Essays

Here, here! So, I shall start a thread to discuss one of my own literary interests-- Existentialism.

I've heard more definitions for this word/idea than I can count; let me hazard my own definition here:

--Existentialism, as a literary movement, highlights the tension between immediate, physical experience and the metaphysical implications of that experience. It does this in order to defend the efficacy of individual experience against the (often) hyper-mediated, "distant" experience of modern life.--

Anthony Giddens explains what I mean by "the (often) hyper-mediated, 'distant' experience of modern life" beautifully in _The Consequences of Modernity_, most especially in the sections on "Modernity, Time, and Space", "Disembedding", "The Reflexivity of Modernity" and "Trust and Ontological Security". If someone asks, I will try to explain it, rather than just referencing his work. You could also go to Freud, Benjamin and Baudelaire, esp. their writings on "shock" in modern experience.

---And now, I will point to two pieces of literature that, I think, best highlight the Existentialist Movement.---

The first is the murder that occurs at the end of Part I of Albert Camus' _The Stranger_.

This chapter is a prime example of Existentialist thought because this murder, in a sense, is not a murder at all-- Camus writes it as a mechanical process, not a metaphysical act. Mersault, the shooter, kills the Algerian, but in this passage that idea-- the idea of "murder"-- is only an afterthought. What Camus focuses on are purely physical sensations-- the piercing sun in Mersault's eyes, the sting of sweat on his brow, the press of the gun's butt on his hand, the 'crack!' of the shots. It is only after all of this that the process takes on its metaphysical, "good vs. evil" facade-- and then, only because Mersault's trial re-casts it that way. This is what makes the trial itself absurd-- it is looking at a physical process and trying to recast it as an act driven by evil intent.

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