aspiration and its empirical practice. It accounts for why “in post-coloniality, every
metropolitan definition is dislodged. The general mode for the post-colonial is citation,
re-inscription, rerouting the postcolonial” (Spivak in Chambers 23).
If the discourse of cannibalism is foregrounded in reciprocity and may be discovered in
various shades and hues (Ted Motohashi 1999: 99), then the stanza demonstrates this
location of cannibalism strangely within the pale of the avowed centre of civilization. By
telling a most horrible tale of a deflationary incident at “Thames Banks”, the persona
questions the myth of progress whose semiotic signification is foregrounded in narratives
of British nationalism.^39 For right at the bank of this highly feted river the following
heinous act took place; besides as a quotidian experience that lasted for about thirty
years, this form of cannibalism cannot be denied in the culture of the space that prided
itself on refinement. What is more, the poet relies on the imagery of horror to drive home
his point:
...Thames
Banks: they picked up a dead woman the other day
Her lungs were found wrapped up in World War soot
She must have been living here thirty years, they said. (32)As if this were not enough, the stanza proceeds to expose another angle to the possibility
of interrogating British modernity and modernization prototypes precisely because of the
ease with which acts of cannibalism have been glamorized and elevated to the status of
tourist attraction. This is the more curious for the persona because it revolves around the
memory of King Henry:
The Tower: King Henry’ abattoirs. His wives’ regalia
Still trail amid the steaming guillotines
The bath tubs are meticulously kept for ten pence. (32)^40
39
Although Conrad was only a naturalized British, his works, especially Heart of Darkness did much to
promote British nationalism. The juxtaposition of British waterscape as symbolized by River Thames with
great endowments of navigation as against River Congo, which lacks such navigatory properties, goes to
show the deployment of literature in the service of imperialism. 40
King Henry VIII (1491-1547) might not be as favoured in history as his father (Henry VII) when it
comes to wars and battles of unification. This is because the record of bloodshed remains enormously
scandalous, and linked primarily with his desperation to have a male heir. If this primarily led to the
severance of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, it also became the main reason why
he became notorious for the promulgation of various suppressive acts, through which many of the