Lissa Lincoln - Law and Literature: The ’Case’ of Deleuze and Camus

It is difficult to imagine an author further removed from the philosophical ideas and literary tastes of Gilles Deleuze than the French existential “moralist“ Albert Camus. However, the proximity between the two thinkers is in fact much greater than one might think. In his relation with literature, Deleuze gives tremendous importance to the framework of law. Questions of judgment and the juridical permeate the pages of his oeuvre. However, and perhaps curiously, although there is much questioning around Deleuze and law, it would seem that there is considerably less interest aroused by the fact that the majority of his philosophy of law lies within his philosophy of literature. Likewise, there has been enormous interest generated around the ideas of law and judgment in Camus, but very little paid to the use of them in his writing. To put it in more deleuzian terms, critics show a keen interest in the themes of law and judgment in Camus, but have neglected the only thing that can make such an interest