the emergence of existentialism as a literary theory in … the postcolonial scenario by kafka and...

Gandhara Journal of Research in

Social Science

ISSN: 2415-2404

Volume 1, No. 1, Spring 2016

2016 Gandhara Research

Society, Pakistan Alia Bashir Tanauli Lecturer, Department of Humanities, COMSATS, Abbottabad, Pakistan

The emergence of Existentialism as a Literary Theory in the Backdrop of Colonialism: A Comparative Study of Metamorphosis

and The Stranger as Postcolonial Existentialist Texts While sifting the individual out of 20th century Existentialist philosophy as the crux of existence and placing him in the larger context of post colonialism, the purpose of this research paper is to situate the emergence of the Existentialist philosophy in the 20th century European colonization process. The emergence of Existentialism as well as its connection with the postcolonial market economy in Europe, and the subsequent exploitation of individualism, have been studied through the lens of postcoloniality. This paper attempts to study the effects of post colonialism on the 20th century Existentialist philosophy in Europe in the light of postcolonial European Existentialist literature. The Existentialism found in The Metamorphosis and The Stranger is the manifestation of the struggle of individualism in the constraining forces of postcoloniality, the ground where on the Existentialism nourished, as against the contours of the absolute personal choices and free will of an individual.

Gandhara Journal of Research in Social Science (ISSN: 2415-2404, Volume: 1, No. 1 Spring 2016) _____________________________________________________________________________________

36

The emergence of Existentialism as a Literary Theory in the Backdrop of Colonialism: A Comparative Study of

Metamorphosis and The Stranger as Postcolonial Existentialist Texts

Alia Bashir Tanauli*

Introduction

Existentialism as an elusive term is difficult to define, for there are as many

interpretations of it as there are different writers. However, in spite of the various

complexities associated with it, this philosophical term is mainly related to human

existence and its experiences in the immediate environment from a subjective point of

view, that is to say as to how far an individual’s life is livable in the timeframe of life and

death, as a free human existence, observed Michelman Stephen (2010). In fact, the 20th

century existentialist philosophy emerged out of the reaction against Plato’s idea of

essence as contrasted with the existence. According to Plato, existence is only the

manifestation of the ideal or the universal abstract ideas and the concrete things in this

universe are the faces of those ideal objects; hence the immediate reality, the existence,

derives its meanings through essence or forms which are abstract and beyond the grasp of

reality, observed Passmore John (1957). All these forms, according to Plato, exist outside

the limits of time and space, observes Soccio, Douglas (2012).

The Metamorphosis and The Stranger are existentialist novels wherein the

protagonists Gregor Samsa’s and Meursault’s characters develop through their personal

choices, arbitrary decisions, as against the transcendental involvement into the human

affairs; Meursault’s ultimate suffering starts from his killing of the Arab and Samsa’s

suffering in becoming a vermin (although transforming into a vermin is not intentional on


37

Samsa’s part but somehow he desired to escape from his immediate affairs of life which

is expressed in his intense dislike to his office job, in other words he might have desired

to be inhuman or the animal in order to escape from the reality). If this making and

breaking of their individual characters is interpreted in the existentialist philosophical

terms, it becomes clear that it is the ultimate result of their personal choices, their

individual decisions or the freedom which they profess and sacredly adhere to, as

according to McCarthy (2004) Existentialism as a philosophical theory maintains that

man is confronted with a hostile world where he gives meanings to his life through his

actions.

However, if, according to the existentialist philosophy, an individual is himself

responsible for his life then why do the characters of Samsa and Meursault have been set

in the postcolonial scenario by Kafka and Camus? Do the constraints of postcolonialism

have something to do with the fate of individual’s life? Does an individual live in a void

wherein his deliberate actions, picked out of his personal choices, are the sole causes of

his downfall or the otherwise? If the mood of pessimism and nihilism, the influence of

Nietzsche, Ponge and Blanchot, the political unrest caused by Hitler and the economic

Depression, define the historical context of Existentialism, then paradoxically

Existentialism as a literary and philosophical theory is celebrating its own demise; for an

individual freedom is curtailed by social forces around him.

