Abstract
This paper examines the connections between two key Western cultural texts: Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, set in the Belgian Congo; and the Oscar-winning movie Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Coppola, 1979). The synergies between these two works are viewed through the lens of postcolonial thought, as shaped in particular by the arguments of Edward Said and Chinhua Achebe. The erasure of the native “other” in both novel and film is argued to point to a persistent Western cultural resistance to non-Judeo-Christian, non-Western subjectivities, be they located in Africa, South East Asia or elsewhere. Instead we have a dominant depiction of the native “other” as stereotype (threatening, barbaric, uncivilized), as merged with a dangerous local environment, or as barely present at all.
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