Abstracts

Eric Berg: ‘Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation as Constant Reference to Camus’

In this paper I argue that the constant references to Camus’ work in The Meursault Investigation distracts the reader to the point that the valuable philosophical and political points are lost to anyone that has read any of Camus’ work.  It is clear that Daoud’s book is a breathtaking addition to Camus studies as the perspective offered alone is stunning.  However, it is my view that the text suffers from entirely too may references to Camus’ body of work, not just The Stranger but the other novels, the plays, short stories, etc and these constant, subtle, obvious, simple, and sophisticated references become distracting to the reader and ultimately makes The Meursault Investigation a derivative work in the worst sense of the word.  From the very opening lines, "Mama's still alive today…”  to the closing lines “I too wish them to be legion”, Daoud, mimics Camus through placement (The Stranger), delivery (The Fall), prose (Lyrical essays), the setting of Oran (The Plague), the mother-son bond (The First Man), love of Algeria (Nuptials at Tipasa), and content (The Stranger) to name a few.  Although a powerful text, its delivery of that power is lost to a gimmick. 

Peter Francev: ‘Absurd Interpretations: A Camusian reading of Lord Byron’s Play Cain’

Upon hearing the title of my essay, ‘Absurd Interpretations: A Camusian reading of Lord Byron’s Play Cain’, it is possible that one might be somewhat perplexed at the correlation between these strange bedfellows, other than noticing that the premise of the paper is to examine Lord Byron’s late play Cain through the lens of Camus’s philosophy of the Absurd. So, what is it about these two artists that could possibly draw them together? On the one hand, in Lord Byron, we have the ‘bad boy’ of the English Romantic period who would undergo such personal turmoil that he would eventually be forced to leave England in the spring of 1816, never to return, and on the other, the outspoken critic of brutal, abusive governments and the somewhat narrow-mindedness of academia, the winner of the 1957 Nobel Laureate for Literature. Through The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel, Camus is able to provide further understanding of the protagonist in a Romantic play that re-writes the Biblical story of Cain and Abel.

George Heffernan: ‘The Meaningless Life Is Not Worth Living: Marcel’s Critique of Camus’

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) and Albert Camus (1913–1960) both resist categorization as thinkers. Marcel may be regarded as a “Christian existentialist”, though he eventually questioned this label, and Camus has been viewed as the “philosopher of the absurd”, though he soon grew uneasy with this designation. Indeed, it is often overlooked that Camus’s thought underwent a remarkable shift from a preoccupation with the ineluctability of absurdity to a concentration on the possibility of revolt. It is also underappreciated that Marcel presented a detailed critique of Camus’s thought, though the reverse did not happen. The purpose of this paper is to outline Marcel’s critique and to examine its merits and demerits. The guiding question is what role, if any, Marcel’s critique played in the passage of Camus’s thought from solitary revolt against the absurdity of the world to collective revolt against the injustice of human beings to their fellows.

Maciej Kaluźa: ‘The Shaping of Revolt. Camus’s ‘Neither Victims nor Executioners’ in Relation to Merleau-Ponty’s Humanism and Terror and Later Political Criticisms of The Rebel’

A careful analysis of Camus’s journalism from 1944 – 1946, especially his publications in Combat and his political engagements of the period may be considered an important aspect for understanding the composition and argumentation of The Rebel (1951). The first draft of Camus’s idea of revolt, we may note, appears already in 1945 in L’Existence, and his understanding of relations between freedom and justice – covered in detail in his analysis of historical rebellion, have taken shape in a series of Combat articles from 1944. The aim of my presentation is to show, how Camus’s ‘Neither Victims nor Executioners’ series may be considered not only a reaction to Merleau-Ponty’s Humanism and Terror – a counterargument for his analysis of political violence (see: Weyembergh 1998, Foley 2007). Focusing especially on Camus’s argumentation from 21 and 23 November, I will try to show, that Camus’s series from 1946 contains a crucial understanding of essential notions relating to deeper understanding of The Rebel, especially regarding his redefinition of revolution and his negative attitude to suggested absolutisation and ideologisation of contemporary Marxist thought. In order to properly situate Camus’s political argument of 1946 I will also reach to Camus’s debate with E. D’Astier (Deux Réponses à Emmanuel D'Astier De La Vigerie, 1948). In conclusion I will attempt to show, that any political and philosophical criticism that appeared after publication of The Rebel, especially Jenson and Sartre’s arguments on Camus’s political vision related to arguments, that have been already proposed by the writer already in 1946.

Simon Lea: ‘Mythologising and Demythologising in Kamel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation

In this paper I aim to show that Daoud intends to demythologise The Stranger, that is he wants to challenge and tackle the mythology within and surrounding Camus's novel but without destroying the message. I will argue that he is successful but not perhaps entirely in the way he intends.

