Word: casementã
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Dates: during 2010-2010
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...Man’s Battle for Human Rights in South America’s Heart of Darkness,” makes explicit allusion to Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, especially apt given the fact that Conrad and Casement met in 1889 in the Congo Free State. Casement??s own description of Arana recalls “the unseen presence of victorious corruption” that Marlow senses in Colonel Kurtz. “There is no doubt the brute has courage—a horrid, fearful courage, and endurance, and a cunning mind too... This...
Goodman’s account of these events is commendably clear, but he often presents the story and its characters in reductively simple terms. As the book’s title suggests, Goodman frames Casement??s clash with Arana as a battle between good and evil, between defenders and abusers of human rights, between heartfelt humanitarianism and ruthless capitalism. This is, to an extent, justified, given the enormity of the crimes committed against the native population of Putumayo by the Peruvian Amazon Company in the name of Europe’s ever-increasing demand for rubber...
...worrying lack of “civilization” in the Putumayo basin crops up repeatedly in Casement??s correspondence and in his 1912 report. Troublingly, though, Casement??s vocabulary goes unremarked upon by Goodman, who appears not to notice that Casement, at least in the early stages of his investigation, did not view Arana’s dealings in the Putumayo in opposition to some universal ethical standard, but to the imperial “mission civilisatrice.” Casement is dismayed, for example, that “there are no civilized authorities...
...important to recognize Casement??s immanence within the imperial system, even as he was enraged by the abuses it engendered, and pointing out this ambivalence would not undermine Casement??s achievement as a campaigner, nor cast doubt on the authenticity of his humanitarian sentiment, but simply illuminate the complexity of his predicament and character. Instead, Goodman misses the opportunity to present Casement??s story as emblematic of the conflicted, traumatized, and transitional consciousness of colonial operators in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, in attributing to Casement an unalloyed concern for “human...
...strength of “The Devil and Mr Casement?? lies in the thoroughness of Goodman’s research and his assiduous fidelity to the historical record. But the tension of Goodman’s narrative ultimately slackens under the weight of his facts, which are deployed too densely, and without enough reflection, to make “The Devil and Mr. Casement?? as satisfying and challenging as it could—and should—have been...