To Be Greeted with Cries of Hate: Albert Camus and the Tragic Impossibility of the Algerian Question*

*Deans' Distinguished Essay Winner

Abstract

The influential writer Albert Camus was born in French Algeria and maintained a close and controversial relationship with the territory throughout his life.  Camus's political writings, often more obscure in popular imagination than his novels, sparked controversy in his time and beyond.  As such, these writings have motivated intense scholarly debate over the morality and feasibility of the author's positions.  Particularly, his simultaneous disavowal of colonial injustice by rejection of Algerian independence alienated him from the contemporary French Left, Algerian nationalists, and "patriotic" Frenchmen.  By framing Camus's positions through a lens of passive colonial collaboration and subconscious bias, the seeming contradictions between the author's moral humanism and practical forbearance of French colonial occupation can be better understood.  Tortured by conflict in his homeland, Camus maintained, "Algeria is where I hurt at this moment, as others feel pain in their lungs" with complete sincerity.  His situation as a pied noir, or French settler in Algeria, added a layer of tragic impossibility to any position endorsing the expulsion of French settlers, but his conscience impelled him to reject, too, the brutality and systemic oppression of French authorities.  This paper will show these feelings were a contraction the author could never full resolve and that still haunts his legacy today.