Camus once claimed not to be a novelist in the usual sense, but “artist who creates myths to fit his passion and his anguish.” Harun, the dialogist/narrator of The Meursault Investigation takes apart one of Camus's most enduring and perplexing myths, demythologising the story of Meursault and the murdered Arab. He does this not by removing fantastic and unbelievable elements of the story and leaving behind historical fact but by introducing fantastical elements and revealing the lack of historical fact. At the same time he continually contrasts his own story (and that if his murdered brother Musa) with sacred myths common to Christianity and Islam in order to show that his brother can be considered neither pure nor a martyr; and in order to challenge the political myth of brotherhood he sees as a disruptive force in Algeria. We see here an example of myth used to challenge myth. But it is not only sacred and political myths that interest Daoud. His novel focuses on a hero myth and here the work of Otto Rank and Freud on 'family romances' is useful in picking apart the Oedipal longings that both inspire and crush his narrator, in particular resentment towards an absent father. Harun and Meursault share remarkably similar lives, they are doppelgängers of a kind but although they appear to be each other's double they are in fact mirror images, equal and opposite. This difference plays an important part in their attitude towards the world. The stifling narcissism of Harun can be compared and contrasted with the liberating narcissism of Camus's Meursault. It is here that we get to the heart of the challenge Daoud and Camus offer their respective communities. And it is here, I argue, that we can judge Daoud's attempt to demythologise The Stranger a success or failure.

Mathijs Peters: ‘‘The One Truly Philosophical Problem’: Arthur Schopenhauer, Leo Tolstoy and Albert Camus on the Question of Suicide’

This paper explores the similarities and differences between Camus and Schopenhauer's reflections on suicide, and therewith aims to shed light on the often overlooked influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy on Camus’ thought. Furthermore, Tolstoy's writings on suicide will briefly be discussed as well, mainly to shed light on the similarities between Schopenhauer and Camus. The author shows that each of these writers claims that the problem of suicide begins at the moment that the rational and reflective mind starts questioning the universe, and argues that each develops an answer to this problem that is irrational in nature: Schopenhauer defends a form of mystical knowledge, Tolstoy embraces his own interpretation of the Christian faith, and Camus writes that the absurd man needs to rebel against the absurdity of the universe while realizing that he cannot change this absurdity. Against Camus’ claim in The Myth of Sisyphus that Schopenhauer does not take the problem of suicide seriously enough, the author argues that Schopenhauer and Camus’ analyses of this problem are actually similar in the following respects: both reject the absurdity of the world and refuse to embrace any kind of thinking that does otherwise, which means that their ideas can be understood as criticizing Tolstoy’s eventual embrace of the Christian faith. Furthermore, both claim that the arts play an exemplary role in illustrating their ideas about suicide. The differences between their theories are then discussed as well: whereas Schopenhauer rejects the world, including the self that is part of it, Camus rejects the world but does this to preserve the individual subject. Furthermore, whereas Schopenhauer rejects the notion of human freedom, Camus defends it.

Luke Richardson: ‘Did Camus Kill an Arab? Readership and Authorship in Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation’

Kamel Daoud’s Prix Goncourt winning novel The Meursault Investigation has sparked a sudden revival of interest in its source novel, L’Étranger and in the life and literature of Albert Camus more generally. The novel, which constitutes a retelling the events of Camus’ seminal 1942 novel and its aftermath from the perspective of the family of Meursault’s Arab victim, contains within it a central conceit that differentiates it from previous attempts: in the world of Daoud’s narrator Harun L’Étranger exists as a novel but written not by Camus, but by the murderer Meursault.

This paper will explore how the conflation of Meursault and Camus influences Daoud’s narrative and what it expresses about the tensions at the heart of Camus’ literature. Is it productive to think of Camus and Meursalt as essentially the same person? Is the accusation against Camus that or a literary, rather than literal, act of violence? I will discuss ways in which the notions of reader, author and character are all placed under pressure by Daoud’s work and how far this strategy helps us in understanding L’Étranger and its highly charged context.

Grace Whistler: ‘Camus’ Struggles with Rhetoric: An Ancient Quarrel’

In this paper I argue that Camus’ entire œuvre can be seen as a struggle to reconcile ‘the quarrel’ between philosophy and literature, which originates from Plato’s proscription of poetry from the polis in The Republic. With a view to demonstrating what I believe to be Camus’ own vision of the role of literature in regard to philosophy (that certain kinds of philosophical understanding are best achieved through encounters with fiction), I examine Camus’ personal struggles with the written word. I begin by suggesting that Camus’ stance in the quarrel is informed by his engagement with different modes of writing, arguing that his experiences as a journalist motivate his dissatisfaction with the efficacy of propositional truth claims – a feeling which is at the heart of both his philosophical and literary texts. I suggest that, for Camus, what cannot be effectively communicated via propositional claims (either in journalistic reports or philosophical arguments), is a comprehension of the subjective experiences of others. I demonstrate his attempt to address this deficit and promote philosophical reflection in the reader, via an examination of the rhetorical devices and techniques he employs in his literary works (such as narrative persons and nomenclature). I conclude that Camus’ endeavour to provoke philosophical reflection through literary form is in many ways a successful one which should, in terms of ‘the quarrel’, guarantee a place for poetry in the polis.