At the Heart of Darkness: Crimes Against Humanity and the Banality of Evil

This article, while rooted in critical literature, is interdisciplinary, drawing upon political and social theory, history, law, and social sciences to address the problem of evil in an environment dominated by crimes against humanity: the Congo during the reign of the Belgian King Leopold. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, is based in part on the author's experiences aboard the steamship Roi des Belges on the Congo River in 1890. The narrative contains three representations of evil: the base, primitive, perverse allure of lust and greed in the deepest recesses of the human psyche; evil at the heart of civilization and modernity; and the banal complicity of ordinary people whose silence and denial allows evil to prosper. Without impugning the quality or importance of Heart of Darkness, either as literature or as part of the global discourse on human rights, it is nevertheless argued that the primitive allure of evil is emphasized in the narrative to the detriment of representations of more subtle and civilized * Birgit Maier-Katkin is Assistant Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages at Florida State University. Her scholarly work is focused on twentieth century German literature and culture with a particular emphasis on exile writers, human rights abuses in the Third Reich, and the multigenerational construction of memory of everyday experience in cultures dominated by crimes against humanity. ** Daniel Maier-Katkin is Professor and Dean of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, where he is also affiliated with the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School where he was a founding editor of the Columbia Survey of Human Rights Law, and of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. His published work focuses on civil liberties and reform in the administration of justice, but his interests are becoming increasingly focused on humanities scholarship. Human Rights Quarterly 26 (2004) 584-604 ? 2004 by The Johns Hopkins University Press This content downloaded from 207.46.13.83 on Fri, 13 May 2016 07:16:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 2004 At the Heart of Darkness 585 manifestations of evil. By redirecting attention to background elements of the story, including the behavior of the Belgian regime and especially the banal complicity of the protagonist Marlow, this essay aims to contribute to the discourse on crimes against humanity and the advancement of human