Cosmos and Camus. Shai Tubali
wholly translated into images. While generally possessing characteristics of the conventional novel, Roberts (2008: 876) regards it as an “essay-novel,” an uncategorizable hybrid “similar in form and content to a long and personalized philosophical essay in the manner of Kierkegaard or of Plato’s dialogues.” Its discourse explicitly covers a diverse philosophical territory, addressing ontological, ethical, political, and aesthetic topics, but without taking care to develop its ideas in a “tight sequential, logical fashion” (ibid., 882). This style, Roberts argues, aims to foster in the reader a reflection that cannot be achieved through abstract philosophical ideas, since The Fall uniquely considers these ideas “in relation to their contexts”; it thus allows us to recognise the imperfections, tensions and contradictions, as well as the power and insight of these ideas (ibid., 882). Roberts concludes that The Fall demonstrates Camus’ ability to “bridge different genres of writing: to allow the literary to become philosophical via the forms of reflection engendered in the reader” (ibid., 885).
4 In this book I ignore the somewhat justified political criticism of many American science fiction films, which posits that what truly hides behind the mask of the alien “other” is the subaltern non-white or non-American other. For instance, American films of the postwar era should be suspected for having projected fear of the Japanese onto sci-fi epics in the form of “alien invasion” (S. Skrimshire 2018, personal communication, 17 July). I, however, limit myself to the metaphysical nonhuman/human interpretation.
5 Zaretsky (2013: 48) describes how Camus, in a meeting with the British philosopher A. J. Ayer, “agreed with Ayer’s dim view of his philosophical reasoning.”
6 A paraphrase of Mulhall’s statement that he has “a sense that there is an open border between philosophy and literature” (Baggini 2018).
7 The Camusean notion of the feeling of the absurd as a primordial condition that lays the foundations for the concept of the absurd (MS, 27) can be compared with Ratcliffe’s definition of “existential feelings”, that is, feelings that relate to “the world as a whole”, rather than intentional states, which are directed at objects in the world (2012: 1–2).
8 Though, as I will argue in Chapter 2, the essential origin of the feeling can be detected and analyzed.
9 Baggini (2018) goes further by claiming that this is where film and philosophy may overlap: their aspiration to “represent reality to us truthfully in such a way as to make us understand it better or more accurately than before,” with the exception that film shows rather than says.
10 One exception is Alan Woodfolk, who explores Camus’ absurdism in film noir (Conard 2006: 107–124), as well as in the science fiction film Alphaville (Sanders 2008: 191–205).
11 See, for example, 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968; The Abyss 1989; Contact 1997; Dark City 1998; Prometheus 2012; Interstellar 2014; Moon 2009; Gravity 2013.
12 Here I borrow words Camus used to describe the absurdist characteristic of man’s encounter with nature (MS, 12–13).
13 Sci-fi films are also produced in Russia and Asia, for instance, yet they are often treated as “American” and “Western” products or as imitations; moreover, one cannot deny the clear hegemonic position of Hollywood in science fiction film production (Fritzsche 2014: 3).
14 This, we will see, is most ironically noticeable in films that deal with artificial intelligences that assimilate human emotions and behaviors (for instance, 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968; Blade Runner 1982; A.I. Artificial Intelligence 2001; Never Let Me Go 2010; Cloud Atlas 2012; Her 2013; Ex-Machina 2014).
PART I Camus’ absurd: Consciousness and limits
←15 | 16→←16 | 17→
CHAPTER 1 The redemptive power of absurd walls in The Stranger
As far as we can tell, Camus’ commitment to the absurd as a literary and philosophical mission began in May 1936, the same month he defended his dissertation on the subject of Christian metaphysics and Neoplatonism at the University of Algiers (Zaretsky 2013: 14). “Philosophical work: Absurdity,” he wrote in his journal.1 Two years later, he reiterated the sentiment two more times in his journal. While he was still in the research and contemplation phase, he determined to tackle the subject, almost simultaneously, in three different genres: a novel, a play, and an essay. Caligula came first;2 The Stranger, the “novel of the absurd,”3 followed, and, shortly thereafter, The Myth of Sisyphus, the “essay on the absurd,” came into being (ibid., 15–16).
←17 | 18→
Naming this creative cycle the “three absurds” (Sharpe 2015: 41), Camus’ initial intention was to have the works published as a single volume (Foley 2008: 14). Although the three belonged to different genres, he clearly conceived of them as a unified, profoundly interconnected body of work. When all three of the works had been completed, he declared, “Beginnings of liberty,” as if he had to get the absurd off his chest (Sharpe 2015: 41). The Myth of Sisyphus was only his first “myth,” one of a prospective trio that he never managed to complete,4 yet although he “progressed beyond” his three absurds, he “remained faithful” to the “exigency which prompted them” (Camus 1955: vi).
Among the various critiques The Stranger was met with upon its release in 1942 – all of which were rejected by Camus, regardless of whether they were good or mixed, as “based on misunderstandings” (Zaretsky 2013: 43) – Sartre’s “Explication of The Stranger” stood out for its undeniable lucidity. Sartre, Zaretsky writes, filtered the baffling novel “through the insights of the philosophical essay” (ibid., 43). Obviously inspired by Camus’ own distinction between the “feeling of the absurd” and the “notion of the absurd” (MS, 27), Sartre argued that The Myth aims at “giving us this idea” whereas The Stranger is intended to give us the feeling. Indeed, just as the feeling of the absurd “lays the foundations” for the concept but is not limited to it and can even go further thanks to its aliveness (MS, 27), so The Stranger silently thrusts us into the territory of the absurd, leaving it to The Myth to “illumine the landscape” (Golomb 2005: 141).5
←18 | 19→
Brombert (1948: 119) justifiably questions Sartre’s consideration of the essay as a key to the novel. Claiming that such an approach is “neither logical nor truly critical,” Brombert comments that the reader of The Stranger cannot be expected to have read The Myth. While a writer’s essays may be used to further elucidate his or her works, they cannot be treated as a starting point: A literary work should contain its own explanation, functioning as both the “communicating vehicle” and that which is communicated (ibid.,