LIT 502 - Epidemic, Ethics, and the Quest for Community

In this seminar students will explore three seminal “plague”-novels across cultures in light of contemporary theory and philosophical thought. Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947), José Saramago’s Blindness (1995), and Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague (2021) represent as their central theme the rupture of individual and collective lives by the onset of an epidemic. Trapped in the Algerian city of Oran, Camus’ protagonists struggle to find meaning facing disease and destruction. The human condition, marked by separation, calls for compassion and implies the desire for communion. In Blindness, the trope of community is posited as an ethical imperative when human life is reduced to the abject. In a nameless city, contaminated by a sudden white blindness, the only inhabitant who is spared takes on the task of alleviating the suffering of her companions. By forming a community, she strives to give back their human dignity. Nights of Plague depicts the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the late Ottoman era. The stage is the fictional island Mingheria in the Levant. In this novel, the author continues to explore the binaries of East-West, or tradition versus modernity, by focusing on the Orientalist discourse. The epidemic becomes the catalyst of transitioning to a new form of community. The question of community is also the focus of our theoretical readings. Students will acquaint themselves with contemporary thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas, Judith Butler, Roberto Esposito, and Jean-Luc Nancy, who seek to redefine the concept of community after its breakdown in modernity. The rethinking of community leads to new trajectories, no longer related to old notions of collectivity as fusion. Community becomes a question, a waiting or event. By bringing the novels into dialogue with theory, students will examine the challenges and questions pertaining to the representation of community. Narrative strategies, such as chronicle, epistolary form, authorial perspective will guide the comparisons. Students will contribute to the seminar with an in-class presentation, a midterm paper, and a final essay.

Unit(s): 0.5
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Graduate course. Offered spring 2024.