For the Heck of It

Camus`s novel The Stranger was also recently used to frame the soccer player Zidane`s behavior in France`s game with Italy for the 2006 World Cup by International Herald/NY Times writer Roger Cohen. Cohen`s garbled parrallel claimed that Zidane`s action (headbutting an Italian player whom Zidane charges had been viciously baiting him throughout the game) was seen as ``unsportsmanlike``.

Zidane and France`s team was filled with athletes who were first or second generation French-all children of French legacy of colonialization. These athletes came to represent ideals of equality in a France where right wing demogogues like Le Pen refused to acknowledge them as citizens. Nationalistic, right wing working class Eurpoeans use the football field to perform their masculinity, national chauvinism and racism, often hurling abuse from spectator stands. In the midst of this specter of hostility, not to mention the institutional racism, impoverishment and low employment rates that face Algerian, North African and Muslim French young men, these athletes are supposed to behave perfectly.

That expectation of perfection led writer Roger Cohen to lament the ``inscrutability`` of Zidane`s now famous head butt. So called gentleman football fans expressed disappointment that a football player, the embodiment of athletic brilliance, could be ``unsportsmanlike``, and therefore claimed Zidane`s violence was a result of his inner essence as an Arab.

The irony was apparently lost on everyone, including Cohen, who apparently sees himself as the benevolent paternal judge and Zidane as the disconnected narrator. Again, such irony.

The narrator of the Stranger was an alienated son of French colonialists in Algeria. His murder of an Arab means nothing to him, because in the framework of Camus` postmodernist theory, all action is meaningless.

What some colleagues and I are discussing is how the bodies of people of color are used to signify white alienation. We are exploring how the theory of postmodernist existentialism uses the colonialist experience to affirm alienation in a disturbing ahistorical, apolitical context.

Dubya`s reading of the Stranger in this context makes perfect sense.

It looks like the whole world can`t get over this. From the Sydney Morning Herald, August 22
FROM THE OUTSIDER IN

In the face of continuing barbs about his IQ, George Bush has made a laudable effort to intellectualisationalise himself, by reading the The Outsider over his summer vacation.

The classic existentialist text, written by the cheese eating surrender monkey and famous philosopher Albert Camus, follows the story of a detached man who is persecuted for his blank emotional reactions. He then kills an Arab because he kinda feels like it at the time.

We`re not sure why Dubya was drawn to this text as his holiday reading (we would have picked him as more of a crime-thriller man) but we`d like to suggestionate some more books for Dubya`s continued education in existentialism: 1. Heidegger`s Being and Time. Despite being German, Heidegger said some interesting things about Cartesian dualism. 2. Crime and Punishment a novel by the Russian (don`t worry, he wasn`t a communist) writer Fyodor Dostoevsky; and 3. Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre, although you should note that he was both French and a communist.

[...It seems, he also needs to make a serious effort to comprehend the psyche of the Arab kids who choose to become suicide bombers....]

Arabs are barabaric, low IQ neanderthals who are incapable of living in a liberal, tolerant, democratic society. It is as simple as that. Unless you give each of these Arabs a brain transplant, it is hopeless. Ok, Bush attacked Iraq but at least he put in a democratic regime there instead of Saddam. If the Iraqis start governing themselves, Bush will leave tomorrow. But no, the Arabs are killing each other in the name of shia-sunni rivalry with a ferocity that is unmatched in history.

Basically it is time for the US to wash its hands off from the Arabs. Let them stew in their juice. The US should arm Israel with nukes and H-bombs and then simply leave the middle-east. It can always buy enough oil in the world market. Also, the US should kick out each and every muslim out of USA back to their original countries, stop all immigration from muslim countries and stop issuing tourist/student visas to muslims. Only business visas should be given and that too after severe scrutiny. The Western European countries should follow suit. That will solve the terrorism issues by quarantining the muslims. After that muslims can do whatever they want in their own lands like killing shias, women etc.