Abstract

This philosophical survey of literature introduces a spectral reading of Albert Camus’ multi-layered text The Fall. Readings on the spectral usually embark on the elements that haunt the subjectivity of the narrator, Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Within the affluence of potential meanings and allusions in the text, I focus on two places—Paris and Amsterdam—that have become “possessed,” or more specifically, places that have become “spaces of the spectral.” Amid the text’s enigmatic character, a spectral reading highlights the particular uncanny turn that disturbs in the plot. I argue that the mentions of Paris and Amsterdam in the text function within the ambit of the spectral. Reviewing the models for spectral readings of place, I make use of Giorgio Agamben’s lens of spectrality. For Agamben, there breed two types of spectrality in a place, namely, ‘Final’ and ‘Larval.’ Putting this perspective on the position of Clamence, this reading respectively exposes Paris as having final spectrality and Amsterdam as having larval spectrality.