Do Not Forget Mr. Kurtz. The Appeal of Savagery
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1902) is classically interpreted as a politically-oriented novel that denounces the imperialism of Leopold II by staging the lies of the humanitarian propaganda of civilizers that are used to cover the violence of the colonial enterprise. In this paper I illustrate how Conrad has transformed the fable constructed around Kurtz and his criminal hunting gang into a philosophical meditation, profoundly pessimistic, about the human condition. Following an anthropological reading I will argue that in his novel Conrad has presented, through the Congolese solitude, the encounter of civilizations in their very own savagery, rather than the primitivism of Africa. Literature and philosophy are presented as a necessary companion to anthropology in those moments when our discipline is confronted by limit-experiences such as savagery, cannibalism and sorcery.