Literature review

McCarthy (2007) observes that The Stranger is an existentialist novel as

Meursault refuses to meet the chaplain several times. According to him, Meursault

prefers to cherish the memories of his sensual past rather to dwell on the idea of God.


38

Meursault, as depicted by McCarthy is not ready to categorize his life into one thing or

the other, doing one thing and regretting the other, being not done; living a life in one

way and resenting for the unlived; Meursault as an existentialist rather perceives life as

an existentialist whole, devoid of past regrets or future concerns. It is in this context that

McCarthy (2007) observed that the mood of pessimism or nihilism in The Stranger is to

be located at the tensed period of 1930s when Gide’s and Claudel’s views about life were

rejected by Camus and Sartre when the Depression created economic difficulties and the

Fascism brought hatred in the world. Therefore the concept of Existentialism and the

absurd emerged in the works of Camus who as a child of his age presented the problems

of a common man in the economically and politically depressed period of European

history.

This overview of existentialism found in the present novels under study, i.e. The

Metamorphosis and The Stranger, provides the background for postcolonial scenario and

the market economy which has been the driving force for colonizing agenda of European

politics. It is in this perspective that Snodgrass (2010) observed that Kafka was prophetic

enough to predict the forthcoming collapse of Russian empire building and reintegration

of Europe into modern age and therefore interpreted the universe in the existentialist

terms and defined the human’s existence in the light of European politics. Added to this

environment is the bureaucratic tampering presence and the denial of citizenship under

Franz Joseph which culminated in Hitler’s persecution of Jews in the forthcoming

Holocaust. It is in this perspective that Kafka makes his character Gregor transform as a

symbol of the loss of humanity. In fact, as Wellbery, Rayan, & Gimbretch (2004) have

observed that The Metamorphosis is to be studied in the context of the historically tense


39

period when the Austro-Hungarian empire was about to crumble in the ever present

conflict among European nations. Therefore, as Patke Rajeeve (2013) has connected the

allegorical literature of Modern era with its postcolonial problems, Kafka’s The

Metamorphosis becomes the offspring of modern existentialist problems. Kafka’s

existentialist literature is to be studied in the light of history of the empire and the colony,

Patke (2013).

Analysis and Discussion

To begin with, whether a German or a Czech, determining Kafka’s belongings is

difficult for, he had been a member of Austro-Hungarian Empire and this feature has had

a far reaching influence on his individualism than any sense of belonging to a certain

nationalism could have aroused. Kafka’s writings, according to Patke (2013), had been

under the influence of that empire. In The Metamorphosis the protagonist transforms

without any explicit reasons but at the outset the readers are introduced to the Gregor’s

emotions of dislike towards his job when he says, ‘Oh God, what a grueling job I’ve

picked! Day in, day out - on the road. The upset of doing business is worse than the

actual business in the home office…’ (p. 4). The text indicates that the protagonist is in

the constraining forces of time and space, each day struggling to get up for the boring job

wherein he is no more than a clerk, eating at odd places and at odd timings,

accommodating himself to a domineering boss. His missing the day’s train, the business

and the work, all in the fleeting time shows that Gregor’s existence is in the constraints of

time.


40

Viewing this precarious position of Gregor in the larger context of capitalist

market economy of the Prague, the then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, would be

helpful, as the postcolonial, capitalist market economy is largely responsible for Gregor’s

metamorphosis. Schleslinger (2013) describes the social and political situation of Austria

as the time of crisis wherein Brno Congress of Austrian Empire demanded national

programme in 1898 for safeguarding the cultural issues as well as protecting minority

rights. Austrian labour movement, in the backdrop of Russian Revolution of 1905, also

triggered the changes in the policies of Francis Joseph which later on culminated in the

Austrian Marxism. The point relevant to this study is that the Czechs were already in the

grip of capitalist economy in Austria and the strict economic policies chalked out under

Francis’s rule. So the character of Gregor in The Metamorphosis symbolizes the

precarious economic and political conditions of Pre-World War I era, the time of the

publication of this novel by Kafka.

