Conclusion
The Formation of the Modern Subject in Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf
In this project we have seen how Conrad and Woolf each take up questions that are markedly similar to one another. Their novels address problems of ontology in Lord and Jacob's, of psychology in Darkness and Dalloway, of social life in Agent and Lighthouse and, in a moment of pure difference, of public history in Nostromo versus private history in Waves. We have also seen the breakdown of three illusions: the illusion of transcendence which, following Wittgenstein's division between the sayable and the unsayable, causes Jim and Jacob to sacrifice their lives in the name of a truth removed from physical reality; the illusion of the unified self which, following Lacan's mirror-stage, causes Marlow and Clarissa to "confront the confining dualities of the everyday world" but allows Kurtz and Septimus to "soar beyond them to a realm of pure exalted being"; and the illusion of a transcendent love which, following Nietzsche, causes both the Verlocs and the Ramseys to chain themselves to a marital relationship founded on subjugation and domination. The inability of these illusory perspectives of offer a solution to the binarism of the modern subject leads Conrad and Woolf, following Bakhtin's models for literary analysis, to create texts that are structured by either choronotopic oppositions (Nostromo) or polyphonic voices (Waves).
I feel it is not unreasonable to suggest that these two writers were instrumental in shaping the modern subject, for their novels frequently preceded their philosophical counterparts. While I feel my critiques of Conrad and Woolf and some of their major novels express my personal critical viewpoint, the readings I offered are the subject of some debate among literary critics. Regarding my interpretation of Conrad, one could debate my analysis with the perspective of Ian Watt and Chinua Achebe, who align themselves with the social critique of Conrad's work. Specifically, Watt sees Darkness as a critique of the brutality of imperialism, and Achebe condemns this work for "projecting an image of Africa as 'the other world,'" a dehumanized environment whose inhabitants are fit to be exploited. While these critics conclude the Darkness contains a convincing literary critique of the brutality of imperialism, Vincent Pecora believes the colonist-imperialist reading is secondary to the journey of the self. In aligning my reading of Darkness and Dalloway with the structural psychology of Jacques Lacan, I am implicitly agreeing with Pecora that the viewpoint held by Watt and Achebe is secondary to the exploration of the self.
Perhaps my critique of Jacob's will find the most detractors. The feminist critic Makiko Minow-Pinkney sees this novel as being concerned with ideological position of the female subject in the age of "phallogocentric ideology" and Teresa de Laurentis believes this novel of to be about "the ideology of gender." One again, my reading differs in that I do not believe that the essential structure of Woolf's novel addresses the problem of gender. Rather, I believe that this novel, like Conrad's Lord, addresses the problematic ontological status of the subject who attempts to straddle the realms of the metaphysical and the real.
If the early novels of Joseph Conrad mark the transition from realism to modernism, the late novels of Virginia Woolf mark the transition from modernism to something Kemp calls "feminist postmodernist fiction." From the standpoint of Woolf's fiction, one is able to view Conrad from the same perspective at which Heidegger views Nietzsche, as someone who "experiences nihilism without being able to think its essence." Parallel to Heidegger's view of Nietzsche as signalling the end of metaphysics, the view of the subject as related in Lord and Darkness inscribes the dethronement of the realist and naturalist forms of narrative. As stated above, the superiority of Woolf, while somewhat unfair considering Conrad's historical precedence, consists in her being able to evaluate the full heterogeneous contents of narrative consciousness in her polyphonic novel, Waves. This statement, too, is contested when Pitt argues that Woolf's fiction lacks the emotional intensity of Conrad's novels. This critical difference aside, I consider Pitt to be an ally for she, too, says that the work of both writers is of most interest as "an exploration of the self."
Conrad's modernist literary perspective continues to advance into Woolf's time, as her novels are marked by a post-modernism that exerts its formative pressure, not on historical time as in Conrad's novels, but on the space of ideology and the spatial landscape of Woolf's novels. Conrad demonstrates a need to fix people in time, while Woolf repeals these fixed notions of space in terms of narrative consciousness. In his novels Conrad unsuccessfully attempts to stabilize the binary self through a unified use of chronotopes, while Woolf signals the breakdown of authorial control as her narrative dissolves into a polyphonic chorus of voices.
