A Professional Conscience: On an Episode of Self-Accusation in Raymond Queneau's The Last Days

A course of action plays out in the margins of Raymond Queneau’s early novel that provides an object lesson in the peculiar phenomenon of self-accusation. The character assigned this unfortunate fate seems intent on pulling at the thread that will make him unravel, for reasons no one else can understand, driven by a conscience that will never be satisfied with the sacrifices made to appease it. The contradictions and tensions characteristic of the process of self-accusation will be approached here with Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment in mind, that form of existence which shows remarkable inventiveness in the pursuit of its own abasement.