In The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, Maya Jasanoff argues that novelist Joseph Conrad’s life and works evidence a global world in the making at the end of the nineteenth century. Padraic X. Scanlan praises this as an impressive experiment in the genre, but asks: without fully contending with the racist imaginary that shaped much of his work, can we so seamlessly embrace Conrad as ‘one of us: a citizen of a global world’

Scanlan, Padraic X.

LSE Research Online

Long	Read	Review:	The	Dawn	Watch:	Joseph	Conradin	a	Global	World	by	Maya	JasanoffIn	The	Dawn	Watch:	Joseph	Conrad	in	a	Global	World,	Maya	Jasanoff	argues	that	novelist	Joseph	Conrad’s	lifeand	works	evidence	a	global	world	in	the	making	at	the	end	of	the	nineteenth	century.	Padraic	X.	Scanlan	praisesthis	as	an	impressive	experiment	in	the	genre,	but	asks:	without	fully	contending	with	the	racist	imaginary	thatshaped	much	of	his	work,	can	we	so	seamlessly	embrace	Conrad	as	‘one	of	us:	a	citizen	of	a	global	world’?The	Dawn	Watch:	Joseph	Conrad	in	a	Global	World.	Maya	Jasanoff.	Penguin.	2017.Find	this	book:	At	the	end	of	the	nineteenth	century,	many	Western	intellectuals	agreed	that	thepreceding	100	years	of	mass	migration,	technological	change,	population	explosion	andpolitical	transformation	were	pushing	humanity	towards	a	reckoning.	Some,	like	theAmerican	preacher	Josiah	Strong,	imagined	that	‘the	warm	breath	of	the	NineteenthCentury’	had	revived	‘a	living	soul	under	the	ribs	of	death’.	To	others,	the	turn	of	thecentury	portended	apocalypse,	not	paradise.	‘Civilisation’	seemed	to	be	making	peopleand	nations	sick	and	crazy,	isolated,	neurotic	and	overstimulated.	We	still	live	in	thenineteenth	century:	making	sense	of	the	tense,	crowded	present	begins	withunderstanding	the	blend	of	violent	chauvinism	and	aching	self-doubt	that	characterised‘Western	civilisation’	in	the	decades	before	the	First	World	War.In	her	smoothly	written	and	ingeniously	constructed	new	book,	The	Dawn	Watch:	JosephConrad	in	a	Global	World,	Harvard	historian	Maya	Jasanoff	offers	the	life	and	work	of	thenovelist	Joseph	Conrad	as	a	tool	with	which	to	untangle	the	railroads,	steamship	routesand	telegraph	cables	that	made	the	world	smaller	in	the	nineteenth	century.	Born	Józef	Teodor	Konrad	Korzeniowskiin	1857	to	Polish	nationalists	in	exile	in	imperial	Russia,	Conrad	spent	the	first	40	years	of	his	life	as	a	youngimmigrant	in	London	and	as	a	sailor	in	the	French	and	British	merchant	marines.	In	the	late	1890s	he	settledpermanently	in	England	and	began	his	career	as	a	novelist.	Conrad’s	personal	history	and	geography,	from	Russiato	the	Congo,	Jasanoff	argues,	shows	a	‘global	world’	in	the	making:	his	fiction	offers	a	meditation	on	coping	with	thatnew	world.	Since	most	of	Conrad’s	papers	are	from	his	writing	life,	Jasanoff	finds	Conrad’s	maritime	life	bytriangulating	between	archival	records,	broader	historical	contexts	and	four	of	his	most	famous	novels,	The	SecretAgent,	Lord	Jim,	Heart	of	Darkness	and	Nostromo,	published	between	1899	and	1907.Dawn	Watch	is	an	experiment	in	genre.	‘If	looking	at	Conrad’,	Jasanoff	writes,	‘opens	up	a	history	of	globalizationfrom	the	inside	out,	approaching	him	as	an	object	of	history	has	let	me	shape	a	biography	from	the	outside	in’.	