Abstract

The drive to modernise cannot be divorced from the evolution of technolo- gies that are designed to profit from nature without concern for long-term effects on the earth and its capacity to carry substantial human populations. While evolving technologies also have other purposes than this transformation of matter to profit, the twenty-first century ecological humanities respond to the way that industrialisation has mobilised environmentally damaging practices over recent centuries. Yet such critiques must also remain aware of the deep patterns that gird philosophies and practices of profit over sustainability. Current events reveal familiar structural tendencies that link them with ancient human predispositions. One of these patterns is the perennial cultural quest to symbolically live “in the light.” Mighty empires continue to colonise on behalf of a profane version of this symbolic quest, wherein the idea of inhabiting light – a figure commonly associated with goodness, truth, order and abundance – is intimately yoked to the power of the profit motive. But darkness shadows this modernising project, both as its wasteland and at itsheart . This paper examines two of the early twentieth century’s most influential texts to uncover the deep anxieties they reveal aboutthe way the symbol of light is co-opted on behalf of the modernising projectof colonisation and its technologies. In doing so it shows that the colonisingaspect of Western civilisation is indivisible from the aim of mastering theearth . It then discusses the way that Conrad and Eliot are sensitive to the shadow of thisdream, recognise the limits of such an agenda of mastery, and experimentwith alternative cosmologies