“Réflexions sur la générosité”: un article peu connu d’Albert Camus

Abstract

This article republishes, with a critical introduction and notes, an important and previously uncollected article which Camus published in a Muslim-Algerian newspaper in 1939. In it, Camus attacked the colonial establishment for denying Muslims equal rights while expecting them to die for France. The article is placed in its historical, political and intertextual context, showing that Camus’s views were closely aligned with those of the moderate Algerian leader Ferhat Abbas (the newspaper’s editor), and that he was firmly committed to France’s ‘civilizing mission’ in Algeria. For Camus, however, this entailed treating Muslims as French citizens and not as colonial subjects.

[Erratum: for ‘Musulmane’ (pp. 10-11), read ‘Antar’.]

[NB: Together with a footnote referring to this article, Camus’s article is now included in Vol. IV of the new Pléiade edition of his Œuvres complètes, ed. Raymond Gay-Crosier et al. (Gallimard, 2008), pp. 1320-2.]