The Many Voices of Conrad

BOOK REVIEWS That creativity gives Poplawski the focus for his examination of the "art and beliefs of D. H. Lawrence" in Promptings of Desire. In all fairness, it bears repeating that his text argues thoroughly and convincingly something Lawrence scholars already accepted as true; for Lawrence the conception and practice of creativity were deeply tied to the religious impulse. Still it is always reassuring to be proven right. Linda Strahan University of California, Riverside The Many Voices of Conrad Bruce Henricksen. Nomadic Voices: Conrad and the Subject of Narrative . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. 201pp. Cloth $34.95 Paper $13.95 NOMADIC VOICES is an appropriate title for Bruce Henricksen's book on five major novels by Joseph Conrad; it suggests not simply the theme of his critical study—the diverse discourses or voices that constitute the subject in Conrad's texts—but also something of his method, which draws freely from a wide range of scholarly commentary on the novels as well as firom postmodern theories of ideology and the self. Henricksen enters what he calls the "current conversation" with readings of The Nigger of the Narcissus, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostramo, and Under Western Eyes, each of which is assigned a separate chapter. His analysis of these works calls into question traditional ideas about narrative, including the humanist assumption that the self is a coherent, stable entity and that literary texts are autonomous structures originating in the sovereign authority of an author. Critically astute assessments of Conrad, in his view, attend to the ways in which networks of institutional and political power determine individual identity through discourse. For readers acquainted with poststructuralist thought, skepticism concerning conventional notions of language and authorship is, of course, nothing new. Jeremy Hawthorn has identified the tendency "to see the subject as site rather than center" as a defining characteristic of much recent criticism. Paul A. Bové makes the same point when he notes literary critics' increasing preoccupation with how discourse "regulates our forming of ourselves." In his introduction Henricksen presents his work as a product of this movement in current theory away from problems of "meaning" and toward the question of the subject, fully aligning himself with the postmodern critique of essentialist attitudes toward literature and culture. He is quick to argue, however, that the 421 ELT 37:3 1994 issues he raises in exploring the discursive construction of subjectivity in Conrad are not imposed from without but rather make up the "texts' own problematics." The theorists heard from most often in this study are Mikhail Bakhtin and Jean-François Lyotard, who share a recognition of the role of social forces in the creation of selfhood. Bakhtin's concept of the novel as a register of a society's rival voices and accents is of obvious appeal to a critic wishing to situate Conrad's texts within the complex socio-political dynamics of his time. The dialogic principle, which holds that the subject is formed in dialogue with others—that is, in the process of responding to and anticipating external discourses—conflicts with the view that individuals (and the art they produce) can transcend the determining influence of historical circumstance. It thus offers a useful means of countering what Henricksen calls "the interests of an older critical hegemony," which was grounded in a belief in the unitary, self-determining subject. In its "openness to difference," whether it be the play of competing social voices discernible in a text or the operation of various forces upon the historical self, dialogism contrasts sharply with discursive formations, such as those embodied in British imperialism, that would enforce a repressive, monologic world view. Lyotard's ideas about the constitutive role of "grand narratives" in human identity and social relationships correspond nicely (for Henricksen 's purposes) with Bakhtin's writings about discourse. Stories are, in Lyotard's account of culture, a vital and ubiquitous element in the legitimation of power. Recent efforts by members of the gay community in the United States to identify their cause with that of civil rights activists of the 1960s, who themselves had employed a Biblical account of journey toward a Promised Land of freedom and justice, suggest how...