“For Rats Died in the Street; Men in their Homes:” The Pharmacology of the Human-Rat Relationship in Camus’s The Plague

Abstract

Animals have always embodied the memory and trauma of troubled times in human history. The alienization of animals in terms of their non-human essence results in their gothification, resulting in irrational fears of animals that represent cultural anxieties and taboos. For instance, rats are the most culturally accepted symbol of the ravages of bubonic plague. Even though scientifically proven otherwise, the rat has become one of the indelible animal constructions of fear, Other-ness and the evil with-out, signifying the harbinger of the poison of untidiness and unsanitariness into an otherwise healthy society. This paper examines the sociopolitical conflicts in Albert Camus’s The Plague through the human-rat relationship. It uses the lens of Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler’s conception of the pharmakon, where the pest becomes the pharmakon (a malign/benign entity) as well as the pharmakos (scapegoat) in a society riddled with the pestilence of cleansing the invasive Otherness. We have argued, through key theories in critical animal studies and the theories of pharmacology in discursive psychopolitics, that the rat becomes the Gothic icon in the narrative, exposing human foibles and affects our perception of chaos and order.

Keywords:

• Rat
• human
• plague
• pharmakon
• pharmakos
• non-human

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the deities, poets, scholars and elders for gracing us with knowledge.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare there is no Conflict of Interest at this study.

Conflicts of interest

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pritikana Karmakar

Pritikana Karmakar is a research scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India. Her research focuses on the biopolitics of the trans-species imaginary and the interlocking oppressions at the intersections of ecological disasters and counteractive biotechnological progress with a special focus on epidemic narratives.

Nagendra Kumar

Nagendra Kumar is professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India. He has been one of the earliest researchers in India to submit a PhD thesis on the fiction of Bharati Mukherjee. He has been the recipient of the Teachers Research Grant of the American Studies Research Center, Hyderabad (1996) and Outstanding Teacher Award of IIT Roorkee (2015). He is Fellow of the MELUS_MELOW, the Salzburg Seminar (Austria), and the International Shaw Society (Canada). He has traveled widely around the globe on academic and professional assignments. His teaching, research interests and publications cover Modern Literatures, Contemporary Fiction and Critical Theories, Soft Skills, Cross-Cultural Communications and Technical Communications.