Myth and Power Structures in Sartre's Les Mouches and La Putain respectueuse

Martha Evans Smith, California State University Long Beach

Abstract

In her paper "Myth and Power Structures in Sartre's Les Mouches and La Putain respectueuse," Martha Evans Smith analyses Sartre's plays with regard to the relationship of the individual with the collective, the purportedly self-determinate part of an apparently universalizing whole. Seeming to illustrate an enactment of freedom and an absence thereof, the disparate outcomes of the hierarchies in the plays impose a success/failure paradigm on the concomitant reading of the two plays. Evans Smith argues that these issues in the plays read with regard to structures of classical mythology and racism in the US-American South demonstrate the close relationship of discourse to dominance in the subjectification of the individual. In Evans Smith's analysis, Sartre's texts demonstrate the nature of tyranny, the personal independence that challenges it, and the opportunity for regime change as a result of rebellion.

Recommended Citation

Evans Smith, Martha. "Myth and Power Structures in Sartre's Les Mouches and La Putain respectueuse." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 10.3 (2008): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol10/iss3/8

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