Genocide, Philosophical Fetishism, Mourning, and Testimony

Authors

  • Caroline Rooney

Downloads

Abstract

This article engages with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in order to explore how Conrad’s novella arguably associates the dynamics of Hegelian dialectical appropriation with the enactments of genocidal usurpation. It proposes that philosophical fetishism entails a twofold movement of the internalisation of the other and the intended eradication of the other’s external existence. It demonstrates how this ploy manifests itself in settler colonial contexts from the Congo to Palestine. Treating Conrad’s text as a form of theatrical testimony, it distinguishes this theatricality from the literalising performativity of genocide.

Author Biography

Caroline Rooney

Caroline Rooney works and publishes mainly in the areas of postcolonial studies and Arab cultural studies, focusing on the cultural expression of liberation struggles and their aftermaths in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. She has held fellowships, including the ESRC/AHRC Global Uncertainties Fellowship (2009–2012) and a PaCCS Leadership Fellowship (2012–2015). She was also the UK PI on a Newton-Mosharafa programme (2016–2017) entitled ‘Egypt’s Living Heritage: Community Engagement in Re-creating the Past’. She has co-directed documentary films including, with William Parry, ‘Breaking the Generations: Palestinian Prisoners and Medical Rights’.

References

Abraham, Yuval. 2024. “Lavender: The AI Machine Directing Israel’s Bombing Spree in Gaza.” +972, 2 April. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/.

Achebe, Chinua. 1977. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” The Massachusettes Review 18 (4): 782–794.

Ahmed, Nasim. 2023. “‘I’m a Palestinian’: Former Israeli PM Golda Meir.” Middle East Monitor, 5 October. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231005-im-a-palestinian-former-israeli-pm-golda-meir/.

Alshaer, Atef. 2024. “Writing Gaza During a Genocide.” Radical Philosophy 2 (16): 6–12.

Alareer, Refaat. 2004. “I am You.” In Out of Gaza: New Palestinian Poetry, edited by Atef Alshaer and Alan Morrison. Thirsk: Smokestack Books.

Alpert, Avram. 2017. “Empires of Enlightenment: On Illumination and the Politics of Buddhism in Heart of Darkness.” Journal of Modern Literature 40 (2): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.01. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.01

Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity.

Conrad, Joseph. 1999 (1899). Heart of Darkness and Other Stories. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions.

Dabbagh, Selma. 2023. “One Tick, Two Ticks.” London Review of Books, 18 November.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/author/selma-dabbagh.

Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. 1998. “Modern Western Philosophy and African Colonialism.” In African Philosophy: An Anthology, edited and translated by Emmanuel Eze, 213–221. Oxford: Blackwell.

Farber, Yaël. 2008. Theatre as Witness: Three Testimonial Plays From South Africa. London: Oberon.

Grande, Sandy. 2015 (2004). Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought, Tenth Anniversary Edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. https://doi.org/10.5771/9781610489904. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5771/9781610489904

Gunter, Joel. 2004. “Exterminate the beasts.” BBC News, 27 May. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-69052857.

Haas, Amira. 2023. “How Can the World Stand By and Watch Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza?” Democracy Now! 19 October. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/19/amira_hass_on_gaza_humanitarian_crisis.

Hegel, Georg W.F. 1991 (1837). The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. New York: Prometheus Books.

Hilberg, Raul. 1966. The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee.

Lacan, Jacques. 2007 (1973). The Other Side of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XVII. Translated by Russell Grigg. London and New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Lemkin, Rob, dir. 2020. African Apocalypse. Inside Out Films.

Magee, Glenn Alexander. 2001. Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. 2015. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816692149.001.0001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816692149.001.0001

Petry, Michael John, ed. 1979. Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

Pierce, Joseph. 2021. Op-Ed. Artnet, 17 January. https://news.artnet.com/opinion/native-capitol-rioter-1937684.

Rooney, Caroline. 2020. Creative Radicalism in the Middle East: Culture and the Arab Left After the Uprisings. London: Bloomsbury; I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781838601188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781838601188

Rooney, Caroline. 2000. African Literature, Animism and Politics. London and New York: Routledge.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2015. The World as Will and Idea in The Collected Works of Arthur Schopenhauer. Translated by R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp. Kindle. Pergamon Media.

Staff, Toi. 2023. “Smotrich says there’s no Palestinian people, declares his family ‘real Palestinians.’” The Times of Israel, 20 March. https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-lawmaker-bezalel-smotrich-declares-himself-his-family-real-palestinians/.

Strejilevich, Nora. 2006. “Testimony: Beyond the Language of Truth.” Human Rights Quarterly 28 (3): 701–713. https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2006.0038. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2006.0038

Wolin, Richard. 2015. Heidegger’s Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Joonas, and Herbert Marcuse. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400873692. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400873692

Published

26-02-2025

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2024): With the Dead: Performance Philosophy, Dying, and Grief

Section

Special section: The Politics of the Dead Body

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Caroline Rooney

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal, provided it is for non-commercial uses; and that lets others excerpt, translate, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).