Fairy Tales and Conrad

Essay A: Fairy Tales
(1) What is the flash of recognition?
Authough both Conrad's Heart of Darkness and the fairy tale (which can in fact be understood as the conventional reading of this scene, and therefore remaining within the book itself) are allegories, there are also important differences. The main critique of the fairy tale is that it hypothesizes these moments of understanding -- of a brief moment when the return of the fairy tale, of the moral, is recognized. There is a moment, in the fairy tale, the so-called result, the outcome, when good again triumphs, or the moral again reappears. It is this iteritive loop, this rise and fall, that seems to mark the rythm of progress -- the recognition of error, the steps in life. It is evident that the flash never occurs in Conrad, as Marlow is allowed to draw back his foot. Authough Conrad seems to write in anticipation of the flash, which occurs at the moment of death. Why?
What are the consequences of this?
(2) The intimacy and non-presence of truth
For Conrad, the flash can never arrive -- there is no cyclic process where truth is ever obtained, there is no distance, and there is no mourning and there is no wisdom -- not even the wisdom of defeat. Anti-Oedipus. Yet -- everything seems to be in anticipation of the flash, and everything is still arranged as if the flash could, somehow, arrive -- or did arrive. This flash is not the flash of comprehension, but perhaps it is the flash of a certain recognition.
What is the difference between the Benjaminian and the Conradian thinking of the flash?
(3) Mutations, Singularity

Fairy Tale Hypothesis

I want to consider the implications of a very radical philosophy of history -- not of what happened in the past, and not of time, but of the concept of history, the relationship between past, present, and future. In order to focus the discussion, I want to focus on 'defining' three terms: [b]history[/b], [b]intimacy[/b], and [b]non-presence[/b].

1. [b]The Fairy Tail Hypothesis[/b] (or, more coventionally, 'allegory')
The basic premise I call the fairy tale hypothesis. Notice that there are in fact TWO morals to each fairy tale, by the following argument:
1. Fairy tails promise to teach a moral (e.g. the bane of curiosity, the inevitable triumph of good over evil) -- this is the superficial moral.
2. Every individual, however, is unaware of this outcome. The good girl simply [i]does[/i] what comes naturally, the bad girl the same, and they both think they will get away with it.
3. Fairy tails are therefore [i]allegorical[/i] -- they do not provide concrete ways of achieving power, but rather says some fact about fate. IN FACT -- any conscious effort to arrive at a certain ends (such as the bad sister copying the good sister) inevitably meets with failure.
4. [i]Therefore[/i], there is a second, 'negative', moral in fairy tales, an allegory of reading: it states that the first moral can never be used as knowledge, that fate is greater than our ability to control it, or: that this fairy tale itself can never be reduced to concrete knowledge but must remain forever as [i]allo-agoria[/i], "The voice from the other". [i]In addition[/i], all fairy tales are always about the [i]forgetting[/i] of this fact (thus, the daughter will always forget what the mother or the woodsman (the voice of the other) warns her).

Conclusion: The fairy tale (the second moral) therefore provides a very radical model of history, which may be concentrated around these words: [b]allegory, other, forgetting, knowledge, control, fate[/b]. Fairy tales at once teach a (superficial) lesson of the world, but the very same story also 'deconstructs' the first reading,


But I want to 'turn the screw' once more.

Ghost Effects

I want to define this expression 'ghost effect', by giving an example. It's well known that Conrad was fond of using the rhetoric of blindness ('inscrutable', 'black', 'dark', etc.) -- but why? Consider the following passage:

And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it anymore; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality -- the reality I tell you -- fades. The inner truth is hidden -- luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing your respective tight-ropes for -- what is it? half-a-crown a tumble -- (14/32)

Within a closed system, a system of conventional meaning, this passage (and the entire book) would be empty pretty much unreadable: and, indeed, there still are people who think that Conrad is really writing about the simple 'failure' of certain knowledge or 'unknowability' -- that is, that Conrad is merely speaking about 'limitations' within an established system of knowledge. Looking directly at the passage, we see almost nothing but blackness -- 'stillness of an implacable force', 'inscrutable intention', ... 'it looked at me' ... 'I did not see it' ... 'the inner truth is hidden'. These certainly sound like descriptions or aestehtic events but, in fact, they actually empty out these events.

What I call ghost effects appear whenever we try look away from the materiality of the text -- in precisely the same way that Marlow has to look away from the mere incidents of the surface. But Marlow cannot look away, and neither, in the end, can we. Let me make myself clearer, as to what I mean here: we recognize that Conrad is playing games with blindness, which we are tempted to classify as 'an expression of limitation/failure'. But even this continues to be an expression -- and we imply this when we take the inevitable next step: we say Conradian blindness, implying a particular, distinguishable, and therefore visible (historicized) form of blindness. That is, there is the temptation to reduce this blindness to a historically defined (and visible) thing -- blindness of, say, the well-defined person Conrad.

