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KEYWORDS: Albert Camus, Edward W. Said, The Stranger, "The Silent Men," Algerian Civil War, Muslims in literature, Arabs in literature, pieds-noirs
ABSTRACT: Contrary to the interpretations of Edward Said and other influential critics, this essay argues that Albert Camus, in his great novel L'Étranger, numerous journalistic essays over two decades, and an often overlooked short story, "Les Muets" (The Silent Men), sympathized with Arab grievances. He favored reconciliation based on equality and reciprocity between Algerian Muslims (predominantly Arabs but including a Kabylian Berber minority, whose suffering he described with great pathos) and pieds-noirs (European colonists).
MANY STUDIES OF ALBERT Camus's famous novel The Stranger regard the book and its author as hostile to Algeria's Arab inhabitants. They stigmatize Camus as racially prejudiced and charge that he perceived the Arabs as mere objects for brutal exploitation by the imperialist French colons (O'Brien, Grégoire). A work of Algerian history briefly summarizes this view: "In his fiction, most famously in his 1942 novel The Outsider [title of the British translation of L'Etranger], the natives tended to be treated in generic terms and were always prone to violence and irrationality" (Evans and Phillips 40-41). The authors of this depreciatory generalization, overlooking the basic fact that the European piednoir Meursault and his friend Raymond initiate the acts of violence in L'Etranger, fail to support it with references to L'Etranger or other works. In contrast to such interpretations, this essay argues that in L'Étranger and the short story "Les Muets," Camus cautiously expounded the view that European colonists (in Algeria, denominated pieds-noirs or colons) and Arab masses could live together and unite to resist upper-class Continental rulers who, directly or indirectly, oppressed them.
Whatever their view of Camus's political attitudes toward Algeria, even his harshest critics do not dispute his love for the sun and sea of his native land. Camus often noted his attachment to Algeria (see, for example, Vircondelet, Vulor). He said he felt closer to it than to France or Europe more generally, which he regarded as "other." "Je n'ai jamais rien écrit qui ne se rattache, de près ou de loin, à la terre où je suis né. C'est à elle, et à son malheur, que vont toutes mes pensées" (Essais 1892, qtd. in Yedes, "Identités...