Under the guillotine blade: Albert Camus’ contributions to Media Ecology

contribuição de Albert Camus para a Ecologia das Mídias

Abstract

This article aims to add to the Media Ecology the contributions offered by Albert Camus in his philosophical essay Reflections on the guillotine ([1957] 2022). For this, a brief chronology of the ecological tradition of the media was outlined — supported, above all, by the legacy left by Marshall McLuhan ([1962] 1972; [1964] 1993) and Neil Postman (1993) — as a way of presenting some of its main references. That said, through a methodology, elaborated from what the work intends to achieve, of a qualitative approach, of a theoretical nature, based on epistemology built on the foundation of the dialogue between the mentioned theoretical perspective and the essayism of Albert Camus. Considering the epistemological presence of complementarity, this dialogism embedded in the reasoning, it is intended to critically discuss the Algerian writer’s argument in order to elucidate how he contributes to the continuity of ecological studies of the media. It can be highlighted, therefore, that Camusian arguments account for the social and psychological repercussions provided by the insertion of the guillotine in French society; represented, in particular, by the promotion of the law of talion in the social fabric, encouraging the notion of justice to become synonymous with revenge and stimulating the awakening of sadism instilled in the hearts of beings. The invention that should symbolize the end of privileges, in fact, exempts the State from blame and centralizes all responsibility for social imbalance in a convict. After all, the legacy of the guillotine is the distortion of the notion of justice and the individualization of collective problems.