Critique On Colonizers' Stereotyping Trauma In Joseph Conrad's Novels

While born in empire-invaded Poland,Joseph Conrad makes his fame in the colonizing empire of Britain.His is a life witnessing and experiencing the deeds of empire and colonization,and this helps him to actively reflect on colonization,and this also plunges him into the vortex of colonization.His novels touch upon empire and colonization.This dissertation focuses on his four novels of The Nigger of the"Narcissus",Heart of Darkness,Lord Jim and Nostromo,to study and critique on colonizers'stereotyping trauma.On the basis of Frantz Fanon's view on colonial races and theory of colonial cultural violence,as well as Fanon and Homi K.Bhabha's colonial stereotyping theory,together with Michel Foucault's discourse power theory,Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis theory,Ashis Nandy's colonial masculinity theory and Paul Gilroy's melancholia trauma theory,this dissertation constructs a colonizers'stereotyping trauma enunciation frame to study and critique on colonizers' stereotyping trauma in the afore-mentioned four novels.Stereotyping trauma is related to the stereotyping knowledge system.Colonial discourse power utilizes colonial cultural violence to disrupt the racial,cultural,and historical origins of the colonized,and then violently posits a common origin to the colonized and colonizers.This common origin is stereotype as fetish,starting from which,colonial discourse produces the stereotyping knowledge system.In this system,the colonized and colonizers are both from the stereotype as fetish,and are to form a binary opposition.The stereotyping knowledge system violently disrupts the heterogeneous origin of the other and then violently homogenizes the other,and on this basis violently hierarchizes colonizers and the colonized other.This mode of violent disruption,violent connection and violent production indicates that the stereotyping knowledge system is from the very beginning alienating the colonized.The stereotyping knowledge system revealed in Conrad's novels not only alienates the colonized,but alienates and causes trauma to colonizers as well.To critique on colonizers' stereotyping trauma is conducive to a comprehensive understanding of the cultural violence of this knowledge system.Stereotyping trauma of colonizers features a dynamic process,from identification with stereotype as fetish to the crisis of colonial masculinity all the way to colonial melancholy.Colonial stereotyping knowledge system utilizes its knowledge form to fix and alienate colonizers,to construct a hierarchized colonial world,in which,colonizers actively identify with the stereotype as fetish,actively accept and assume alienated identities,and pursue on the basis of these traumatized identities their dreams to realize their respective cherished value.Within the stereotyping knowledge system,colonizers' identity features a political ruler/regulator.This kind of identity after colonizers'identification with stereotype as fetish is said by Nandy as with a characteristic of colonial masculinity.When this identity is in crisis,the colonizer's colonial masculinity is in crisis.Colonizers'traumatized colonial masculinity may be the lack of masculinity or femininity-inmasculinity,and this kind of trauma may be caused by colonizers themselves as well as by the colonized.If,after identification with stereotype as fetish,a colonizer's identity is in crisis,the value of the stereotype as fetish may be under crisis.A colonizer makes an identification in order to realize his value in the colonial world,whereas in the stereotyping knowledge system,the value of stereotype as fetish is to lay order for this world,to safeguard colonization.When the pursued value of a colonizer matches that of the stereotype as fetish,and when the value of stereotype as fetish is in crisis,the colonizer will acutely feel it.This feeling will plunge the colonizer into colonial melancholy.There are two kinds of colonial melancholy:melancholia and melancholy.Stereotyping trauma of colonizers is a dynamic process.With identification,colonizers confirm the racial hierarchy fixed in the stereotyping knowledge system;with the colonial masculinity crisis and colonial melancholy,colonizers may see their capacity to regulate or rule the colonized threatened or subverted,but they never doubt the civilization and progress they represent.On the contrary,they once again confirm the superiority of this civilization.Caused by cultural violence,colonial stereotyping knowledge system is essentially alienating and traumatizing.Conrad can reflect on colonization,but he is unwittingly caught into this knowledge system,and this means that he suffers,as the colonizers written in his novels,from the stereotyping trauma.This manifests that the stereotyping knowledge system is culturally violent and generally trauma-causing.