Thisechoes	a	moment	early	in	Heart	of	Darkness,	as	the	narrator	prepares	to	relay	the	main	action	of	the	novella,	a	yarntold	by	Charles	Marlow,	a	British	sailor	(and	recurring	character	in	Conrad’s	fiction).	Sailors’	tales,	the	narratorexplains,	are	usually	simple	–	but	not	Marlow’s.	‘To	him’,	the	narrator	continues,	‘the	meaning	of	an	episode	was	notinside	like	a	kernel	but	outside’.	This	echo	is	typical	of	Dawn	Watch,	which	cleverly	mirrors	Conrad’s	tendencies	tomine	his	own	experiences	in	his	fiction,	as	Jasanoff	uses	Conrad’s	fiction	to	reconstruct	his	experiences.Jasanoff	illustrates	the	cosmopolitanism,	energy	and	diversity	of	the	British	world	in	the	late	nineteenth	century.	Sheemphasises	that	although	Conrad	might	be	caricatured	as	a	British	sea	novelist,	none	of	his	novels	take	place	inBritish	colonies,	and	the	novels	Conrad	set	in	Britain	itself	focus	on	people	who	were	not	‘ethnically’	British.	As	anémigré	Pole	in	London,	Conrad	was	part	of	an	enormous	population	of	naturalised	new	Britons	in	the	capital,	washedup	on	the	shores	of	an	island	that	–	at	the	time	–	welcomed	political	refugees	from	across	Europe.	As	a	sailor	inSoutheast	Asia,	Conrad	worked	on	the	Vidar,	a	British-built	ship	owned	by	an	Arab	tycoon	with	offices	in	Aden,Jeddah,	Suez	and	Singapore	and	crewed	by	sailors	from	across	the	empire.	Jasanoff	maps	a	dynamic	nineteenth-century	world	that	looks	very	different	from	the	familiar	ones	of	the	era,	with	their	hardening	borders.LSE Review of Books: Long Read Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff Page 1 of 4		Date originally posted: 2018-01-17Permalink: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/01/17/long-read-review-the-dawn-watch-joseph-conrad-in-a-global-world-by-maya-jasanoff/Blog homepage: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/Image	Credit:	(Dean+Barb	CC	BY	2.0)Conrad’s	psychological	struggles	intertwined	with	his	global	life.	He	brooded	on	the	idea	of	the	universe	as	amoral,incomprehensible	and	determined,	and	on	ideology	as	an	insincere	cover	for	the	exercise	of	power.	His	novels	oftenfocus	on	individuals	in	crisis	discovering	that	their	sense	of	free	will	was	a	self-deception.	As	Conrad	told	BertrandRussell,	no	idea	was	powerful	enough	to	‘stand	against	[his]	deep-seated	sense	of	fatality	governing	this	man-inhabited	world’.	In	Lord	Jim,	Marlow	barks,	‘Hang	ideas!’,	and	pleads	instead	for	‘a	few	simple	notions	you	mustcling	to	if	you	want	to	live	decently’.	Jasanoff	reconstructs	Conrad’s	love	of	the	sea	as	his	way	of	coping	with	thisexistential	dread.	A	sailing	ship	caught	the	wind:	it	harnessed	a	power	beyond	human	control	to	move	where	it	could,but	was,	in	the	end,	at	its	mercy.	And	yet,	the	inauthenticity	of	‘ideas’	tormented	Conrad.	In	his	youth,	he	attemptedsuicide	by	shooting	himself	in	the	chest.	Later	in	life,	he	was	so	prone	to	fits	of	exhaustion	that	one	of	his	sons,	as	atoddler,	played	at	‘being	ill’	in	imitation.	In	Nostromo,	the	dandy-turned-revolutionary	Martin	Decoud	is	marooned	on	adesert	island.	As	he	waits	for	rescue,	Decoud	begins	to	finds	his	individuality	‘merged	into	the	world	of	cloud	andwater,	of	natural	forces	and	forms	of	nature’.	Decoud	shoots	himself	in	the	chest,	and	unlike	Conrad,	Decoud	doesn’tmiss.Jasanoff	promotes	Conrad	as	a	kind	of	cranky,	eccentric	progressive	in	comparison	with	many	men	of	his	era	–	anti-colonial,	if	not	anti-racist.	