Empires of Enlightenment: On Illumination and the Politics of Buddhism in Heart of Darkness

In the frame story of Heart of Darkness, Marlow is compared several times to a meditating Buddha. While Conrad criticism has considered these references from a philosophical point of view, it has not yet engaged how they relate to the main story’s representation of the politics of colonial rule. Focusing on this complex relation between Enlightenment — East and West — and colonialism, the novella presents a broad-ranging critique of both Buddhist and European Enlightenment when they try to impose their vision on the world. The novella further suggests a distinction between absolute enlightenment and what the narrator calls “spectral illumination” — insights that are not forced onto the world, but rather continually emerge from it. This other politics of illumination calls on us to continually reinterpret and transform the world, while refusing the false hope of any final and conclusive enlightenment.