'No visible history': With reference to your wider reading, compare ways in which the impact of 'history' is explored in your two texts.

'Visible history' is a difficult term to unpack. For the most part, this is because of the term 'history' and the various ways it is interpreted as a concept and as something that we engage with. What is visible to us seems relatively easy to identify: we see landscapes, objects, texts. Landscapes can be natural or manmade; objects can be anything, likewise, be natural or unnatural, and as small as a fragment of pottery or a coin to a building or statue. Texts, likewise, take various forms, and we can often learn something of history from the history of the text object. However, when we connect the term 'visible' with 'history' we run into problems breaking down the process of interpretation. Even in my definitions of 'visible' and 'history', it is difficult to seperate the interpretation from some underlying context. If we imagine finding a piece of pottery, it seems unlikely that we could work out how old it was and where it came from without some foundational knowledge that comes from somewhere other than the object itself. This problem is actually particularly relevant to readings of Joseph Conrad's novella, 'The Heart of Darkness', because so much of the novel is about interpretation. Conrad addresses the issue of 'visible history' through the ways in which his protagonist, Charles Marlowe, responds to the landscape of Africa, its people, and the things that he sees on his travels. The way that Marlowe interprets the 'history' of the places, people, and objects around him, and, speaking more broadly, the way he interprets the history of Africa, often speaking of its 'prehistory' and thus associating 'history' with 'culture', exposes many of the biases of imperialism and the problems inherent in historical interpretation.