Camus' Stance On Algeria Still Stokes Debate In France
Camus' Stance On Algeria Still Stokes Debate In France
November 7, 20133:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Algeria-born Albert Camus poses for a portrait in Paris following the announcement that he is being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. Camus' views on his birthplace still stoke controversy.
AFP/Getty Images
A hundred years after his birth, French writer-philosopher Albert Camus is perhaps best-remembered for novels like The Stranger and The Plague, and for his philosophy of absurdism.
But it's another aspect of his intellectual body of work that's under scrutiny as France marks the Camus centennial: his views about his native Algeria.
Camus was born on Nov. 7, 1913, to a poor family that had settled generations earlier in French Algeria. His father died a year after his birth, and Camus' illiterate and deaf mother, who worked as a cleaning lady, raised him. His brilliance would deliver him from that world of poverty.
Enlarge this image
This photo from 1920 shows 7-year-old Albert Camus (center, wearing black suit) in the workshop of his Uncle Etienne in Algiers.
Apic/Getty Images
Camus is regarded as a giant of French literature. But according to Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer, it's Camus' North African birthplace that permeated his thoughts and shaped his writing.
"His two greatest novels, The Stranger and The Plague, were both set there, in Oran and Algiers. He wrote incredible lyrical essays about his life there," Hammer says. "So he's extraordinarily Algerian ... down to the core."
But Algeria has never reciprocated that love, says Hammer, who recently traced the writer's roots there. That's because Camus' French Algeria, much like apartheid South Africa, was divided into two worlds: an Arab world and the world of the pieds-noirs, or black feet, the name given to the million-plus Europeans who lived there.
"He represents an Algeria that essentially is banished from the map, an Algeria of the pieds-noirs. So this was the world that Camus knew. It was a very segregated society, he really didn't know the Arab world," Hammer says. "So that's what you saw reflected in his work."
During World War II, Camus joined the French Resistance against the Nazis and published an underground newspaper. It was his novel The Stranger, published in 1942, that brought him instant international acclaim. In 1947 came The Plague, a novel seen as a classic of existentialism.
In 1957, at the age of 43, Camus won the Nobel Prize for literature.
But it's Camus' politics, not his philosophy, that still makes waves in France. Though he hailed from the left, today he's embraced by conservatives. In the 1950s, Camus fell out with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the Paris left bank literary scene after he denounced communism.
Camus' stance on the Algerian war infuriated both the left and right at the time. He supported Arab aspirations for political rights, but he couldn't imagine an independent Algeria.
The topic remains sensitive in France, where 1 million pieds-noirs fled after the war ended in 1962. One Camus exhibit was canceled and two historians fired, reportedly to appease the sensitivities of the local pieds-noirs community.
Biographer Elizabeth Hawes says Camus was always more simple, seen from the U.S.
"Americans in general don't know anything about Algeria and they know very little about French intellectual politics. And so Camus was always just sort of a hero," Hawes says. "There was a lot of the mythic to Camus. He was great looking, and he was heroic, and there was the resistance, he was the outsider."
Camus' life was cut tragically short at the height of his career in a car accident in 1960. He was only 46. France is still grappling with his legacy.
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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
This broadcast radio interview/report is about 3:37 minutes long. Students listen to this radio clip while reading along in the transcript.
Camus' Stance On Algeria Still Stokes Debate In France
November 7, 20133:00 AM ET
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
The French writer-philosopher Albert Camus was born 100 years ago today. The Nobel Laureate is remembered for novels like "The Stranger" and "The Plague," and for his philosophy of absurdism. But as NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us, in this centennial year the French are focusing on Camus's often controversial views of his native Algeria.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Albert Camus was born in 1913 to a poor family that had settled generations earlier in French Algeria. His father died a year after his birth. Camus was raised by his illiterate and deaf mother, who worked as a cleaning lady. His brilliance would deliver him from that world of poverty. Camus is regarded as a giant of French literature. But according to Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer, it's Camus's North African birthplace that permeated his thoughts and shaped his writing.
