Conrad and Masculinity

Epistemology, Modernity and Masculinity 127
profitable to examine, not what the ‘empty’ signifier might mean
(what is the knowledge that Marlow obtains?), but rather the structural
distribution of that signifier (how is that knowledge circulated?).
Such an analysis of the discourse of power/knowledge within the text
may reveal another sort of meaning, through the homologies of this
discourse with historically identifiable discourses (such as the male
homosocial and homophobic discourse identified by Sedgwick, or the
colonialist discourse of civilization, light and knowledge versus the
primitive, darkness and ignorance). To an extent this is reading
against the grain of the text, which presents itself as about metaphysical
and personal truths mapped onto geographical and spatial
metaphors (the journey, the heart, the way in, the edge). Where,
however, the text encourages and assists a reading in terms of political
and ideological structures is in its narrative technique, its use of
the frame of Marlow and his listeners, which focuses attention on an
economy of knowledge and power extending to the reader. That this
frame is both part of the ideological structure and provides a critique
of it should not surprise us, being indicative of the condition of
Conrad’s work which makes it a continuing subject of political debate.
This condition, I would suggest, is that of working within a set of
historical and ideological discourses, but offering footholds for the
critique of these discourses through a reflexive relativism embodied in
narrative structure. 17
The much-debated lie to the Intended seems an inevitable point of
departure for a discussion of knowledge in ‘Heart of Darkness’. The
very term ‘the Intended’ is an example of the way in which the text
tempts interpretation into ideological acceptance: it is difficult to refer
to the woman whom Marlow meets at the end of the story other than
by this term, which involves the critic in replicating her objectification
and the subordination of her subjectivity to Kurtz’s will. There is
another suppression, as well as Marlow’s lie to her about Kurtz’s last
words: the suppression by the text of the name (her name) which he
pretends had been those last words. Marlow’s lie also associates her
(unspoken) name with the idea of horror. 18 In realist terms, the lie
needs little explanation. Faced with Kurtz’s grieving fiancée, whom he
has only just met and who seems to be keeping going psychologically
by idealizing her dead lover, is it surprising that Marlow does not risk
causing embarrassment and trauma by telling this woman that her
lover had become a brutalized mass murderer? What encourages the
reader to go beyond such a realist account is the linguistic, symbolic
and emotional excess of the passage which includes the lie, the near-