콘래드와 다윈(진화론). Oxford

Conrad's response to Darwinism can be gauged from his presentation of humanity as an extension of the natural world, driven by the same impulse to survive. [Oxford 84]

 

In The Descent of Man, Darwin played into the hands of late 19th-century white-supremacists with his suggestion that some races (many of which he refers to as 'savages') can be regarded as sub-species, and that the moral sense that distinguishes man from other species has found its highest ｅxpression among Caucasians.

 

 

 

At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. (Charles Darwin - The Descent)

 

 

 

In his vision of colonialism, Conrad repeatedly undermines European claims to racial superiority by unsettling the binary opposition between 'savage' and 'civilized'.

 

the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums..... From "Heart of darkness" by Joseph Conrad

   

 

Decoud - There is above the middle part of this house a sort of first floor, with narrow openings like loopholes for windows, probably used in old times for the better defence against the savages, when the persistent barbarism of our native continent did not wear the black coats of politicians, but went about yelling, half-naked, with bows and arrows in its hands.

 

the 'barbarism' of the past which 'went about yelling, half-naked, with bow and arrows in its hands', persists in the present, albeit wearing 'the black coats of politicians'. (Nostromo)