Conrad and Masculinity

Epistemology, Modernity and Masculinity 123
possibility. 14 My attention will be primarily directed, not towards
what the substance of such a truth might be for Conrad, but towards
the structural significance and symbolic associations with which his
texts endow the idea of such truth, as well as less exalted forms of
knowledge. In terms of structural significance, I am concerned with
the way in which knowledge circulates among characters, is passed on
or withheld, is shared or competed for. In terms of symbolic associations,
I consider the symbolic identification of certain characters at
key points in the fictions with an idea of truth.
One advantage of considering the texts in this light is that it enables
the inclusion of the author, readers and critics (as well as implied
author and implied reader) since the acts of writing, reading and interpreting
are themselves a form of circulation of knowledge. 15 Conrad’s
fictional self-consciousness (evident in the many references in his
work to the acts of reading, writing, telling, listening and interpreting)
serves to project the processes of circulation of knowledge outside the
confines of the text. The gendering of knowledge and truth within
Conrad’s texts deeply implicates the aesthetic and didactic status of
those texts. In representing ‘truths’ about gender and in representing
a relationship between truth and gender, Conrad’s fictions are also, in
Foucault’s terms, participating in the production and distribution of
knowledge and truth via the institution of literature. Readers and
critics are not, however, passive in this process. They may repeat or
change the modes of circulation set up within the text. In discussing
masculinity in Conrad’s fiction I would hope to resist certain
gendered modes of circulation rather than to perpetuate them.
The process of circulation may be analysed in terms of the literary
forms and modes of communication employed by his homodiegetic
narrators. The principal literary forms are: the telling of stories (e.g.
Marlow in ‘Heart of Darkness’); the writing of letters (e.g. MacWhirr
and Jukes in ‘Typhoon’, Decoud in Nostromo, Marlow in Lord Jim), the
keeping of a diary (Razumov in Under Western Eyes) and the writing or
speaking of narratives which claim not to be fictional, but which must
involve elements of fictionalization, at least in the form of shaping
and selecting material (Marlow in Lord Jim, the language-teacher in
Under Western Eyes). Two important modes of communication in
Conrad’s fiction are confessing and overhearing (or its written equivalent
– reading a text intended for someone else). These two modes
combine in various ways with the literary forms which have been
mentioned. Storytelling, letter-writing and journal-writing may all
have elements of confession in them and may all be overheard or read