Cook, Conrad and the Poetics of Error

In Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography (1966), Edward Said responds to the vast archive of letters between Conrad, his friends and editors, and observes ‘dominant themes, patterns and images,’ which rival the author’s ‘highly patterned fiction’ (xix). In a similar gesture, this essay examines the complex intent behind Conrad’s Endeavour re-enactment, reading the event as a staged pilgrimage—devised and later described by an author who had geography and history in mind. Conrad’s own documentation of the event will prove significant. ‘The body art event needs the photograph to confirm its having happened,’ writes curator and art historian Amelia Jones (14). A performance’s dependency on its material afterlife is also observed by performance scholar Paul Auslander: ‘the act of documenting an event as a performance is what constitutes it as such’ (5). Unsurprisingly, no photographs commemorate Conrad’s voyage. Instead, three texts offer witness. It is through them that we may observe the ephemeral Endeavour re-enactment, which must be understood as both a textual and historical event.