A Remote Kinship : Using Heart of Darkness to Promote an Anti-Essentialist and Anti-Racist Understanding of Race and Ethnicity in the EFL Classroom

Abstract: Heart of Darkness does raise several issues when used in a teaching context. For instance, the novella depicts the Congolese as primitive, animalistic, ignorant, and superstitious. Thus, it perpetuates racist tropes about Africans that unfortunately still exist today. In an era marked by heightened awareness of racial and social inequality, the language in Heart of Darkness becomes extremely offensive because it subjects the racialized reader to language that is hard to digest. However, this essay attempts to illustrate how a critical reading of Heart of Darkness shows that the novella is far too complex to be reduced to the epitome of racist discourse, namely because it illustrates the inherent ambivalence that characterizes the Victorian, imperialist, colonizing West. Taught the right way, Heart of Darkness has the potential to provide students with the knowledge necessary to comprehend that race is a social construct that is developed, generated, and replicated discursively through various ideologies with the express intention of defending the unequal treatment of people and groups