This situation, i.e. the economic exploitation is strikingly similar to another

existentialist text, The Stranger by Camus. Set in French Algiers, post-colonial effects are

visible from the very start of the novel, the constraints of time and space in the post-

colonial market economy where the protagonist is dwindling between the ‘yesterday’,

‘today’ and the ‘tomorrow’ time or thinking of the time as to when his mother died, when

would he run for the carriage and above all, for how much time would he take his time

off for his mother’s funeral ceremony (p. 4). This constraint has also been set in the

postcolonial market economy where Meursault’s boss is unhurt to the death news of

Meursault’s mother’s death and instead reluctantly allows him a negligible time to attend

to his mother’s funeral ceremony. These are the circumstances where Mausault as an


41

employee of the capitalist economy has to excuse himself for his absence; however, it is

the moral responsibility of his boss to pay him sympathy and condolence at the mother’s

loss. These directives show that the boss is only concerned for the business which would

be missed during Meursault’s absence. McCarthy (2007) observed that the capitalist

designs of Meursault’s boss, i.e. the work, the business and the progress in commercial

profits are evident of his lack of sympathy for the dead mother. His matter-of-fact style,

his counting on business and calculating Meursault’s mother’s age altogether, reveal him

to be a stern capitalist working to safeguard the capitalist economy, implying that an old

death should not be considered as a big loss. Added to this is Meursault’s lack of

ambition or his disinterestedness towards his promotion to Paris is to be analyzed in

terms of his working class background as against his boss’s attitude toward work ethics,

which is ambitious. This contrast shows the tension between the capitalist forces and the

proletarian wage earning attitude.

However, if the existentialism as discussed earlier, is the transference of meaning

into one’s life through personal choices, self-will and individual decisions, then, how far

the economic forces in the form of impersonal forces are responsible for the change of

one’s character or destiny. Economic conflicts are easily traceable from Camus’s early

writings and this economic tension is also discernible from the text of The Stranger,

which, as a piece of existentialist writing might also be read as French Algerian, social

and economic conflict. The economic conflict between the Arabs and the pied noir were

intensified by 1930 owing to agriculture slump. The Arab nurse in The Stranger,

employed to attend to needs of the dead woman before the funeral ceremony, is sick

herself, showing the general plight of Arabs who are unemployed, impoverished and sick


42

in the colonial world of French Algeria, observed McCarthy (2007). The hints of the

narrator at the old house ‘the Home of Aged Persons’ where Meursault has admitted his

mother, as there is nobody at home to look after her, is another pointer which pins at the

constraints of economy or the social structure for which the economy is responsible. The

rise of Existentialism and the absurd in French writing, associated with Sartre and Camus

came forth in the same decade, i.e. 1930s, when the economic tensions were on the rise in

the French Algeria. Algeria being the colony of France was merely being used as gold

mine. France was keen on taking the expensive resources from Algeria and little

investing in Algerian population, hence embittering the people, the pied noir, the

indigenous, and the Arabs alike, creating a wide economic gap among the businessmen,

farmers and the masses, observes McCarthy (2004). Camus’s association with the FLN,

the Combat, Alger Republicain and his stance for the Arabs manifests that he raised his

voice for equality between the settlers and the local population, if not for the

independence for Algeria, Evans & Philips (2007). This concern is predominant in

Camus’s writing in The Stranger, while he takes up the cause for the Arabs as they were

being marginalized at the hands of the French authorities. He championed the equal rights

for the local population while also wrote in the Alger Republicain, the agricultural crisis

in Kabylia, McCarthy (2007). Camus, according to McCarthy (2007) was entering a

dangerous political arena while speaking against the French government’s inability to

bring essential services in the country, bringing economic crisis in Kabylia and implying

local self-government for the Arab population and this was the limit for Camus for he

could never articulate such a demand on behalf of the local population as it would be an


43

interference in the exploits of French colonialism. Hence the murder of the Arab takes

place in The Stranger, McCarthy (2007).

