Description
Albert Camus – a Nobel Laureate of Literature and doyen of mid-twentieth century existentialism – is associated with a contradiction. On the one hand, he is known for his involvement in and support of the French resistance, on the other, his reticence to support the Algerian War of Independence. Reading Camus’ Notebooks, correspondence and journalism alongside his self-styled literary cycles that centre on the figures of Sisyphus, Prometheus and Nemesis, this chapter considers how Camus’ stance on rebellion and revolution is the product of his thought on love. In situating Camus’ work in a pied noir (French Algerian) literary tradition and its imagining of a Mediterranean utopia, the chapter suggests that his project offered Hellenism as a riposte to Christianity, a secular rendering of his fellow North-African, Saint Augustine’s thought. While normative evocations and postcolonial critiques of Camus abound, few use love as a lens to interrogate their encounter. Offering a contextualised reading of Camus’ secular revision of Augustine on the subject of love and war, this chapter explores how love and utopia are implicated in the sanction of forms of political killing in general, and unconventional warfare in particular. In the process, it considers how Camus’ work on love contributes to the burgeoning literature on political violence and utopia and their implications for the study of just war and necropolitics.
