Prior to attacking a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas, Patrick Crusius posted a manifesto on the notorious 8chan website in which he justifies his attack as a self-defensive response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” While this manifesto certainly contains the irrationality necessary to justify mass murder, it also repeats and reinforces language and worldviews present in public discourse, especially in discourse from white nationalists. Analyzing the Crusius manifesto in context of this white nationalist public discourse reveals how language used and worldviews perpetuated by white nationalists ultimately construct an apocalyptic meta-narrative that transforms immigrants and refugees into dangerous invaders. By repeatedly telling stories that frame immigrants or refugees as criminals, invaders, and terrorists, white nationalists have constructed a meta-narrative that subsumes localized narratives, which means that any story about an immigrant seeking refuge in the United States becomes a story of an invader and criminal. Crusius repeats and reinforces this meta-narrative in his manifesto, drawing on the foundational white-nationalist French scholar Renaud Camus, whose “Great Replacement” theory claims that non-white populations are systematically replacing white populations, leading to a “white genocide.” Ultimately, the apocalypse in this meta-narrative is not a violent, devastating end to the United States, but rather the end of a structure dominated by whiteness and Western culture. It’s this perceived apocalypse that inspires Crusius’ violent response. Ultimately, this meta-narrative capitalizes on fear to transform genuine love of nation into a volatile xenophobia that can encourage a perceived need for violent self-defense. On the scholarly front, this research may reinforce the suggestion of scholar Dana Cloud, who claims that scholars and rhetors cannot challenge white nationalist irrationality with a rational approach, but rather with localized narratives that ground the experiences of immigrants and refugees in concrete details that foster empathy and understanding.

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Text in French with an abstract in English / The loss of a life for natural causes has always been, always is and always will be something tragic for human beings, even if it was foreseen. It is all the more tragic when the loss of human life is caused by violent circumstances such as murder or an accident, as in the case of the untimely death of Albert Camus in a car accident. The worst, however, is when a miscarriage of justice in court, due to an error on the part of the judge, results in the loss of a valuable life by the death penalty. This value must be assessed in existential terms, in terms of the human being contextualized in a life worth living despite its absurdity, as described by Camus. It must be realized that this brutal death is imposed by a few words pronounced by a fallible judge, imposing the death penalty on another fallible human being, and that the sentence is then carried out by another fallible human being – all of whom are fundamentally subject to human imperfection and who regularly make mistakes in life. By emphasizing the fallibility of the human being in various ways in his literary works, Camus convincingly demonstrated that, in our already absurd existence, the death penalty is the ultimate scandal, making this punishment truly exponentially absurd – the absurdity of absurdity. How the author demonstrated that fallibility, the eternal imperfection of human beings, is the main reason why the death penalty exceeds absurdity. Using L'Étranger as a starting point, a novel in which the death penalty is mentioned only at trial, on death row, and in the very last part of the novel, and which is strategically supported by other works by Camus, this essay explores how Camus may have used his characters to subtly illustrate the relationship between the everyday imperfections of human beings and the possible death penalty. The essential principle is that there is a precise operational link between the essence and structure of everyday conflicts and the structure of a trial. Parallels are drawn between conflict and trial, particularly with regard to the fallible human beings participating in both, in various judicial capacities, confirming Camus' conviction that the death penalty is the absurdity of absurdity. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (French)

The purpose of this these is to explore Nietzschean values as they appear in three modern allegories: Franz Kafka's The Castle, Albert Camus' The Plague, and Nikos Kazantzakis' Zorba the Greek. The intent is to illustrate Friedrich Nietzsche's three stages of the overman as they apply to Kafka, Camus, and Kazantzakis. (91 pages).

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This article claims that Ralph Ellison's use and then revision of French existential themes is essential to understanding his overriding message of Invisible Man: Ellison's hope for a more polyglot American democracy that transcends the white democracy of mid twentieth century America. Specifically, I argue that Ellison, after demonstrating his ability to understand and engage in the traditional ideology of European existentialism, deviates from its individualistic conclusions demanding that the larger community, not just the solitary individual, must become ethically responsible if the classic existential tenet of authenticity is to be achieved. In order to establish this claim, I identify key passages in Invisible Man that indicate Ellison's desire to engage the existential movement. Writings from Camus and Sartre provide the foundation for comparison between Ellison's work and the French based philosophy. This background provides the groundwork to explore Ellison's deviations from the existential forms of his day. These departures have significant implications for Ellison's view of a socially productive individual, and therefore of his message in Invisible Man. In order to document the prevalence of existentialism in Ellison's literary consciousness, I then discuss its rise and decline in postwar New York. I also outline what is known about Ellison's relationship to the movement. Lastly, I conclude with a discussion of the philosophical tradition of existential philosophy and the difference between the philosophy of existence, seen in the Western canon through philosophers like Kierkegaard, and existentialism, one of its popular manifestations that peaked in the 1940s. Separating the two existential movements allows me to explore the tangential way most Ellison critics have associated him with existentialism and advocate for a more inclusive critical discussion of Ellison's relationship to existentialism.

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