The way I use the word 'tempted' in 'we are tempted to classify this', I make it sound like it's something that we have control over. But it's really, in the end, not a matter of personal choice, but of the nature of appearing, in literature: literature does not manifest presence, but is always characterized by its inability to manifest the object. That is, when we see the rhetoric of blindness, we see precisely that -- something 'of' blindness -- an expression of blindness, a statement of blindness, and so on. Literature is always a inadequate remainder or announcement of an event it cannot reach -- blindness, in this case.

But at the very moment that this historicization occurs, Conrad seems to reappear, as a ghost -- more precisely, as a ghostly voice (and not as a a transcendental understanding of structure, or of an era -- this would be the trascendental or emergent understanding implicit in Conradian ruins). That is, I want to point out that the above passage is precisely about this process we are talking about right now, historicization and ghost effects. Marlow, on the ship, cannot look away from the steering of the ship, from the navigation around these superficial elements. Yet, he feels the presence of this vast, inscrutable force. That is, what Marlow calls 'looking' is precisely what we above called 'visibility', or historical visibility -- the way that there seems to be an irresistable force making us reduce Conrad's blindness to a particular, historical form of blindness: we cannot look away. And, in fact, at the very moment that we seemed to have looked away from this blindness -- at the very moment that we seemed to have understood these Conradian 'games' involving blindness, and see Conrad as a (yet to be understood, holistic) historical 'perspective' -- we, at this moment, suddenly hear the voice shift and reappear.

Now -- to take a breath -- it's obvious that what I describe above, this (somewhat forced, some may argue) reading of the passage as an allegory of reading or of historicization can easily be ignored -- with no ill consequences. No one is hurt by the ignorance of this highly intellectual reading, and it seems to be of very little consequence. And we will most readily admit that such a reading is not obvious and apparent, but rather strings together via the ambiguity of several themes: visibility, blindness, surface, navigation. It is most certainly not a grammatical reading.

Yet, the way in which this reading appears, unsteadily, unconventionally, and with difficulty, is precisely what we are after. This may be connected with what Conrad calls the 'feeling' of the darkness which watches him. But the latter reading continues to appear from within the text, as that which the text had already contained: the allegorical meanings of these words, 'visibility', 'blindness', etc. This is a reading that risks, and -- I assert -- that Conrad himself risked. But what are the wagers?

A summary
Let's slow down and consider what exactly we are arguing here, since this little reading would be absolutely trivial if it merely strove to be a 'correct interpretation' of the text. Our primary goal right now, is the definition of this 'ghost effect' of the text, which I call the effect of something appearing as we look away. The moment that we have understood/'seen'/historicized the text, the text gains a secondary, meaning -- not a subtext, since this concept implies a separate, independent meaning -- but rather a secondary 'ghostly' meaning, an 'allegory of reading' that is parasitic upon the first reading: it is both [i]about[/i] the first meaning, and relies on the secondary definition of a set of key words.

This parasitism reduces the entire process to a failed attempt to look away. We want to look away from the text, but the secondary meaning brings us back at the moment of looking away -- so it turns out that we still are listening to the text. There is no development of the system, but rather a re-hearing of the voice -- we are being told, and we are again, merely announcing the visible, the superficial. And we would like to, once again, historicize this telling -- we would say this entire process is nothing but the dramatization of being unable to look away, or even perhaps the Conradian dramatizaiton of not being able to look away. But, of course, such efforts will be in vain.

We have therefore reached an aporia in our system. We are unable to look away, realizing that any transcendental mode of understanding (Conradian blindness, Conradian dramatization of failure) continues to be a reading of the text -- so that there is no meaning which would finally lie beyond the text, which would finally be capable of historicizing this text. Yet, in the ghost which reappears, this ghostly voice, ...

Substance Abuse: Reconstitute/Explode/Redeem

I feel cheerful, but also desperate, for these difficulties are somewhat beyond my comprehension. I have a vague feeling of where we are, in terms of freedom, future, purpose, and history -- that is, the existential condition which we are in. Perhaps, I can express this existential condition, the vague entirety of this condition -- the motivations for believing this is so, and the questions of fate and future, and our role in that future, freedom and limitations, reality, etc.., where all these terms seem to tie into one another in not haphazardous but unexpected ways. That is, with some help from the Heart of Darkness, I'm going to try to elaborate this 'existential' condition -- with this word expressing the idea that freedom, limitation, and action is always foremost on our mind, even as we consider epistemic and material problems.

