“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.