Historically, by 1881, until 1940, at the fall of the Third Republic, Algeria

remained the integral part of French government under the 1875 Constitution, although it

was good news for the settler population, the Muslims remained marginalized as they had

no right to vote which indicated that French politics in Algeria was race specific.

Muslims were living on the fault line of social and political inequality which was

segregating Europeans, Jews and the Muslims from each other, observed Evans (2012).

While depicting the context of the novel, i.e. the murder of the Arab at the hands of a

pied-noir hero, Meursault, MaCarthy (2007) observed that the criticism of the novel

mainly rests on an individual’s struggle against the hostile world while ignoring the

working class issues, the economic conditions of the times and the effects of post

colonialism on Algerian population. It is in this context that Boahen (1990) recorded the

history of African economy under colonial rule, including French West Africa, which

was made to be dependent on the capitalist world of the colonizers, i.e. the relation of

producers and the consumers, African and The colonizers respectively. It was an

extension of the colonial power through economy. The War and the Depression struck

hardly on the African economies as the labourer became powerless under the new

constraints as the wages were being slashed down by the capitalists in order to meet

challenges in the Depression. So it was mainly the conflict of economic structures,

French being the capitalist while the Algerian, the agrarian society; indigenous labourers

were employed on low wages in order to promote the colonizer’s capitalist agenda.

Confiscation of local property at the hands of French colonizers, withholding the local


44

business of Algerian Muslims increased the tension between the colonized and the

colonizer, Bennoune (1988).

In fact, the reasons for Meursault’s reaction to his boss indifference to his

mother’s death and the labour which would be missed during his absence should be

located in the market economy prevalent in Algeria. The fact of the matter is that The

Stranger presents the conflicting forces of capitalism and socialism wherein Camus

pleads for liberal values, social justice and economic reforms in the French Algeria.

Camus, according to Orme (2007) had been influenced with the political ideas of Jean

Grenier, who believed in socialist values of, building a nation on socialism, resting in

peoples’ power rather on the State. This political and economic ideal was taken up by

Camus who propagated the democratic values based on social and economic justice. The

political system which excludes the working- class would be a failure for the future

French government.

It is in this context that Sartre, the chief proponent of existentialism expanded the

definition of existentialism in Critique of Dialectical Reason, wherein the influence of

the society was made equally responsible in the development of an individual’s

personality, affecting his choices and individual decisions. While using the term

‘practico-inert’, the laws or the customs, made by free actions in human affairs, he

emphasizes the involvement of the world in to human affairs thereby influencing human

choices and struggles and the placement into the history. In fact the Critique of

Dialectical Reasoning is an effort to grasp the world in the perspective of overall human

struggles in a historical time which is the result of human action, ultimately ‘historical

making of humanity’ observes Catalano (2010). Ironically, it was Sartre, the champion of


45

individual freedom and responsibility, who, after ‘conversion’ to Marxism, wedded the

Existentialism with Marxism, as according to him human freedom is curtailed by the

society; a man cannot live as an individual or individual freedom is impossible in a world

which runs through the interaction and involvement between humans. It is through the

wedding of Existentialism and Marxism, that the mankind and the world can be

understood in totality. Thomas (1986) observed that Sartre championed the socialism;

stood against negritude and colonization. He was against the French colonization in

general and colonization in Algeria in particular as according to him this had caused a

negative impact on French politics, as the values of justice, democracy and freedom have

been marred during the colonizing program of French Empire. Sartre argued that through

colonialism France had rendered violence on the Algerian population in the pretext of

civilizing the uncivilized.

