The representation of the African : ‘Other’ in Melville’s Moby-Dick and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Abstract EN

This paper intends to propose a re-reading of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and explore the authors’ discourse in relation to ‘Africanism’ where the black African is portrayed as the ‘Other’.

Toni Morrison introduces the term Africanism as: “The denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreading that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people” (Morrison, 1992: 6).

Africanism is, then, the way the West constructs Africa.

The latter is seen as a place of passivity, full of monolithic blackness, populated with black savage people who need saving because of their savagery and depravity.

The purpose of this work is to explore to what extent do the two authors’ perceptions of the African ‘Other’ resemble and\or differ from those that the general ideologies of their times circulated.