Aestheticizing Colonial Violence in Conrad’s Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness

Abstract

In Heart of Darkness (1899) and Lord Jim (1900), Joseph Conrad captures the attempt
of colonial rhetoric to rationalize, even aestheticize, colonial violence. In both works, Conrad
reproduces colonial rhetoric and brings to the limelight discursive elements which rationalize
acts of violence against the native inhabitants of invaded lands by establishing a connection
between these acts of violence and a higher ideal that pertains to the larger myth of the civilizing
mission and the white man's moral responsibility towards humanity—drawing on an inventory of
racial values and ideas which give primacy to a European worldview and undermine the
humanity and moral value of the Other. The objective is to make agreeable and more bearable
the whole colonial ordeal, especially the need to brute force in colonized lands whenever the
European project is met with resistance. Primarily, the aesthetic of violence is an interpretation
which aims at reshaping the political and social mindset of men and women involved in the
colonial project so that the career of colonial aggression is both endurable and enduring and the
colonial project advances.