Conrad in Trump Country

A meditation on the relevance of Conrad's "mythic realism" for an understanding of the fears, angers, and desires that have surfaced in a volatile contemporary American populism. Drawing on D.H. Lawrence, Greil Marcus, Michael Taussig, and on a reading of Heart of Darkness, the essay argues that we need to go beyond critical distance and rationality to grapple with the violence that both supports and subverts liberal moral and social orders.