Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Sozialwissenschaften

Representing The Unspeakable Trauma : A Deleuzian Reading Of Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness

Abstract

Che-ming Yang

This paper explores Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to analyze Kurtz’s ghastly vision of horror (trauma) and how he overcomes this traumatic experience through the metamorphosis of becoming-animal/savage in forming his lines of flight from the oedipalizing/oppressive capitalism and imperialism. To avoid following a conventional approach to study this novella, I explore Kurtz’s unspeakable horror that underlies a postmodern aesthetics of problematizing representation. To further unveil the strategies for (re)presenting Kurtz’s unspeakable pain and horror, or to be more specific, the mysterious vision that overwhelms him right before he dies, I apply the Deleuzian conception of the “impossible writing”—a writing strategy that is characteristic of minor literature/writing—to analyze Marlow’s narrativization, for it happens to highlight Marlow’s impasse, just like Kafka’s, that bars him access to writing for Kurtz’s outrageous experience and vision and thus turns this narration/writing into something impossible.