However,	she	–	like	her	subject	–	is	taken	with	the	idea	of	the	world	‘beyond	the	telegraphcables	and	mail-boat	lines’,	a	famous	line	from	Lord	Jim,	uttered	by	Marlow,	where	‘the	haggard	utilitarian	lies	of	ourcivilisation	wither	and	die’.	Jasanoff	makes	a	point,	in	the	opening	of	the	book,	of	recounting	her	travails	in	getting	tothe	Democratic	Republic	of	Congo,	and	in	arranging	passage	on	a	boat	down	the	Congo	River,	in	order	to	findConrad	by	re-enacting	the	author’s	most	famous	voyage.	Like	Conrad,	she	hoped	to	go	‘beyond’	and	come	closer	toan	authentic	experience	of	the	‘wild’	places	beyond	the	pale	of	the	‘civilised’.	‘The	world’,	Jasanoff	writes,	‘is	made	upof	‘‘nowheres’’	and	‘‘somewheres’’’.	She	allows	that	‘which	counts	as	which	depends	on	what	‘‘where’’	you	look	from’.And	yet,	Dawn	Watch	rarely	offers	a	view	from	‘nowhere’	that	isn’t	Conrad’s.	Jasanoff	floated	down	the	Congo	Riveron	a	barge	delivering	Primus	Beer,	a	popular	brand	in	the	DRC.	In	an	essay	on	the	trip,	published	in	the	New	YorkTimes,	Jasanoff	describes	a	visit	to	Bumba,	a	town	on	the	river.		‘In	the	colonial	era’,	she	writes,	‘this	used	to	besomewhere’.	But	for	whom?	Bumba	is	off	the	electrical	grid,	but	it	has	more	than	100,000	residents.	The	geographiesmade	by	colonialism	are	not	neutral:	Conrad’s	(and	Jasanoff’s)	thirst	for	adventure	has	a	politics	that	is	leftunexamined	in	the	book.LSE Review of Books: Long Read Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff Page 2 of 4		Date originally posted: 2018-01-17Permalink: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/01/17/long-read-review-the-dawn-watch-joseph-conrad-in-a-global-world-by-maya-jasanoff/Blog homepage: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/In	Heart	of	Darkness,	Marlow	watches	African	villagers	dance	on	the	banks	of	the	river	as	his	steamship	putters	by.‘They	howled’,	he	remembers,	‘and	made	horrid	faces;	but	what	thrilled	you	was	just	the	thought	of	their	humanity’.At	the	Inner	Station,	deep	in	the	jungle,	Marlow	finds	the	cultivated	and	eloquent	but	ghoulish	and	emaciated	Kurtz,an	ivory	dealer	worshipped	as	a	god	and	garlanded	with	the	shrunken	heads	of	his	victims.	To	Marlow,	the	‘natives’are	nearly	animal,	while	Kurtz	has	been	twisted	by	the	power	to	command	claimed	by	European	empires	and	by	theperverse	contradictions	of	the	‘civilising	mission’.	Marlow	is	troubled	by	his	kinship	both	with	the	‘prehistoric	men’	ofthe	riverside	communities	and	with	Kurtz	and	his	‘abominable	satisfactions’.	To	Jasanoff,	Marlow’s	unease	points	towhat	she	takes	as	a	progressive	critique	of	imperialism.	It	wasn’t,	she	writes,	‘that	‘‘savages’’	were	inhuman,	it	wasthat	any	human	could	be	savage’.	‘Anyone	could	be	a	savage	[…]	everywhere	could	go	dark,’	she	writes	elsewhere.Jasanoff’s	characterisation	of	Conrad’s	views	echoes	one	of	the	basic	premises	of	colonial	and	imperial	chauvinism	–of	‘savagery’	as	darkness	and	‘civilisation’	as	light.	Marlow	sees	the	African	villagers	as	representatives	of	animaginary	‘prehistory’	–	ignorant	and	animal,	but	morally	innocent.	He	sees	Kurtz	as	prone	to	‘savagery’	–	with	all	ofthe	violence	of	putatively	prehistoric,	pre-civilised	man,	but	with	all	the	guile	of	civilisation.Image	Credit:	Postage	Stamp,	1903	(John	Flannery	CC	BY	SA	2.0)Conrad	allowed	that	the	Africans	and	Malays	who	worked	alongside	him	were	human,	and	he	saw	in	their	‘savagery’a	release	from	the	hypocrisies	and	constraints	of	civilisation.	