I want to call to attention in this title -- 'reconstitute / explode / redeem' -- to the various ways that we relate to the past, the various ways in which we read. Up to this point, we have always imagined reading as having to do with ruins. Recall that even this understanding of ruins is a step beyond what we are being trained or taught -- I mean, we have learned the lesson of stepping back from the naive belief in aesthetics, and immediate responses, and the reality of characters, emotions, and so on, to realize that there are bigger problems in the world than how we feel, and even to denounce the culture which places so much emphasis on feeling -- this aesthetic empire of media. It doesn't take much to realize this, perhaps a faith in Marx, or a understanding and a belief in racism, to realize that this empire is no good. But to return to the original point, we realize that the concept of 'ruin' is not even sufficient to describe what reading is, as the way we are using it, as Conrad is forcing us to consider this term.

And, indeed, Conrad is forcing us to consider this term -- putting it in the forefront, making it apparent. The empire is in ruins, and even this story is in ruins -- the form of what I call the 'shattered logics', where Marlow is like an incapable conspiracy theorist -- unable, for example, in the City of Death, to explain how this group of people have to do with one another, and with these fateful weavers. And what the brickmaker has to do with the manager, and so on. These considerations seem artificial and forced, since we are used to treating obscurity and illogicality with disfavor, and we are used to reducing these mysteries back to the personal, or the the author: "Conradian ruins, Conrads particular ruins".

Thus, we are used to a particular kind of reconstitution, which we know to work beyond whatever the author has to say -- we are used to reading against the author, ignoring him even. And, in the last example, Conradian ruins, we ignore the author, paradoxically, in order to reconstitute the author. Yet, all these practices go back to the original assumption or the readibility of the text -- or, to be more precise, the reconstitutibility of the text, with this word expressing the temporal process, the kind of fake history we associate with reading -- reading as ruined and (partially, in most cases) reconstituted by the reader.

What seems promising to me, at this point, is the principle of non-reconstitutibility, what appears as a radical aholisticity of the text, the timelessness of the text in my sense -- not in the sense of eternal, but rather not of a time or an era. This principle seems irresistable to me, since we are all tired of these pragmaticist and operational definitions ("perspective", "author", "racism", etc.) that form the endpoints and easy answers of any reconstitutive reading. But if reading is not reconstitution (in the sense understood above) then what can it be? And what do these latter two terms in reconstitute/explode/redeem suggest about reading?

But I want to take a breath here, and attempt to coordinate the above questions about reading with our original existential problem: how do these questions of reading tie into reality and to materiality? The coordination of these two problems seems is promised by the question of 'substance abuse': why does Conrad create an artificial ruin (all ruins are artificial, of course, but the Conradian ruin makes this artificiality apparent), as if engaged in 'substance abuse' -- abuse of the materials of reconstitution? Why does Conrad create an unnatural ruin (a ruin that cannot be further ruined by natural historical processes) -- as if this opposition unnatural/natural could be maintained at all? These questions seem to suggest the possibility of moving beyond the purely negative notion of aholisticity, since these artificial ruins of Conrad suggest a way of reconstitution which would not fall back into the traditional models of author and era. But how does this reconstitution take place, if we are not after merely a new holisticity? That is, if these artificial ruins are not to be the ruins of an artifical process?

Heart of Darkness: Preliminary Discussions

It seems that, in order to appreciate something like Heart of Darkness, it's necessary to absolutely ignore the conventional mentality where everyone feels like they have their own 'opinion' to contribute to a work, where everyone is so eager to share how they responded to a book. Indeed, Heart of Darkness is about a ruin, but one that is absolutely not to be understood in the traditional existential senses -- so that, in particular, Heart is not a ruin in the sense of a failure. Coordinating the above two thoughts, Heart of Darkness is about the ruin of modern society, but this ruin cannot be understood without thinking with the book, i.e. the definition is always at stake -- so that the 'about' must be understood strongly, as an evocation and a thinking of a highly particular sense of ruin.

The question of "What is ruin?" will guide our reading, but we must be clear as to the actual stakes involved (i.e. "keeping it real") -- for surely, in this question, we are not attempting to reach a definition of Conradian ruin. In order to outline the stakes of what we are attempting to do with this reading, why read at all, and why read philosophically in order to understand ruin, I must first of all describe the intimacy of ruin with the practice of reading. And authough this sounds like a preliminary discussion -- to lay out the stakes beforehand, before one applies this 'theory' to the historical object of the Heart -- we will find that we cannot talk about ruin and reading without referring to the book.

