Colonial Encounters and Cultural Contests: Confrontation of Orientalist and Occidentalist Discourses in "Karain: A Memory"

Edward Said defines Orientalism as a discourse of Western power and domination over the Orient. He shows how Europe accumulated knowledge about Eastern peoples and cultures with the "intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate even incorporate what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world" (13). Orientalism, formalized as Europe's will to power and supremacy, has been widely discussed since Said initiated a debate in his influential 1978 Orientalism. Occidentalist discourse—which refers to the way the Orient perceives, constructs, and categorizes the West¹ —has instead been neglected in postcolonial studies in general and in Joseph Conrad criticism in particular. This essay focuses on "Karain: A Memory" and traces how far Conrad sets Orientalist and Occidentalist discourses in a productive dialectical relationship, using irony and derision to unsettle essentialist assumptions of identity and culture. While examining the collision of Western and Eastern perspectives, I demonstrate that Conrad in this tale espouses an aristocratic vision of colonialism that sets the European colonizing nations in a strict hierarchical order.

In "Karain: A Memory" the tension between the West and the East is conveyed in a convoluted, elusive narrative where the unnamed English narrator is shown hosting Orientalist and Occidentalist discourses. The narrator simultaneously perpetuates stereotyped images of the Malays and harbors a dis-Orientalizing rhetoric that acknowledges the natives' value. When he describes the Malays, he adopts an ethic of differentiation, portraying them as both "barbarous" and "sometimes well-bred," "truculent" and capable of "restraint," resolute and martial, and soft and gentle ("Karain" 38). Karain's devoted followers are a "barbarous crowd, with the variegated colors of checkered sarongs, red turbans, white jackets, embroideries [ . . . ] They had an independent bearing, resolute eyes, a restrained manner; and we seem yet to hear their soft voices speaking of battles, travels and escape" ("Karain" 38). In this statement the narrator represents the natives in a mixed hue—a description that makes him move away from the traditional colonial representations which commonly dismiss the natives as a monolithic set. But this initial moderate view turns out to be inconsistent, as he gradually assumes narrative supremacy asserting truths about the Malays with generalizing confidence and authority. The narrator's perceptual and ideological shift is especially evidenced in his depiction of Karain. Each time he refers to the Malay chief the narrator readily reiterates the colonial prejudices that he previously set out to dismantle. And this inclination betrays an inability to distance himself fully from Europe's stereotypical visions of its "others": "He summed up his race, his country, the elemental force of ardent life, of tropical nature. He had its luxuriant strength, its fascination, and like it, he carried the seed of peril with it" ("Karain" 41).

The ghost-ridden, superstitious Karain appears here as a prototype concentrating the Malays' features. He is made paradigmatic of his race, culture, and environment, typifying the very Malay essence and tropical nature. In semiotic terms, Karain becomes a mere metonymy—the part that represents the whole—mirroring his own people. In keeping with Europe's categorization of its others, the narrator defines the protagonist as a generic type, organically connected to his cultural and geographical milieu. He denies Karain the romantic privilege of the first person, lumped together with the rest of his community into an anonymous collective "they." The narrator's Orientalist views are further reinforced by Hollis's stereotypical assertion: "Those Malays are easily impressed—all nerves, you know" ("Karain" 81). The Malays are associated with emotionalism and irrationality, standing in sharp contrast to Europe's rationalism and sense of moderation. As he dwells on cultural and racial differences, the narrator stresses the unbridgeable gap that separates an enlightened West from a benighted East: "We felt as though we three had been called to the very gate of Infernal Regions to judge, to decide the fate of a wanderer coming suddenly from a world of sunshine and illusions" ("Karain" 79).

The opposition between a bewildering, emotional Orient and a coherent, cerebral West is even more striking at the...