The Politics of the Ordinary: Boredom, Routine, and Power in Camus’s The Stranger

Abstract

This study reconceptualizes boredom in Albert Camus’s The Stranger as a mechanism of social governance rather than an existential void. Moving beyond traditional readings of absurdism and moral detachment, it argues that Meursault’s highly routinized existence reflects a form of political subjectivation shaped by regulated time, normalized behavior, and affective discipline. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power, Henri Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life, and Giorgio Agamben’s notion of bare life, the paper contends that the novel dramatizes how modern power operates not through overt coercion but through the subtle management of ordinary practices and emotional expectations. Meursault’s condemnation in the trial underscores a juridical logic that penalizes the refusal of socially mandated rhythms of feeling particularly grief and remorse more than the act of murder itself. Through this lens, The Stranger emerges not only as a literary exploration of alienation but as a critical examination of the politics embedded in the mundane, revealing how routine, habit, and boredom sustain structures of control and normalize compliant subjectivity within everyday life.