Twentieth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The European colonial venture which reached its peak in the 19th century caused one of the fiercest cultural collisions in the history of human civilization. It can be said that the novels which deal with colonialism are the very sites, epitomes, and even means of cultural collisions which the colonial encounter necessitates. Literature, especially the genre of novels, was an important vehicle of such discourses. This power which the colonizer assumed through their discourse can be called “epistemic advantage” because it was knowledge which vindicated their rule over foreign lands even though it may have been initially established by guns, cannons and trade tactics. Later in the postcolonial era, one can see how the colonized react to this cultural hegemony. Novelists like Chinua Achebe try to give a firm voice to the African culture through his fiction. Joseph Conrad, as evident from his writings, was a person who strongly believed in the moral superiority of the Europeans. He wails at the moral degeneration of the Europeans abroad and sees imperialism as the corrupting force which informs his attitude towards it