What	he	felt	at	sea	–	at	work,	at	peace	–	he	imagined‘savages’	felt	all	the	time.	Jasanoff	admits	that	she	ignores	Conrad’s	literary	influences	and	relationships.	But	thiseditorial	decision	also	excludes	a	great	deal	of	the	intellectual	and	cultural	atmosphere	that	Conrad	breathed.	Conradwas	obsessed	with	interior	life,	but	Sigmund	Freud	is	absent	from	the	Dawn	Watch;	Conrad	brooded	on	uncaringnatural	forces	shaping	human	life,	but	Charles	Darwin,	his	followers	and	critics	are	left	waiting	in	the	wings.	Jasanofflauds	Conrad’s	preoccupation	with	fate	as	a	defiant	rejection	of	liberal	belief	in	the	autonomy	of	the	individual,	butConrad	lived	in	a	time	when	natural	historians	and	social	scientists	fretted	over	evolution:	eugenicists	hoped	toengineer	a	‘better’	human	race	and	criminologists	wondered	what	use	it	was	to	‘deter’	criminals	who	might	be	fated	tocommit	crimes.In	The	Secret	Agent,	the	sinister	diplomat	Mr	Vladimir	smirks	remembering	an	ambassador	who	exclaimed	on	hisdeathbed,	‘Unhappy	Europe!	Thou	shalt	perish	by	the	moral	insanity	of	thy	children!’	Conrad’s	sense	of	‘civilisation’as	a	kind	of	maddening	fraud	was	widely	popular	among	Victorian	psychologists	and	anthropologists,	who	fearedthat	only	the	civilised	could	be	‘morally	insane’	–	that	is,	capable	of	acts	of	‘savagery’	without	the	exculpation	of‘savage’	innocence.	The	leading	Victorian	psychiatrist	Henry	Maudsley	acknowledged	(like	Conrad)	that	‘the	lowestsavage	and	the	highest	saint	belong	to	the	same	human	kind’,	but	suggested	that	culture	and	morality	were	arrangedon	a	continuum	from	‘savagery’	to	‘civilisation’.	‘A	low	savage’,	Maudsley	wrote,	‘in	civilized	society	must	needs	farealmost	as	badly	as	a	carnivorous	animal	would	fare	in	a	land	of	herbivorous	animals	which	it	was	forbidden	to	eat’.LSE Review of Books: Long Read Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff Page 3 of 4		Date originally posted: 2018-01-17Permalink: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/01/17/long-read-review-the-dawn-watch-joseph-conrad-in-a-global-world-by-maya-jasanoff/Blog homepage: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/In	The	Secret	Agent,	the	police	informer	Mr	Verloc’s	brother-in-law,	the	cognitively	impaired	and	childlike	Stevie,overhears	Verloc’s	revolutionary	circle	discussing	the	‘cannibalistic’	tendencies	of	the	upper	classes,	and	takes	talkof	the	rich	drinking	‘the	warm	blood	of	the	people’	literally,	collapsing	to	the	floor	in	terror.	Stevie,	incapable	ofunderstanding	metaphor,	has	a	kind	of	‘savage’	innocence	himself,	which	leads	him	to	his	death	in	a	failed	attempt	toblow	up	Greenwich	Observatory.	Of	the	novels	Jasanoff	explores,	The	Secret	Agent	is	the	most	overtly	engaged	withEuropean	politics,	turning	the	fulminating	anarchism	and	socialism	of	the	late	nineteenth	century	into	dark	comedy.The	joke,	in	the	end,	is	that	politics	is	a	thin	film	over	animal	instincts	and	the	raw	exercise	of	power.	Stevie,	in	theeyes	of	the	revolutionist	and	former	medical	student	Ossipon,	is	a	degenerate,	‘most	interesting	to	study	[…]	aperfect	type	in	his	way’.	