Worlding Appetite
Colonialism, Modernism, and the Gustatory in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8864259 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ruchi Mundeja (0000-0002-5553-7644, University of Delhi, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 102 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1068-1085 |
| Publication date | 2021-08-09 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | English Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0013838x.2021.1952537 |
| OpenAlex | W3191505534 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 21 |
As a sceptical re-engagement with recent criticism's ingestive incorporation of canonical modernists into a postcolonial frame, this essay's focus on ingestive moments in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a useful entry point into exploring the connection between a devouring colonialism and a consuming modernism. The modernist savouring of the new intersects disturbingly with colonialism's brutal practices of ingestion, if Heart of Darkness be one's test case. With objects disappearing with alarming rapidity down Kurtz's gut, this essay takes the alimentary route to examine how covetousness in Heart of Darkness shifts from the colonialist to the modernist axis. Guts, bowels, entrails - even as Conrad's novella portrays a landscape ravaged by the ravenous, it also inaugurates modernism in establishing Kurtz and Marlow as connoisseurs and curators of souvenirs recovered from a downward journey into the subterranean. The complex interplay between gustation and gestation examined here is by way of intervening in the conversation that has built up around opening up the (modernist) canon, by shifting focus to how canonical texts wrestle with or are even betrayed by their own subtexts and how that might complicate any sanguine understanding of intersectionality vis-à-vis modernism and postcolonialism
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Criticism · Literature · Modernism (music · Modernity · Postcolonialism (international relations · Skepticism · Sociology · Theology · Joseph Conrad and Literature · Travel Writing and Literature · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |