On 28 and 29 September, the second two-day scientific symposium devoted to the contexts of Joseph Conrad’s work in semi-contemporary culture took place in our Scientific Center. The symposium featured twelve speakers: Laurence Davies, Richard Ambrosinin, Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech, Robert Hampson, Michel Arouimi, Joanna Skolik, Karol Samsel, Daniel Vogel, Julie Gay, Rob Lemkin, Kaoru Yamamoto. Presentations included the reception of Conrad in African, French and Canadian literature, transmedial adaptations of Conrad’s works (comics, graphic novel, film), and an analysis of the transcreation of Core of Darkness as Heart of Darkness in the perspective of stylometry. In lively discussions also held with online participants (from Israel, United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom), issues of colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonisation were raised. The conference culminated with Rob Lemkin’s moving documentary film, ‘African Apocalypse‘ from 2020. The film’s main narrator is a British Oxford student and activist Femi Nylander with Nigerian roots, travelling from Oxford to Niger in the footsteps of the brutal coloniser Captain Paul Voulet, mirroring the fate of Kurtz from Heart of Darkness. The material is largely based on the testimony of a Nigerian community whose injustices inflicted by the coloniser still linger in its collective memory (post-memory). The film became the starting point for a debate on ethical issues, current processes of neo-colonialism and the role of Conrad’s texts in explaining the dangers of the contemporary world.