To	Ossipon,	he	seems	physiologically	murderous;	to	Conrad,	Stevie	has	the	innocence	of	a‘prehistoric’	man,	complete,	fragile	and	easily	lost.Conrad	criticised	colonialism	and	exploitation,	but	refused	to	add	his	voice	to	public	campaigns	organised	inopposition.	He	was	sceptical	of	all	ideology.	‘The	only	prescriptions	Conrad	wrote	were	for	individuals,’	Jasanoffobserves.	But	in	the	end,	there	is	no	getting	around	Conrad’s	racism	–	it	is	screamingly	obvious	and	unapologetic,and	any	account	of	Conrad’s	work	has	to	reckon	with	the	way	a	particular	racial	animus,	a	twinned	envy	andcontempt,	shaped	his	artistic	legacy.	Anti-colonial	sentiment	was	not	anti-racist	sentiment.	Non-white,	non-Europeancharacters	in	Conrad’s	fiction	are	treated	as	undifferentiated,	depersonalised,	without	the	individuality	of	the‘civilised’.	Conrad	assumed	that	because	Europe	seemed	to	be	moving	too	fast,	it	meant	the	rest	of	the	world	wasn’tmoving	at	all.Conrad’s	novels	play	with	unreliable	narration	and	inner	monologue,	but	allow	it	only	to	‘civilised’	characters.Conrad’s	ideas	about	‘civilisation’	and	psychology	give	him	license	to	deny	interiority	and	individuality	to	‘savage’characters.	In	Almayer’s	Folly,	his	first	novel,	Conrad	describes	the	consciousness	of	an	enslaved	woman	in	Borneo,in	whose	mind	‘lay	useless	and	barren	the	seeds	of	all	love	and	of	all	hate’.	Conrad	describes	‘her	half-formed,savage	mind,	the	slave	of	her	body—as	her	body	was	the	slave	of	another’s	will’.	Jasanoff	glosses	this	passage	asConrad’s	attempt	‘to	enter	the	mind	of	a	slave	herself’.	But	what	Conrad	does	in	this	passage	is	precisely	to	deny	tothe	enslaved	woman	the	self-doubt	and	complexity	he	allows	to	European	characters.Ultimately,	Jasanoff	writes	that	she	finds	common	cause	with	Conrad	because	‘he	was	one	of	us:	a	citizen	of	a	globalworld’.	She	sees	problems	of	the	present	–	terrorism,	inequality,	exploitation,	ultra-nationalism	–	in	Conrad’s	novels.Dawn	Watch	is	a	daring	experiment	in	entering	the	mind	and	world	of	a	troubled	and	troubling	artist,	and	animpressive	book.	And	yet,	history	and	fiction	don’t	flow	together	as	neatly	as	Jasanoff	would	have	it.	Writing	a	globallife	from	inside	out	and	outside	in	may	make	it	too	easy	to	treat	the	progressive	Conrad	as	prescient	and	to	excusethe	reactionary	Conrad	as	a	man	of	his	time.Padraic	X.	Scanlan	is	Assistant	Professor	in	the	Department	of	International	History	at	the	LSE,	and	the	author	ofFreedom’s	Debtors:	British	Antislavery	in	Sierra	Leone	in	the	Age	of	Revolution	(Yale,	2017).	He	is	on	Twitter@pxscanlan.Note:	This	review	gives	the	views	of	the	author,	and	not	the	position	of	the	LSE	Review	of	Books	blog,	or	of	theLondon	School	of	Economics.	LSE Review of Books: Long Read Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff Page 4 of 4		Date originally posted: 2018-01-17Permalink: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/01/17/long-read-review-the-dawn-watch-joseph-conrad-in-a-global-world-by-maya-jasanoff/Blog homepage: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/

Long read review: the dawn watch: Joseph Conrad in a global world by Maya Jasanoff

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Long read review: the dawn watch: Joseph Conrad in a global world by Maya Jasanoff

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