In Conrad we meet characters who are impoverished, psychologically and ontologically. His characters, including Jim, the romantic dreamer, Kurtz the dehumanized colonist, Verloc the isolated anarchist and Decoud the alienated revolutionary, are each grounded in the corrupted ideology of modernism. Similarly, Woolf's characters, including Septimus' delusional fantasies, Mr. Ramsey's refuge in philosophical flights of imagination, Bernard's howl of pain and Jacob's final self-destruction all testify that no solid core of selfhood and ever be captured. The work of these two authors represent the transition from masculine time to feminine space: Nostromo, centered on Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope, is a novel whose concern with temporality ends in the solipsistic corruption of the self while Waves, centered on Bakhtin's concept of polyphony, is a novel whose concerns with spatiality over time leads to an expansion of consciousness and the overcoming of death as the negation of the self, the limit of the self's existence.
In a dramatic reversal of the poetics of his early modernist texts, the later novels of Joseph Conrad it is seen that the political dimension of the literary text becomes opaque, without the transparency that was once a dominant feature of his work. In the high modernism of Woolf's novels, the once opaque body becomes transparent and, for the first time, enters into consciousness. Conrad's early novels, like Lord, confront the limits of the metaphysical subject, inaugurating modernism with the close of narrative forms like realism and naturalism. What Woolf does in her later novels, especially Waves, mutates Conrad's achievement one step further. She alters the epistemological foundation of modernist narrative by discovering the possibility of psychic reunification and return--a superannuated plot-structure dating back to the romantics--through not modernist temporality, but through a postmodern investigation of the ideology of space. Finally, if one can say that Conrad's modernist text can be seen in terms of chronotopic opposition, then one can also claim that, for Woolf, the polyphonic consciousness of postmodern narrative attempts to overcome the oppositional structure of the literary text.
In this project we have seen how Conrad and Woolf each take up questions that are markedly similar to one another. Their novels address problems of ontology in Lord and Jacob's, of psychology in Darkness and Dalloway, of social life in Agent and Lighthouse and, in a moment of pure difference, of public history in Nostromo versus private history in Waves. We have also seen the breakdown of three illusions: the illusion of transcendence which, following Wittgenstein's division between the sayable and the unsayable, causes Jim and Jacob to sacrifice their lives in the name of a truth removed from physical reality; the illusion of the unified self which, following Lacan's mirror-stage, causes Marlow and Clarissa to "confront the confining dualities of the everyday world" but allows Kurtz and Septimus to "soar beyond them to a realm of pure exalted being"; and the illusion of a transcendent love which, following Nietzsche, causes both the Verlocs and the Ramseys to chain themselves to a marital relationship founded on subjugation and domination. The inability of these illusory perspectives of offer a solution to the binarism of the modern subject leads Conrad and Woolf, following Bakhtin's models for literary analysis, to create texts that are structured by either choronotopic oppositions (Nostromo) or polyphonic voices (Waves).
I feel it is not unreasonable to suggest that these two writers were instrumental in shaping the modern subject, for their novels frequently preceded their philosophical counterparts. While I feel my critiques of Conrad and Woolf and some of their major novels express my personal critical viewpoint, the readings I offered are the subject of some debate among literary critics. Regarding my interpretation of Conrad, one could debate my analysis with the perspective of Ian Watt and Chinua Achebe, who align themselves with the social critique of Conrad's work. Specifically, Watt sees Darkness as a critique of the brutality of imperialism, and Achebe condemns this work for "projecting an image of Africa as 'the other world,'" a dehumanized environment whose inhabitants are fit to be exploited. While these critics conclude the Darkness contains a convincing literary critique of the brutality of imperialism, Vincent Pecora believes the colonist-imperialist reading is secondary to the journey of the self. In aligning my reading of Darkness and Dalloway with the structural psychology of Jacques Lacan, I am implicitly agreeing with Pecora that the viewpoint held by Watt and Achebe is secondary to the exploration of the self.
