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Space/Place and Home: Prefiguring Contemporary Political and Religious Discourse in Albert Camus's The Plague

  • Feature Article: Political Theory Revisited
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Contemporary Political Theory Aims and scope

Abstract

Albert Camus has been criticized by postmodern and postcolonial scholarship for being part of and not a critic of the colonial enterprise. In this essay, using Camus's The Plague, we argue that Camus's work is, in fact, seeking a space for political discourse that addresses, before these theories developed, the issues raised by the postcolonial and postmodern critiques. Using theories of space/place and home and concentrating on discourse, particularly on Joseph Grand's sentence, we argue that Camus challenges the colonial as artist. He seeks an alternative to the conflict model of political discourse, developing a discursive mode that is political, but also aesthetic and religious. The intersections of religion, art, and politics in his work problematize models of political discourse and open a way to think about the place of narrative and story-telling and their meaning for being at home with ‘others’ and the self, in community, in a place.

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LeBlanc, J., Jones, C. Space/Place and Home: Prefiguring Contemporary Political and Religious Discourse in Albert Camus's The Plague. Contemp Polit Theory 2, 209–230 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300093

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300093

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