Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other” - JPCS

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies
ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic)
civilization. It is for this reason that, throughout his work, he looks forward with equanimity
or even with satisfaction to the imminent extermination of all primitive peoples (1-12)
If literature is a figurative representation of human experience, and if the fundamental
elements of biological existence are organisms, environments, and actions, the figurative
elements that correlate with these biological elements would naturally assume a predominant
position within most figurative structures. Evolutionary theory can thus provide a sound
rationale for adopting the basic categories as well as the theoretical assumptions that govern
the structural underpinning of human relationship. Hence, in its construction of the “Oriental
Other”, Orientalism tended to assimilate the Darwinian paradigm. This is obvious in the
depiction of the Oriental characters, settings, and actions which constitute a single,
continuous body of stereotypical, essentialist, Orientalist thought. Consider Shakespeare’s
“Caliban”, Defoe’s “Friday”, or Conrad’s “Niggers,” to mention but a few. In his early work,
Kipling had made the landscapes and culture of India a fantasy that recuperates the
sensations of savagery. In She and King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard combines tales
of fabulous adventure with ethnographic descriptions of Africa. Much of Conrad’s early
fiction is set in the jungles. In Heart of Darkness, he broods over the spirit of the African
wilderness. Journeying into the wilderness is “like traveling back to the earliest beginnings
of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings’” (40). Marlow
sums his tale of the wilderness as “one of the dark places of the earth” ( 5). In Lord Jim,
Conrad writes “… that 'giving your life up to them' (them meaning all of mankind with skins
brown, yellow, or black in colour) ‘was like selling your soul to a brute.'” (284)
Influenced and encouraged by Darwinism, many Victorians not only scientists and
anthropologists, but also the popular fiction associated with imperialism and the idea of
Empire (Griffith 179). The idea of the incompatibility of ethical or cultural norms, then,
revolved around the sense of racial associations. Diversity, therefore, could be only a codeword
for racial difference.
In fact, Darwinian Theory promotes the idea of war, and regards peace as an element that
retards progress. “Evolutionary anthropology has focused on the origins of war, or rather
ethnocentricity, because it epitomizes the problem of group selection, and because war may
itself have been the main agent of group selection” (Dawson 79). This line of thought is
embodied in Vladimir Jabotinsky’ statement: “Stupid is the person who believes in his
neighbor, good and loving as the neighbor may be. Justice exists only for those whose fists
and stubbornness make it possible for them to realize it . . . Do not believe anyone, be always
on guard, carry your stick always with you – this is the only way of surviving in this wolfish
battle of all against all” (qtd. in Bruzonsky 19). This is actually the Fascist ideology of
Darwinism that continues to pose a threat to the world in the 21 st century. Those who have
the power/knowledge or the force of imposition in the Orientalist/colonialist thought would
survive chiefly because they were the "fittest”, hence more successful at warfare. "The tamest
are the strongest," wrote Walter Bagehot, the first avowed social Darwinist. (qtd. in
Dawson81)
‘Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other”,’ Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al-
Mahfedi and Venkatesh P
JPCS Vol 3, No 1, 2012
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