Perhaps my critique of Jacob's will find the most detractors. The feminist critic Makiko Minow-Pinkney sees this novel as being concerned with ideological position of the female subject in the age of "phallogocentric ideology" and Teresa de Laurentis believes this novel of to be about "the ideology of gender." One again, my reading differs in that I do not believe that the essential structure of Woolf's novel addresses the problem of gender. Rather, I believe that this novel, like Conrad's Lord, addresses the problematic ontological status of the subject who attempts to straddle the realms of the metaphysical and the real.
If the early novels of Joseph Conrad mark the transition from realism to modernism, the late novels of Virginia Woolf mark the transition from modernism to something Kemp calls "feminist postmodernist fiction." From the standpoint of Woolf's fiction, one is able to view Conrad from the same perspective at which Heidegger views Nietzsche, as someone who "experiences nihilism without being able to think its essence." Parallel to Heidegger's view of Nietzsche as signalling the end of metaphysics, the view of the subject as related in Lord and Darkness inscribes the dethronement of the realist and naturalist forms of narrative. As stated above, the superiority of Woolf, while somewhat unfair considering Conrad's historical precedence, consists in her being able to evaluate the full heterogeneous contents of narrative consciousness in her polyphonic novel, Waves. This statement, too, is contested when Pitt argues that Woolf's fiction lacks the emotional intensity of Conrad's novels. This critical difference aside, I consider Pitt to be an ally for she, too, says that the work of both writers is of most interest as "an exploration of the self."
Conrad's modernist literary perspective continues to advance into Woolf's time, as her novels are marked by a post-modernism that exerts its formative pressure, not on historical time as in Conrad's novels, but on the space of ideology and the spatial landscape of Woolf's novels. Conrad demonstrates a need to fix people in time, while Woolf repeals these fixed notions of space in terms of narrative consciousness. In his novels Conrad unsuccessfully attempts to stabilize the binary self through a unified use of chronotopes, while Woolf signals the breakdown of authorial control as her narrative dissolves into a polyphonic chorus of voices.
In Conrad we meet characters who are impoverished, psychologically and ontologically. His characters, including Jim, the romantic dreamer, Kurtz the dehumanized colonist, Verloc the isolated anarchist and Decoud the alienated revolutionary, are each grounded in the corrupted ideology of modernism. Similarly, Woolf's characters, including Septimus' delusional fantasies, Mr. Ramsey's refuge in philosophical flights of imagination, Bernard's howl of pain and Jacob's final self-destruction all testify that no solid core of selfhood and ever be captured. The work of these two authors represent the transition from masculine time to feminine space: Nostromo, centered on Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope, is a novel whose concern with temporality ends in the solipsistic corruption of the self while Waves, centered on Bakhtin's concept of polyphony, is a novel whose concerns with spatiality over time leads to an expansion of consciousness and the overcoming of death as the negation of the self, the limit of the self's existence.
In a dramatic reversal of the poetics of his early modernist texts, the later novels of Joseph Conrad it is seen that the political dimension of the literary text becomes opaque, without the transparency that was once a dominant feature of his work. In the high modernism of Woolf's novels, the once opaque body becomes transparent and, for the first time, enters into consciousness. Conrad's early novels, like Lord, confront the limits of the metaphysical subject, inaugurating modernism with the close of narrative forms like realism and naturalism. What Woolf does in her later novels, especially Waves, mutates Conrad's achievement one step further. She alters the epistemological foundation of modernist narrative by discovering the possibility of psychic reunification and return--a superannuated plot-structure dating back to the romantics--through not modernist temporality, but through a postmodern investigation of the ideology of space. Finally, if one can say that Conrad's modernist text can be seen in terms of chronotopic opposition, then one can also claim that, for Woolf, the polyphonic consciousness of postmodern narrative attempts to overcome the oppositional structure of the literary text.
posted by Andrew B. Noselli at 8:12 AM
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