Sisyphean (Out)rage and the refusal to Mourn

Abstract

John Cruickshank noted that Albert Camus “always convinces us more when speaking as a moralist than when speaking as a logician.”¹ Indeed, the combination of emotional persuasiveness and logical perplexity in Camus’s philosophical work presents contemporary readers with something of a roadblock. Attracted by the tenor and timbre of Camus’s message, many scholars have either ignored or mistaken serious philosophical problems at its core. This article argues that contemporary readers should interpret Camus’s central concept, absurdity, in its appropriate context: as a metaphor for psychological resistance to traumatic loss and deprivation. In what follows, I describe the nature and aim of such resistance and demonstrate that the absurd rebellion Camus depicts in his major works entails an obfuscation of understanding and a sacrifice of the ability to make loss meaningful. Approaching Camus’s absurd philosophy in this way, however, does not diminish the significance of his endeavor. On the contrary, the analytical tack pursued here suggests that Camus’s thought contributes substantially to our understanding of grieving processes on both cultural and individual levels, while offering us an interpretive key to the broader tradition of absurd philosophy, literature, and drama.