The Discourse of Cultural Superiority in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) and Albert Camus’ L’étranger (1942).
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Date
2025
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Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
This research paper studies the discourse of cultural superiority in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness (1899) and Albert Camus’ L’étranger (1942). It aims to provide an account of the
writers’ attitudes towards the African peoples and cultures and to explain how the Europeans
in general looked at the African natives during the late 19th and early 20th century in the
context of colonialism. It discusses different aspects of ethnocentrism and otherness in themes
and characters and analyzes the superiority complex that appears in the characters’ actions,
thoughts and behaviors towards the natives. This research relies on important theories which
are: William Graham Sumner’s Folkways (1906), Franz Boas’ Race, Language, Culture
(1940), Alfred Adler’s Understanding Human Nature (1927), and Edward Said’s Orientalism
(1978) to define the concepts of ethnocentrism, the superiority complex, and otherness
respectively. The first chapter deals with the representation of ethnocentrism in both novels at
the level of themes and characters. The second chapter deals with the ‘superiority complex’
and ‘otherness’ in the novels. This work highlights the oppression and brutality of European
colonialism and sheds light on the African peoples’ suffering from subjugation,
dehumanization and racism. It attempts to deconstruct the discourse of cultural superiority in
both novels. Ethnocentrism exposes the racist and ethnocentric attitudes of the European
characters towards the natives, otherness reveals the writers’ process of categorizing
characters according to a binary system of divisions between Europeans and indigenous
characters, and the superiority complex highlights the European protagonists’ arrogant
behaviours and racist actions towards the natives. This research introduces the discourse of
cultural superiority in colonial literature which reinforces the colonial enterprise by presenting
an ethnocentric perspective resulting in otherness and superiority complex.
Description
60p. ; (+CD-Rom)
Keywords
Conrad, Camus, Ethnocentrism, Orientalism, discourse, Otherness, Superiority Complex
Citation
General and Comparative Literature