To read is to approach history. This assertion is counterintuitive when we realize that reading, for the most part, is understood today as an aesthetic or recreational activity -- perhaps not by default, but when we realize that reading cannot actually bring us in touch with reality. That is, all of us, having overcome the naivete of perception and representation, have nonetheless insisted on sticking with the notion of a 'mental image' or a 'mental effect' in thinking about reading. In other words, from a niave materiality (the opinions of the author, the images in the book, etc.) we have moved to a secondary, psychological reality or perhaps even a vulgar-technical reality (how I felt, how lighting was used, etc.). The reasoning thus runs: if a book cannot be pinned down and categorized, then the only reality a book can contact is the psychological reality, either expressed in psychological or technical-aesthetic terms.

What we are gambling, in our proposed reading, is in fact not something that extraordinary. We will ask Heart to be a characterization and a critique of our present age. Heart cannot be read, therefore, within the systems and the aesthetic/psychological impasses which characterize contemporary society -- in other words, we do not hope to arrive at a psychological understanding of our psychological age and its psychological readings. In other words, if Heart is about the present age, then it is not about the materiality and the mechanics of the present age -- or, it cannot be a demystification of the present age, a procedure which would continue to rely on psychological models.

To pause a breath for a minute here: the point of this post is to raise some preliminary questions about the stakes of our reading, yet our essay has been filled with mostly negative assertions. We recognize that Heart is about ruin, and that it is in fact about our ruin. But, being about our time, it is not of our time: it is not to be understood psychologically, experientially. We often forget that books were never considered paper equivalents of movies and reality until very recently -- for the longest stretches of history, it had a archival function. An archive makes no claims to immediacy, authough it does make some (debatable) claims about truth. And, basically, books continue to be treated in this way -- literary institutions are founded upon the archival nature of the book, the way it continues to bear truth, not as 'representation', but as, traditionally, 'spirit', 'ideology', 'culture', etc.

Heart, then, is an archive of the present age. More precisely, it is an archive of the age of empires, but that age continues to exist. As archive, it responds to the present age, yet (I assert) it cannot be read by the present age. I'm reminded of the way in which 80's movies seem to go out of style so quickly -- if seen on TV today, those movies appear as ruined works -- but they are ruined, apparently, in a very specific way, a way that we at present can apparently read. It's only possible to read ruined works (it's possible to respond to anything) -- thus, in 80's movies we confront a moment of readibility, when the emotional and psychological magic of the film has worn out and when the jagged peices of ideology seems to display themselves like a shattered pot. Hidden patterns that once ran through the text become apparent, theorizable, readable -- we read the shattered moral logics that were thought, at one point, to apply to all of humanity.

But, my point in bringing up 80's movies is, once again, to provide a foil to the ruin of the Heart of Darkness. We hear that literature is timeless -- yet, we argue (above) that only timeful literature can be read, or only 'quaint' and antiquated things can be read. When people say that great literature is timeless, they mean something entirely different from what is meant here when I say "not of this time", or without a time. "Timeless" in the sense of universal, enduring, eternal, must be differentiated from timeless in the sense of 'having no time', 'not having arrived': the former believes (foolishly, without any evidence at all) that the popular endurance of certain works of literature means that appeal in an aesthetic and obvious sense, that 'beauty' is eternal, and so on. Of course, we know that beauty is the most ephemeral thing of all, and not in a nostalgic and mournful sense, but rather in the sense that beauty is a kind of mystification that cannot withstand the test of time. That's why there are classes on art appreciation -- becaus these things don't come naturally or immediately, and that a certain understanding of history is required to rephenomenalize these works.

We have arrived, then, at the consideration of the particular nature of the ruin of Heart -- a special kind of ruin that renders the text, I argue, both readable and unreadable for these reasons: On the one hand, a work is readable only if it is in ruin, on the other hand, the ruin of Heart do not fit together like a once whole pot, but rather like a conspiracy -- something that seems to point elsewhere. In the ruin of Heart of Darkness, we recognize its readibility, its status as memory, as ideology, as temporary mystification. Yet, Heart resists the reconstruction, since it was never whole to begin with -- the ruin is to obvious, it is too apparent, Heart is about its own ruin.

Before we attempt to state all of this in forms which are a bit more precise, let's attempt to catch our breath. We began with the some observations about ruin, and about the relationship between reading and ruin. By reading, we mean here an intellectual analysis of the work and its history, and not an aesthetic enjoyment. We observe that the ruin of Heart is not ruined by time, of psychological change, but is a preexisting ruin ('about its ruin'). Our very ability to read, if it is founded upon ruin, upon reading ruins, is disrupted -- Heart is ruined by a process we have never encountered. Heart is therefore both readable and unreadable -- as ruin, as the ruin of history, it promises a reading, but as a ruin already, as something ruined by nothing (that we know of) it also denies this reading. We must attempt, at this point, to formulate some questions which our theorizing would be a response to.