SOURCE: Rabinowitz, Peter J. “Reader Response, Reader Responsibility: Heart of Darkness and the Politics of Displacement.” In Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness,’ edited by Ross C. Murfin, pp. 131-47. Boston Mass.: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Rabinowitz presents a reader-response interpretation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Even before Chinua Achebe proclaimed in 1975 that “Joseph Conrad was a bloody racist” (9),¹ many critics had scrutinized the racial politics of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. But Achebe's stature as one of Africa's foremost novelists gave new urgency to the concerns about Conrad's ideology; and since then, it has been increasingly difficult to talk about the novel without coming to terms, either explicitly or implicitly, with Achebe's condemnation. Some critics have defended Conrad's political credentials. Brian W. Shaffer, for example, argues that Conrad's African fictions are “‘rejoinders’” to philosopher Herbert Spencer's “typology of...