Kurtz in Heart of Darkness (1899) as an archetype of the colonizer: liminality, trauma, ghost, violence and ritual
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17398/2660-7301.48.261Keywords:
Colonialism, Liminality, Trauma, Ghost, Violence, RitualAbstract
This article analyses the figure of the ivory trader Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). This narrative is a canonical work within Western cultural representations of the colonial universe and the character of Kurtz serves as an archetype of the colonizer in later literary works. The relationship of interdependence and interconnection between the colonial universe and the universe of the metropolis established by Conrad allows the analysis of this figure to also offer details that serve to understand the figure of the perpetrator of mass crimes of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The article focuses on cultural, psychological, social, anthropological and political aspects related to the colony and the colonizer, such as liminality, animality, trauma, ghostliness, inheritance, burials, violence and rituals.
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