Politics and Ethic of Care of the Self in Albert Camus’s The Plague

Albert Camus’ The Plague articulates a new aesthetic of existence that resists biopolitical normalization. It means cultivating one’s self and not attempting to discover an authentic and hidden self because it entails a continual process of becoming. The sudden eruption of plague in Oran, signifies a rupture in history of its people as the “bored populace is consumed by commercial habits aimed at making money”. In The Plague , if some people become more self-centred and insensitive, characters such as Rieux, Rambert, Peneloux and Joseph Grand show concern for the suffering people and stand in solidarity with them. Their characterization as ordinary individuals who assume responsibility for others’ existence in times of disaster reflects Camus’ hermeneutic of care of the self as an ethical project. Camus aptly asserts that “ordinary acts of courage and kindness are more helpful than the illusion of superheroes”. Deriving a cue from Foucault, Heidegger and Levinas, the paper attempts to explore how care of the self is intertwined with ethics and politics. It is argued that without spiritual discipline and caring for others, the ethical transformation of self cannot take place. It indicates fashioning of the self more freely and self-reflexively and thus speaking truth to power and sacrificing for others. The paper examines this poetics of self which shares an ethical relationship with truth, freedom and kindness.

classes and identities are exposed to suffering. However, people who are privileged have more resources to latch onto when a crisis enters into their life. Every epidemic or pandemic exposes whether a society has a culture of care, compassion and truth or not. The outbreak of novel corona virus (Covid-19) has exposed this truth vividly. Camus' novel The Plague underlines that life is full of absurdity and people need to rebel against the absurd to fill their life with meaning. The bourgeois life of the citizens of Oran produces this absurdity. They were living a comfortable and normal life before the outbreak of the epidemic. However, the sudden arrival of plague in Oran causes an ontological and epistemological crisis. Itsignifies a rupture in history of its people as the bored populace is consumed by their materialistic and commercial habit of minting money.The epidemic destabilizes the regularity of life in Oran.
It devastates the citizens of Oran physically, psychologically and spiritually. The paper proposes that in the actions of Dr. Rieux, Rambert, Tarrou and Peneloux, we can read Foucauldian-Heideggerian and Levinasian enunciation of the politics and ethic of care of the self.
Michele Foucault refers to the ancient Greeks and Romans to theorize the ethic of care. He argues that ancients regarded care of the self as the basis of moral rationality. It was a precept of living. (Ethics,94). The practice of self is a permanent battle. Care of the self has a curative and therapeutic function. We must be strong enough to stand up against events and not to be overwhelmed by the emotions that may arise in us. (Foucault,99). For the ancients, care of self was not just about paying attention to oneself but also to show concern for others as well. He alludes to the association of the care of the self with politics, pedagogy and selfknowledge. (Ethics,95). The idea of care, postulated by Socrates, meant caring for one's soul and for others' by examining his own conduct and that of his interlocutors.
For Foucault, care of the self indicates ethical transformation of self in the light of truth. (Iftode,(79)(80). It is a kind of spiritual exercise which requires self-reflection, meditation and discipline and regulation of one's conduct. He draws upon the idea of parrhesia (which means to say express the whole truth) articulated in the antiquity in relation to the care of the self. Parrhesia needs courage to tell truth to power and it can be read as polar opposite of rhetoric. A parrhesiat is a courageous teller of truth who takes risk whereas a rhetorician is a glib talker. (Franek,119). Expounding the relation between self and truth, Foucault specifies that it does not imply discovering some hidden truth rather the aim is to equip the subject with truth it was not aware of and to put it into practice. (Ethics, 100). He defines ethics as conscious practice of freedom. He writes: "freedom is the ontological condition of ethics" (Ethics, 284). The theme of care of the self was anchored in moral reflection. He opines that care for oneself was not denounced as a form of self-love or a form of selfishness. In fact, it emerged during Christianity as it prescribes that salvation is possible only through renunciation of the self. But for the Greeks and Romans, care of the self was required for proper conduct and practice of freedom. Not to be a slave was a prerequisite for the formation of self. To know oneself, to master oneself and care of the self are interrelated.
The notion of ethic as conscious practice of freedom centred around the theme "Take care of yourself". (Foucault,285). Ethics is a mode of being and behaviour. It is a reflective part of freedom. That's why Foucault opines that a slave possesses no ethics. Freedom is inherently share solidarity with others without surrendering our individual identity and freedom.
Alberoni calls it "alternative form of solidarity" (Movement and Institution 20). The notion that authentic being entails concern for others revolutionizes the idea of individual autonomy.
In fact, to care for others and preserving our individual autonomy simultaneously shows our creativity. Actually, to exist authentically we need our permanent anguished and critical relation with the social present. The Being of Dasein as Being-in-the world is predicated upon the notion of care. (Mulhall 2005 for what must be done." (qtd. in Tronto 105). He deconstructs the totalizing and Darwinistic frames of the Western thought which reduces the other to an object for reflection. Selfpreservation without concern for the other is a Darwinistic value. However, Levinasian ethic of care calls for defying this rule of being."The content of the other's instruction is ethical." (Dietrich et al. 43). We learn dialogically through other's action and response.We inhabit this world with others. We may not immediately know. But we have an ethical obligation to the other who may not be present at the moment. The entire equation of the self-other also changes; we also become the other in others' intellectual categories. (Levinas 213). He elaborates that personal responsibility is determined by our responsibility to others. We indicates a terrible sense of absurdity. Camus observes: "The Truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard but solely with the object of getting rich." (The Plague 2). It is an ugly, glamour less and soulless town where banality is the defining characteristic of human existence. The self-absorbed citizens of Oran never imagined that their'normal' would be turned upside town.
In the wake of the plague, the gates of Oran are closed and it gets isolated from other towns. The infected people are also isolated. The pulsating life comes to a sudden halt.
Cinema halls and restaurants are closed; all trade and commercial activities are stopped. All kinds of communication and transport except telegraphic messages are stopped. People are separated from their loved ones. The entire town is gripped by crippling anxiety and nihilism. Even the government of Oran does not show any gestures of sympathy for the people. Dr.
Rieux takes help of his friend, a clerk in the municipal department, to apprise the administration of the gravity of the situation. But his efforts to alert the administration about the possibility of the eruption of a major epidemic also go futile. It continues to ignore the signs of imminent threat. As a result, it turns out to be a catastrophe.
Rieux believes that by caring for all we can build a better world. It reminds us of Joan Tronto's view: On the most general level, we must suggest that caring can be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we must do to maintain, continue, and repair our The death of M. Michel marks the end of bewildering portents and the beginning of a new phase where perplexity gives place to panic. It is an alarming sign of a contagion. Dr.
Rieux receives call from many people with complaints of high fever and other symptoms of plague. Rats were dying in the street and men in their homes. Castel, one of Rieux's colleagues also hints at the eruption of an epidemic. Camus ponders: "Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet plagues and wars take people equally by surprise" (The Plague 35). He describes that his townsfolk are too obsessed with themselves to pay heed to the occurrence of a pestilence. He further writes that contagion is not a figment of imagination. It is a hard and terrifying reality staring in our face. It is not a bad dream that will disappear. As a matter of fact, it is the men who pass away; first it strikes the humanists like the citizens of Oran, because they do not take precautions. However, Rieux does not ignore his forebodings about a contagion. An incessant fear and unease grips his mind. He recollects what he had read the epidemic. Terrible figures float across his memory that around thirty plagues that happened in history resulted in millions of deaths. He expresses that it is possible to stop it from exploding into an epidemic. Camus hints at the fact that it is foolhardy to wait for superheroes or Gods to whisk away humans from a pestilence. Actually, timely and wise interventions by ordinary men and women can save humanity from grave dangers. His reply to Tarrou carries a significant message. He expresses: "But you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine.
What interests me is-being human." (Camus 245). Through his tryst with struggle of life, he has attained the wisdom that to be is to exist inter-subjectively. To be human is to care for others and take part in people's struggle.
As Foucault has aptly said everything is discursive, the outbreak of the plague is also interpreted differently.