JOSHUA HAMMER: His two greatest novels, "The Stranger" and "The Plague," were both set there, in Oran and Algiers. He wrote incredible lyrical essays about his life there. So he's extraordinarily Algerian, I mean down to the core.
BEARDSLEY: But Algeria has never reciprocated that love, says Hammer, who recently traced the writer's roots there. That's because Camus's French Algeria, much like apartheid South Africa, was divided into two worlds: an Arab world and the world of the pieds noirs, or black feet, the name given to the million-plus Europeans who lived there.
HAMMER: He represents an Algeria that essentially is banished from the map, an Algeria of the pieds noirs. So this was the world that Camus knew. It was a very segregated society, he really didn't know the Arab world, so that's what you saw reflected in his work.
BEARDSLEY: During World War II, Camus joined the French Resistance against the Nazis and published an underground newspaper. It was his novel "The Stranger," published in 1942, that brought him instant international acclaim. In 1947 came "The Plague," a novel seen as a classic of existentialism. In 1957, at the age of 43, Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
This French newsreel shows him accepting the award in Stockholm.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWSREEL)
BEARDSLEY: But it's Camus politics, not his philosophy, that still makes waves in France. Though he hailed from the left, today he's embraced by conservatives. In the 1950s, Camus fell out with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the Paris left bank literary scene after he denounced communism. Camus's stance on the Algerian war infuriated both the left and right at the time. He supported Arab aspirations for political rights, but he couldn't imagine an independent Algeria.
The topic remains sensitive in France, where a million pieds noirs fled after the war ended in 1962. One Camus exhibit was canceled and two historians fired, reportedly to appease the sensitivity of the local pieds noirs community. Biographer Elizabeth Hawes says Camus was always more simple, seen from the U.S.
ELIZABETH HAWES: Americans in general don't know anything about Algeria and they know very little about French intellectual politics. And so Camus was always just sort of a hero. You know, there was a lot of the mythic to Camus. He was great looking, and he was heroic, and the Resistance. He was the outsider.
BEARDSLEY: Camus's life was cut tragically short at the height of his career in a car accident in 1960. He was only 46 years old. France is still grappling with his legacy. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=243536815
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
VOCABULARY:
stance (n.) : position or view
French Algeria (French: Alger to 1839, then Algérie afterward; unofficially Algérie française, Arabic: الجزائر الفرنسية, Al-Jaza'ir al-Fransiyah) began in 1827 with the blockade of Algiers by the French navy and lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems.
blockade (v.) seal off (a place) to prevent goods or people from entering or leaving.
Pied-Noir (n.) (French pronunciation: [pjenwaʁ], Black-Foot), plural Pieds-Noirs, is a term referring to Christian and Jewish people whose families had migrated from all parts of the Mediterranean to French Algeria, This lasted from about 1956 to 1962.
absurdism (n.) [ab-sur-diz-uh m, zur-] the philosophical and literary doctrine that human beings live in essential isolation and in a meaningless and irrational world.
Smithsonian (n.) “Smithsonian Institute,” named for English scientist and philanthropist James Smithson (1765- 1829), who left a legacy to the U.S. government to found it.
apartheid South Africa (n.) (in the Republic of South Africa) a rigid former policy of segregatingand economically and politically oppressing the nonwhite population.
existentialism (n.) philosophy opposed to rationalism (reason), and empiricism (judging by our senses) that say the individual should take responsibility for his choices and does what he wants apart from outside influences.
hailed from the left came from a liberal political view or position
all definitions taken from <dictionary.com>
Activity for Annotated Bib Practice and Camus’ The Stranger
Context: You are in college writing an argumentative paper which has as its controversial topic:
“Was Albert Camus a Racist?”
Your professor says you need to have 2 sources: one a web article, and one a radio transcript of a broadcast published interview.
You have found this transcript of a morning radio show called “Morning Edition” on NPR 94.1 radio. It is a broadcast published report. Eleanor Beardsley and Renee Montagne conducted the radio program with info from contributors Elizabeth Hawes and Joshua Hammer. Beardsley also wrote the article above on pages 1-3, which was adapted from the interview.
