This collection of studies examines the various types and uses of ideas
of "the other" and othering in Joseph Conrad's fiction. It offers
examinations of different aspects of the colonial other both in Africa
and Latin America, including a personal reminiscence of American
imperialism by a descendant of a character mentioned in Conrad's
fiction.
The first three papers offer insights into Conrad's artistic
presentation of both the historical and concrete side of capitalism and
imperialism as well as the universal aspects of these
social-political-economic formations. The next four studies theorize the
colonial other, from European/Western perspectives and from Third World
perspectives. The final four papers concern otherness in seamanship, in
terms of the imperial other and alterity, and the female as other,
othering by gender.
The dimensions of the other in Conrad's fiction that the collection
examines are mainly colonial, imperial, and civilizational, set in the
realities of geographical space of Africa, Latin America, and the Far
East, the reality at sea, and the reality of gendered humanity. They are
grounded in various contexts significant for Conrad's epoch: both
domestic and pertaining to English and European colonial-imperial
overseas expansion, and illuminated from both English/Western and Third
World perspectives.
Various Dimensions of the Other in Joseph Conrad's Fiction features
both general theoretical arguments and distinctive methodological
approaches to Conrad's oeuvre, such as historical contextualization and
source studies, postcolonial theory, imagology, Levinas's theory of
alterity, the Lacanian theory of jouissance, literary feminism, and
personal narrative.
The book is volume 29 of the series Conrad: Eastern and Western
Perspectives: within this series it offers the first complex and direct
treatment of multifarious incarnations of the other in Joseph Conrad's
fiction.
The studies included create a truly international constellation of
criticism, with authors at universities in the United States of America,
France, Switzerland, Ukraine, Algeria, Iran, Japan, and Poland. Owing to
their unique national and cultural-literary backgrounds and perspectives
upon Joseph Conrad's oeuvre, Various Dimensions of the Other in Joseph
Conrad's Fiction continues and strengthens the transnational profile of
the series Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives.