(Mills 53). Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their book
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy also expound how reality is constructed and apprehended through discourse: The fact that every object is constituted as an object of discourse has nothing to do with whether there is a world external to thought…An earthquake or the falling of a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the sense that it occurs here and now, independently of my will. But whether their specificity as objects is construed in terms of natural 'phenomena' or expressions of 'the wrath' of God depends on the structuring of a discursive field. What is denied is not that such objects externally to thought, but the rather different assertion that they could constitute themselves as objects outside any discursive condition of emergence. (Hegemony and Socialist Strategy 108).
Tarrou observes: "I can say I know that world inside, as you may see-that each of us has the plague with in him; no one on earth, is free from it." (Camus 242). He tries to interpret plague as a metaphor for evil or sin. He argues further that there are pestilences and victims on this earth and it is up to us choose as to where we want to stand. What he implies is that the world is full of injustice and deprivation. It hinges on our will whether to go with justice or injustice. We should try as far as possible to join forces with truth and justice, thus, It invents a different politics of care where the precariat and the suffering of humans constitute the main concern. When the gates of Oran are opened, people celebrate and enjoy.
However, Camus posits that the threat of plague never disappears forever. He articulates a warning message: That the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedroom, cellars, trunks and bookshelves; that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it roused up its rats again and sent for to die in a happy city.
What he gestures towards is that evil never dies for good and struggle defines human life.
Metaphorically speaking, if one totalitarian regime collapses, it does not imply that it cannot be replaced by another similar regime. At the end when Camus reveals that Rieux is the narrator, the latter explains as to why he decided to chronicle all the events. He mentions that he wished history to bear witness in favour of the oppressed and the plague-stricken people.
Rieux's politics of care propels him to record and archive truth so that the memorial of injustice and outrage may be preserved. For justice to be secured, truth needs to be consciously protected and presented. Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it". (Foucault 133). Truth is something which societies have to work hard to produce; it does not appear in a transcendental way. His ethic of care is most clearly visible in his statement "to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: there are more things to admire in men than to despise." What he underscores is man is immensely capable of compassion, love, and sympathy even in the times of epidemics. So, the experience of the plague familiarizes with the notion that man is not intrinsically evil or cruel. The values of compassion, equality and love can be inculcated in man.
In conclusion, it can be said that the politics and ethics of care in Camus' The Plague does not uphold the liberal political view because in liberalism the ultimate end is to seek freedom from the obstructing concerns of the other. Camus argues for ethical freedom in which civic duty and the sense of responsibility for others constitute the idea of liberty. The origin of caring lies outside the self-in the transcendence of the oppressive in-dwelling so the actions of caring do not not ask for valorization. Care and responsibility are not abstract terms; they exist only in practicing and doing them.