A Postcolonial Study of the Heart of DarknessIn this article, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness will be examined using a recent movement, postcolonial study which primarily focuses on the relationship between self and other, always closely linked in the reflection on each person's identity. The Other is commonly identified with the margins, who have been oppressed or ignored by a Eurocentric and male-dominated history. Conrad is also aware of the interdependent status of the Other with the Self, but his primary concern is the Self, not the Other, even as he deals with the natives. As Edward W. Said indicates in his Orientalism, the Orient (or the Other) helped define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience1. For Conrad, the Other only has meaning to the extent that it provides insight or information for the construction of a Eurocentric self-image. In Heart of Darkness, the story takes place in the Congo, the real battlefield of colonial exploitation. Marlow perceives the natives according to stereotypical Western standards, although he also shows a sense of sympathy towards the suffering natives. The natives cannot be understood or seen represented from their point of view. The colonial aspects of Heart of Darkness begin to be explored through Marlow's historical perspective. Viewing history as cyclical, Marlow juxtaposes the Roman invasion with that of the current British imperial project. According to Marlow, when the Romans first arrived in Britain, they might have felt the same as the British in Africa: "The Romans first came here...the darkness was here yesterday." .. savages, very little to eat worthy of a life. civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink” (9-10). ...... middle of paper ......lism, racism or impressionism? Review (Fall 1985)Burden, Robert. Heart of Darkness. London: Macmillan, 1991. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. ed. Robert Kimbrough. 3rd. edition. New York: Norton, 1988. Lionnet, Françoise. Autobiographical voices. Cornell UP, 1988. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.------------ The world, the text and the critic. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983------------Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966)Shaffer, Brian. "Rebabarizing Civilization: Conrad's African Fiction and Spencerian Sociology”, PMLA 108 (1993): 45-58Thomas, Brook “Preserving and maintaining order by killing time in the heart of darkness”, in Heart of Darkness, ed. La Presse de Martin., 1989)