Joseph Conrad's short story "An outpost of progress". A (post-)colonial Gothic reading (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, , language: English, abstract: At first sight, postcolonial theories and Gothic writing appear to have barely features in common. On the one hand, Gothic as a genre flourished with Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764, which celebrated irrationality and explored "feelings, desires and passions which compromised the Enlightenment project of rationally calibrating all forms of knowledge and behaviours" (Smith and Hughes 1).

In the succeeding decades, numerous writers trail Walpole by publishing their individual Gothic novels, e.g. Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus. On the other hand, studies in colonialist discourse contemplate colonialisation and its aftermath on individuals, communities and cultures, emerging in the late 1970s as essence of literary criticism. Although both genres appear to focus on antithetic research domains considering time references as well as contexts, they still share their enthusiasm in questioning conceptions of rationality. Therefore, both study areas challenge issues, of which humans are incapable to explain. Thereby, the creation of an 'Other' is crucial.

On the one hand, postcolonial and colonial domains challenge and attempt at standing reason for the clash of cultures with which colonisers and colonised people are confronted. On the other hand, emphasising the idea of transgression, Gothic fiction inhabits images of the Other as well, illustrating anew the impossibility for explanation.

Joseph Conrad published his short story "An Outpost of Progress" in 1897 and collected it to his work Tales of Unrest in 1898. "An Outpost of Progress" has become subject to crucial criticism of imperialism, colonialisation and civilisation, by describing the story of two white men, Kayerts and Carlier, who are in charge of a trading post in the Congo cabin. Consequently, the story represents the difficulties between two oppositional cultures and the effects of this encounter. Considering the dark ambience created throughout the story, this short story can be analysed in terms of a postcolonial gothic reading. This paper aims, therefore, to outline main reasons why this short story accords with characteristics of a postcolonial and colonial gothic reading.