Time and the Other in the Imperialist Discourse of Kipling and Conrad

This paper sheds light on the appropriation of the concept of time in the imperialist discourse of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. Following a Saidian perspective, it shows that the writings of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling appropriate time as an ideological tool so as to provide primary support for the British Empire. They do this by the dichotomy they draw between the primitive time of the non-Western people and the evolutionary time of the Westerners. Both writers show that the non-Westerners, in view of their primitivism and the advancement of the Westerners, need the intervention of the latter so as to promote their progress. They make some polyphonic appeal to other disciplines so as to achieve this purpose. Consequently, they, for instance, weave their texts with the teachings of anthropology, biology and history, hence the importance they grant to the concept of time as it is viewed in evolutionary thought of the nineteenth century.