It was this historical context, the French Algerian conflict that compelled him to

fit his theory of existentialism in Marxism, for he had a belief that the Algerian peasants

would stand up against the French colonialism. His idea of the existence preceding the

essence can only be situated in the individual freedom within the constraints of history or

situations in life. In other words freedom is curtailed by the worldly constraints, Davis

(2011). It was this historical background that formed Camus’ communist leanings and the

reasons for his joining the Communist party in 1935 where his job was to organize

debates and discussions on the left wing politics, McCarthy (2004). French colonialism

had also been criticized in Camus’ editorials in The Combat. He even did not hesitate in

criticizing the French government for injustices which it was creating in its colonies

when the French government was going through its own rebuilding process after the


46

Liberation. According to Camus, it was hypocrisy on the part of French government to

fight for its own freedom and suppressing the very right for its colonies. Authentic

democracy was impossible in France without acknowledging the same for the colonies,

Valensi-Levi (2006).

Conclusion

In the light of the above discussion on the existentialist novels The

Metamorphosis and The Stranger it becomes clear that 20th century Existentialism

emerged out of European nations’ colonizing agenda. The capitalism as a form market

economy in the postcolonial Austrio-Hungarian Empire, and the French Algeria, to which

Kafka and Camus belonged respectively had far reaching effects on the social systems of

both these countries. The existentialist struggle of the individuals, Samsa and Meursault

in the novels is to be studied in the light of these effects, i.e. the postcoloniality, the

market economy, the exploitation of an individual in constraining forces and above all the

implied struggle between the Capitalism and the Socialism, the protest against which

Samsa and Meursault stand for.

End Notes_________

Boahen, Adu.A. (ed). (1990). Africa under colonial domination, 1880-1935 Vol.7.

London: James Currey Ltd.

Bennoune, Mahfoud. (1988). The making of contemporary Algeria, 1930-1987.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Catalano, S. Joseph. (2010). Reading Sartre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Daviis, Haleh Muriam. (2011). Algeria as postcolony? Rethinking the colonial legacy of

post-structuralism. Journal of French and Francophone philosophy, 9(2). pp-136-

152.Doi.10.5195/jffp.2011.510.


47

Evans &Philips. (2007). Algeria; The anger of the dispossessed . London: Yale University

Press.

Evans, Martin. (2012). Algeria: France undeclared War. New York: Oxford University

press.

Flynn, R. Thomas. (1986). Sartre and Marxist Existentialist: The Test Case of Collective

Responsibility.

McCarthy, Patrick. (2004). Albert Camus The Stranger. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Michelman Stephen (2010). A-Z of Existentialism. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Orme, Mark. (2007). The development of Albert Camus’s concern for social and political

justice. Cranbury: Associated University Presses.

Patke, S. Rajeev. (2013). Modernist literature and postcolonial literature. Edenburge

University Press Ltd. Edenburge.

Snodgrass, Ellen Mary. (2010). Encyclopedia of the Literature of Empire. New York:

Infobase Publishing.

Wellbery, Rayan, & Gimbretch. (ed). (2004). A new history of German Literature.

Havard: Harvard University Press

Schleslinger, Rudolf. (2013). Central European Democracy and its background:

Economic and political group. Routelege.

Passmore John. (1957). A Hundred Years of Philosophy. Penguin Books.

Patke, S. Rajeev. (2013). Modernist literature and postcolonial literature. Edenburge

University Press Ltd. Edenburge.

Valensi-Levi, Jacqueline. (ed).(2006). Camus at Combat : Writing 1944-1947. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Soccio, J. Douglas. (2012). Archtypes of widom: An introduction to philosophy. Boston:

Cengage Learning.

McCarthy, Patrick. (2004). Albert Camus The Stranger. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Michelman Stephen (2010). A-Z of Existentialism. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, Inc.

the emergence of existentialism as a literary theory in … the postcolonial scenario by kafka and...

Documents