Recovering indigenous inscriptions of meaning from the colonial novel: A re-reading of the spatial archetypes in Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim

Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah (2011) Recovering indigenous inscriptions of meaning from the colonial novel: A re-reading of the spatial archetypes in Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. In: SoLLS.Intec 2011 Conference, 11-12 May 2011, Bangi.

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Abstract

This paper discusses an alternative reading practice of the colonial novel (Zawiah 2003) that puts the re(-) presentation of space in such novels under scrutiny. Informed firstly by Jungian archetypal criticism and secondly, by Gayatri Spivak’s concept of ‘worlding’ (1999), it examines the re-presentation of Malaya’s geospatial features – the sea, mountains, forests – as archetypes in the novel Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad. These archetypal images, I argue, erase the indigenous meanings already inscribed onto Malaya’s geospatial features, in the colonial project of worlding Malaya. However, by peeling away the layers of Western inscriptions of meaning onto Malaya’s geospatial features, the contemporary, post-colonial reader might recover the various meanings endowed on Malaya by its native inhabitants. This alternative reading practice thus enables the reader to discover the diversity of meanings that can and have been given to geospatial features, as opposed to the West’s unilateral act of worlding other worlds.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Full Paper)
Additional Information:	4869/27403
Uncontrolled Keywords:	archetype; collective unconcious; clonialism; Malaya; representation; worlding
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences > Department of English Language & Literature
Depositing User:	Dr. Siti Nuraishah Ahmad
Date Deposited:	19 Dec 2012 15:43
Last Modified:	16 Mar 2016 09:12
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/27403

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