“What I really wanted was some rivets, by heaven!” The labours of empire

Work and production in Conrad’s “Youth” and Heart of Darkness

Bibliographic Data

ID21189585
AuthorsJosh Hambleton-Jewell (0000-0002-9461-0947, University of Exeter, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume59
Issue2
Pages200-214
Publication date2023-03-04
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2022.2160085
OpenAlexW4313566619
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

Written during the decline of the imperial-capitalist international division of labour, Joseph Conrad’s maritime adventures such as “Youth” constitute some of the earliest literary registrations of the stagnation of a world-system undergirded by the exploitation of labour. This is perhaps why Fredric Jameson claims that Conrad’s fictions mark “a strategic fault line in the emergence of contemporary narrative”. Conrad’s are some of the first texts to question whether imperial capitalism actually contributed to social development in the colonies. This article argues that his representation of the inefficiency and unproductivity of work aboard the Judea in “Youth” and in the Belgian Congo in Heart of Darkness signals a broader strategy of exploring the contradictions and discontinuities of the social logic that structures capitalist accumulation. Whilst still writing within an imperial language and logic, Conrad’s portrayal of imperial inefficiency in these texts moves towards representing the colonialist division of labour from without

Adventure · Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Art history · Capitalism · Empire · Heaven · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · History · Joseph Conrad and Literature · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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