1. A Sense of Place

In this final chapter we will extend and apply the critical existentialism that we began to develop in the previous chapter. We will begin by returning to Camus’ concerns regarding nihilism, and to the justification of murder this nihilism leads to (recall §4.1.c). As we further develop these arguments, we will take up the theme of justified murder by turning to the conception of political power as Locke defines it – that is, as ‘a Right of making Laws with Penalties of Death’ (Locke 1988, §3) – and then explore the distinction Locke makes between political power and conjugal power. With this distinction, what becomes important is the justification of political power, or the question of what justifies state-sanctioned murder. In the later sections, we will see that the difficulties which follow upon making the distinction between conjugal and political power reflect the de/differentiating tendencies of the problem of making sense of life. Camus sought to maintain a delicate balance in relation to the problematic nature of life, resisting the nihilistic tendency, as he saw it, to assume that one or other of these tendencies is ever fully actualised and determinative, and determinative to the point of justifying murder. Along the way, as we explore the issues involved in attempting to maintain this balance, we will bring in work from studies in wayfinding, especially the work of Tim Ingold and J.J. Gibson, to show just how prevalent the tendency is to rely upon what Ingold calls the ‘cartographic illusion’, or the tendency to think that a map, in this case, simply represents a reality that is always already there. Bringing Adorno back into the discussion we will show how the cartographic illusion is yet another instance of the illusion of a solution without a problem, an illusion that is also common within political discourse. This will then set the stage for the closing sections, in which we will deploy a critical existentialism in order to challenge these illusions and encourage a rethinking of the key political ideas of freedom, law and progress.