Reading series 2: Genres of Discourse

And yet whiteness is not a straightforward object of desire, any more than light is: blackness is desired, and whiteness is only the disappointing result of a desire that proclaim itself satisfied. Whiteness will be disavowed, as a truth that is either deceptive (as with the white spaces on the map, which hide the black continent) or illusory: the whites think that ivory, white, is the ultimate truth: but Marlow exclaims: “I’ve never seen anything so unreal in my life” (23). Whiteness may be an obstacle to knowledge, as with the white fog, “more blinding than the night” (40), which impedes the approach to Kurtz (Todorov 107).