Genocide, Philosophical Fetishism, Mourning, and Testimony

This article engages with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in order to explore how Conrad’s novella arguably associates the dynamics of Hegelian dialectical appropriation with the enactments of genocidal usurpation. It proposes that philosophical fetishism entails a twofold movement of the internalisation of the other and the intended eradication of the other’s external existence. It demonstrates how this ploy manifests itself in settler colonial contexts from the Congo to Palestine. Treating Conrad’s text as a form of theatrical testimony, it distinguishes this theatricality from the literalising performativity of genocide.