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Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, who gradually transformed himself
into the English writer, Joseph Conrad, was a mercurial
personality. He left Poland for the sea, though he had no
experience with salt water. He left the Polish language for French,
and then for English. He attempted suicide at the age of twenty. He
invested in various schemes and lost his inheritance. He married an
English typist nearly sixteen years younger than himself with whom
he had nothing in common. He worked as a writer though he made no
money through all the years of his most important work and though
he experienced terrible psychological breakdowns after completing
each novel. He was warm with his friends, ingratiating with
influential strangers, but also intensely irritable and easily
offended. His work is as varied and changeable as his personality,
from his first two, emotionally intense Malay novels, to the stolid
and confident Nigger of the "Narcissus" and "Typhoon"; from the
coldly ironic "Outpost of Progress" to the nightmarishly subjective
Heart of Darkness; from the leisurely, panoramic visions of
Nostromo to the tautly nervous, claustrophobic ironies in The
Secret Agent. Despite the extraordinary thematic and tonal range of
his work, critics have imposed a stable political perspective on
his fiction-most often an organic conservatism, influenced by his
Polish background. This is understandable; until recently, a
critic's role has been to impose order on an artist's creations.
The approach in this book is different. Drawing on the work of
Michel Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard, especially on the
latter's critique of what he called "the grand narrative," A
Political Genealogy of Joseph Conrad shows how Conrad's politics
were always radically contingent on audience, contemporary events,
and, especially, genre. While the political perspective in each of
his stories and novels may be more-or-less coherent and consistent,
there is no consistency throughout his work. A Political Genealogy
of Joseph Conrad is the first book devoted exclusively to Conrad's
politics since the 1960s.
Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, who gradually transformed himself
into the English writer, Joseph Conrad, was a mercurial
personality. He left Poland for the sea, though he had no
experience with salt water. He left the Polish language for French,
and then for English. He attempted suicide at the age of twenty. He
invested in various schemes and lost his inheritance. He married an
English typist nearly sixteen years younger than himself with whom
he had nothing in common. He worked as a writer though he made no
money through all the years of his most important work and though
he experienced terrible psychological breakdowns after completing
each novel. He was warm with his friends, ingratiating with
influential strangers, but also intensely irritable and easily
offended. His work is as varied and changeable as his personality,
from his first two, emotionally intense Malay novels, to the stolid
and confident Nigger of the "Narcissus" and "Typhoon"; from the
coldly ironic "Outpost of Progress" to the nightmarishly subjective
Heart of Darkness; from the leisurely, panoramic visions of
Nostromo to the tautly nervous, claustrophobic ironies in The
Secret Agent. Despite the extraordinary thematic and tonal range of
his work, critics have imposed a stable political perspective on
his fiction-most often an organic conservatism, influenced by his
Polish background. This is understandable; until recently, a
critic's role has been to impose order on an artist's creations.
The approach in this book is different. Drawing on the work of
Michel Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard, especially on the
latter's critique of what he called "the grand narrative," A
Political Genealogy of Joseph Conrad shows how Conrad's politics
were always radically contingent on audience, contemporary events,
and, especially, genre. While the political perspective in each of
his stories and novels may be more-or-less coherent and consistent,
there is no consistency throughout his work. A Political Genealogy
of Joseph Conrad is the first book devoted exclusively to Conrad's
politics since the 1960s.
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