Racial slurs and perception of racism in Heart of Darkness

Mastropierro, Lorenzo; Conklin, Kathy

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of the racial slursniggerandnegroinHeart of Darknesson readers’perception of dehumanisation,discrimination, and racism. It compares data collected through online question-naires to test whether the absence or different frequencies of the slurs influencehow participants perceive thefictional representation of the African people in thetext. Three versions of the same questionnaire are used: one with unmodifiedpassages fromHeart of Darkness, one with the same passages but without theracial slurs, and one with the same passages but with more slurs than in theoriginal. Findings show that the absence or overabundance of slurs compared tothe original does not alter reader perception of dehumanisation, discrimination,and racism. By comparing the results, this paper makes two interconnected con-tributions. First, it contributes to the critical discussion about racism in Conrad’snovel, by providing evidence on whether the representation of the Africans isperceived as dehumanising, discriminatory, and racist by readers. Second, it offersan empirical perspective on the usefulness of the“sanitising”(removing orsubstituting of all racial slurs) of literary texts with potential racist implications,adopted by some publishing houses and applied to novels like Conrad’sThe Niggerof the“Narcissus”and Mark Twain’sThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Citation

Mastropierro, L., & Conklin, K. (2021). Racial slurs and perception of racism in Heart of Darkness. Journal of Literary Semantics, 50(1), 25-41. https://doi.org/10.1515/jls-2021-2028

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 24, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Apr 5, 2021
• Publication Date: Apr 27, 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 21, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 6, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Literary Semantics
• Print ISSN: 0341-7638
• Electronic ISSN: 1613-3838
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 50
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 25-41
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jls-2021-2028
• Keywords: Linguistics and Language; Literature and Literary Theory; Language and Linguistics
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5487058
• Publisher URL: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/jls-2021-2028/html