LITERATURE AND ETHICS: HISTORY, MEMORY, AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN ALBERT CAMUS’xxS LE PREMIER HOMME

OpenAlex İngilizce

This article discusses Albert Camus's controversial engagement in the debate on Algeria, examining his late literary works in the light of his political views on the Algerian war. The unfinished novel Le Premier Homme in particular, it is suggested, served Camus as a literary vehicle for articulating his political argument for diversity, solidarity, and openness. Against the emphasis on history and historical action, espoused among others by Sartre and leading, as Camus insisted, to a perpetuation of violence, Le Premier Homme attempts to conceive an ethically receptive notion of Algerian identity outside the traditional evocation of the collective history of a uniform ethnic group.