Signifyin(g): Racialising the Other in Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus

Abstract

This paper examines how Conrad’s novella The Nigger of the Narcissus discloses a representation of Otherness of its main character, James Wait, through processes of signifying. While the text itself purports to provoke an inquiry into the motivations behind the actions of men, the suggestive use of the N-word in its title and the fact that its main character is of African descent problematises the correlation implied between race and negative human attributes. In my analysis, I use the notion of signifying in two ways. First, I draw on the linguistic notion of signification which is predicated on the existence of the sign consisting of two inseparable aspects: the signifier and the signified. Secondly, I use the concept of signifying as it has been expounded within African-American literary discourse (Gates, Jr., 1986) to describe a variety of verbal rituals resulting in rhetorical negotiations that inform constructions of identity and universal belonging. I posit that both these notions of signifying combine to construct a racial Other in Conrad’s text through a sustained focus on the character’s personal attributes. I further assert that these signifying processes cast the eponymous ‘nigger’, James Wait, as the racial Other who is positioned as the narrative’s object of knowledge, power and criticism.