the paper i am writing is sort of sparked by chinua achebe's famous essay on heart of darkness, "an image of africa" where he argues that conrad is a racist and heart of darkness is racist and therefore heart of darkness should not be considered art nor conrad an artist. i disagree with this on the most basic level because i do not believe that something is any-less art because it comes from a racist perspective. and i don't believe that art has any ethical or moral responsibility--so essentially i am arguing for aestheticism (which achebe has called a "piece of deodorized dog shit").
|