Abstract

Liminality represents a transient and in-between space in which the subject, midritual, is rendered absent and abject. This space is generated and inhabited by both the victims and perpetrators of social transgressions; a space in which each party is caught in a state of abjection until the fulfilment of punishment. Located within this sphere the reader finds the worlds of William Burroughs’ Junky (2002 [1953]) and Albert Camus’ The Outsider (2013 [1967]). Junky outlines the daily journeys of its narrator, Bill, through the lens of his opiate addiction as he travels from the chill of New York to the sub-tropics of New Orleans and the heat of Mexico; constantly haunted by the ‘junk vibe’ until the lure of new highs takes him to the tropics of Columbia and beyond the reader’s reach. The Outsider follows the narrator, Meursault, as he travels under the burden of the Algerian sun from the day of his mother’s death through to his conviction of murder for shooting a man after a confrontation on a beach. The titles of both texts denote the protagonists as abject and liminal. The liminal is present within Junky and The Outsider in three distinct ways: the criminal element, the oppressive environment, and language.

Highlights

  • Liminality represents a transient and in-between space in which the subject, midritual, is rendered absent and abject

  • I wiped the blood off my arm. – Burroughs, Junky, 2002, p. 126

  • ETropic 16.1 (2017): ‘Tropical Liminal: Urban Vampires & Other Bloodsucking Monstrosities’ Special Issue | 141 and Albert Camus’ The Outsider (1967), remain suspended in this world of ritualtaboo. These texts are spaces in which the ideal of the sovereign subject as self-contained and self-knowing, is rendered voiceless and abject; a state from which the narrator, text, and reader never emerge. This abjection is created through the narrator’s associations with blood and their actions project them into a state of liminality; a transient and in-between space in which the subject, mid ritual, is rendered absent and abject

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Summary

The abject criminal

The title of each text indicates the completeness with which Meursault and Bill are stripped of their subjectivity. Even the first-person narrative, with their removed and despondent voices, cannot break through the completeness of their objectivity Meursault occupies this liminal space because he does not recognise the liminal element in social ritual. Meursault acknowledges the social ritual of the funeral, but does not recognise the liminal realm which his mother has entered This is evidenced in his inability to show remorse for murder. The Algerian, like mother, is already physically and socially dead It is this inability to comprehend the social performance of ritual, rather than his actual actions of killing, that condemns Meursault. Had he feigned some remorse during his hearing he may have escaped the death penalty. Meursault seems to describe people, but he does so without giving any indication of character or personality – they remain two-dimensional and leave no lasting impression

Environments over bodies
The failure of language
Full Text
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