Conrad’s Shadow: Catastrophe, Mimesis, Theory by Nidesh Lawtoo

Abstract

Reviewed by: Conrad’s Shadow: Catastrophe, Mimesis, Theory by Nidesh Lawtoo Claude Maisonnat (bio) Nidesh Lawtoo. Conrad’s Shadow: Catastrophe, Mimesis, Theory. Ann Arbor: Michigan State University Press, 2017. xiii + 420 pp. ISBN: 9781611862188. Here is an innovative book that deliberately stands apart from run-of-the-mill critical studies of Conrad’s works. The project is justifiably ambitious and foregrounds its theoretical bias as early as the subtitle which could act as a caveat to some. However, that Lawtoo qualifies his book as theory-oriented should not discourage those who are not theoretically oriented because it is a tightly-knit and thoroughgoing demonstration that is at the same time well-written and eminently readable. The unifying concept which connects all the chapters of the book is that of mimesis, already implicitly contained in the word “shadow,” but it is more than that. It should not simply be understood as a mimetic approach to the old [End Page 201] romantic topos of the figure of the double but most convincingly as an exploration of hitherto largely ignored aspects of modernity. Lawtoo’s starting point is the idea that mimesis is a protean concept in search of an identity and to a large extent the whole book can be read as an attempt to explore the various facets of that identity, touching on subjects like post-colonial studies, new materialism, environmental studies, and even the neurosciences. The danger of resorting to such a unifying concept is, of course, that it entails a number of repetitions, but Lawtoo’s efforts to overcome the conundrum of relying on a single hypothesis to account for human behavior and artistic creation are eventually rewarded. Far from diluting the notion by widening its scope and thus threatening to blunt its cutting edge and diminish its efficiency, he skilfully succeeds in demonstrating its relevance to new fields of expertise like the theory of catastrophe, the emergence of the Anthropocene, the ethics of sharing, and the threat of horrorism, among others. His acute understanding of theoretical stakes is nothing new as he had already illustrated this in his previous and successful book on Heart of Darkness and Contemporary Thought. Lawtoo’s method of textual investigation is original and always the same: he focuses on a particular episode which could appear minor to some, and explores its many theoretical implications, in the meantime showing why it is crucial and sheds some light on the whole text. This is something of a technical feat, as it ultimately proves highly convincing and satisfactory. This is the case, for instance, of the significance of the last duel between d’Hubert and Féraud in “The Duel,” interpreted as a way of putting an end to the repetition of violence, or the storm scene on board the Sephora in “The Secret Sharer,” revisited in the light of the Anthropocene and the ethics of catastrophe. The book itself with its 420 pages, 361 of them being devoted to a series of essays on individual works, is composed of three main parts: Ethics of Catastrophe, Anthropology of Frenzy, and Metaphysics of Tragedy, followed by a coda entitled “Conrad’s Neuroplasticity,” the latter being perhaps not indispensable. It looks at A Personal Record and Under Western Eyes, exploring briefly such concepts as the neuro turn and brain plasticity, and attempts to account for the question of language and adoption. The whole comprises eight chapters altogether. In a lengthy but necessary and helpful introduction of some forty pages, Lawtoo explains what he means by the figure of the artist as double beyond the mere homo duplex cliché that Conrad applied to himself. Then he considers his own position as a Janus-faced reader who wants to be as much critically oriented as he is theoretically oriented as far as his epistemological approach is concerned. This leads him to assess his position as a protean theorist who covers multiple cultural grounds encompassing psychoanalysis, sociology, psychology, anthropology, post-colonial studies, [End Page 202] media studies, affect theory, and even neurology with the discovery of the function of mirror neurons in the way the brain works. In this last instance, he threads his path cautiously, and rightly so, because the...