The Sick Man of Algeria: Colonialism and Medicine in Camus' The Plague

Abstract

This essay examines the medico-colonial complex in Albert Camus' The Plague, seeking to understand the deep mutual implication of medical and colonialist discourses in the novel. This begins by briefly surveying the history and theory of French colonialism through the work of Edward Said before comparing with principlist medical ethics per Tom Beauchamp and James Childress and coming to understand the ideology and rhetorical emphases of French colonialism in those terms. Having thus established a framework within which to understand both discourses, analysis then moves to show how their logical and structural commonalities play out in The Plague, particularly with regard to the colonial situation and textual elision of the Arab population of Oran over the course of the narrative, commonalities further theoretically grounded with reference to the work of Arthur Frank. Frank provides a bridge to the theory of narrative medicine, as proposed by Rita Charon, which contrasts starkly with colonial medicine by its insistence on preserving the subjectivity and individuality of the patient. Orienting by this point of reference, the essay concludes by tracing the threads of power, authority and control by which the figures of both doctor and patient are woven into the classically clothed colonial ideology of European supremacy.