Event date: Tuesday 17 February 2009, 5.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Blandijnberg 2, Faculty Room 

“Reading Heart of Darkness after the Holocaust” given by Professor Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London)

“As the historian Omer Bartov writes, the Holocaust has ‘projected its impact both forward and backward in time, an explosion of destructive energy at the heart of Western Civilization that compels us to rethink our assumptions about the nature of humanity and culture, history and progress, politics and morality.’ Bartov suggests that we need to read pre-1939 texts with eyes sensitized by what we have learnt from the Holocaust. Conrad’s canonical Heart of Darkness has been a focus point for post-colonial thought, and for thinking about the meeting of literature, history, and trauma. However, read after taking seriously a range of difficulties and questions raised by the Holocaust, many of its celebrated and complex characteristics are illuminated. I focus in this paper on three of the changes that this sort of view offers.”

Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Director of the Holocaust Research Centre there.  He is currently a fellow at the Flemish Academic Centre for Science and the Arts. He is the author of four books,  Ethical Criticism (1997), Doing English (1999, 2nd ed. 2002), Postmodernism and Holocaust Denial(2001), and The Holocaust and the Postmodern (2004), and the editor or co-editor of four books includingTeaching Holocaust Literature and Film (2007) and Derrida’s Legacies (2007). He has published articles on many contemporary philosophers and writers and on a  range of issues in philosophy, literary theory, and historiography. His work has been translated into five languages. He advises the UK government’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and is on the Executive Committee of the Forum for European Philosophy. He is the Series Editor of Routledge Critical Thinkers.