Your professor tells you that both the article and the radio interview must be annotated in MLA style, and you must write 2 paragraphs about each one.
Directions: In your spiral-bound notebook, using the guidelines above and below, write annotated entry for the radio interview.
Basic Style for Citations of Electronic Sources (Including Online Databases) Author. Title. Title of container (self contained if book), Other contributors (translators or editors), Version (edition), Number (vol. and/or no.), Publisher, Publication Date, Location (pages, paragraphs and/or URL, DOI or permalink). 2nd container’s title, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location, Date of Access (if applicable).
Published Interviews (Print or Broadcast)
List the interview by the full name of the interviewee. If the name of the interview is part of a larger work like a book, a television program, or a film series, place the title of the interview in quotation marks. Place the title of the larger work in italics. If the interview appears as an independent title, italicize it. For books, include the author or editor name after the book title.
Note: If the interview from which you quote does not feature a title, add the descriptor, Interview by (unformatted) after the interviewee’s name and before the interviewer’s name.
Gaitskill, Mary. Interview with Charles Bock. Mississippi Review, vol. 27, no. 3, 1999, pp. 129-50.
Amis, Kingsley. “Mimic and Moralist.” Interviews with Britain’s Angry Young Men, By Dale Salwak, Borgo P, 1984.
Lesson Plan For Senior CP English 9/29/17
TODAY’S GOAL: By the end of the period, students will have written one annotated bibliography entry using an NPR radio show transcript “pretending” they are writing a research paper on the racism of Albert Camus. It will look like this:
Beardsley, Eleanor. “Camus’ Stance on Algeria Still Stokes Debate in France”. NPR “Morning Edition”. Renee Montagne, Josh Hammer, and Elizabeth Hawes. 2013. www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=243536815. Accessed 29 Sept 2017.
This article was written by Eleanor Beardsley, who is a journalist reporter for the radio show NPR (National Public Radio). Her bio tells us that she has covered the Arab Spring in Tunisia and has done extensive work in Northern Africa, and covered the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels in recent years. She is highly qualified to write this article because she also writes about issues in France and has been a journalist for many years.
I can use this article in my research paper because it directly addresses the racism of French people against Arab culture in Algeria during Camus’ time. He also knew very little of Arab (Muslim) culture, even though he was a French Algerian, born and bred. I can also use it because this journalist interviewed experts that research Camus’ views and they are reliable sources.
- Materials Check: on the tables
- Camus article
- transcript of radio show
- class notebook, pen, 3 colors of highlighters.
- Notebook is opened to your Works Cited tab.
- “How Annotated Bibs Work” (annotated bib formatting from Owl Purdue MLA Writing Lab )
- student example of how a finished annotated bib should look
- Eleanor Beardsley bio sheet
- vocab sheet
- Review the why:
- to reinforce our knowledge and understanding of the life of Albert Camus, the author of our novel, The Stranger
- to learn how to write an annotated bibliography of these 2 sources.
- Frontload vocabulary (10 mins): Students take it in turns to read-aloud the word, then the definition of each of our vocab words which appear in the articles we are about to read and listen to.
- Personal Quiet Reading (7-10 mins): Look at the pictures, take 7 minutes to silently read over the article and picture captions (pp. 1-3)
- Listen to the NPR radio piece while reading along in the transcript (pp. 4-5)
This is about 3:37 mins long.
- Look at the student example, noting the 3 main components of an entry. Students take turns reading aloud Emilie’s paragraphs. (10 mins)
- (highlight this) citation line
- (highlight this) paragraph 1, which should include:
- author’s name,
- her education and background
- how she is qualified to be an expert on this subject
III. (highlight this) paragraph 2, which should include:
- subject of the article
- ways I can use this to either support or refute my argument
- Now look at the “How Annotated Bibs Work”. Each student takes one of these pieces of information and shares with the group:
- author
- title of source
- title of container
- other contributors to the source
- Publisher
- Publication date
- Date of Access
- Assignment Directions:
- Your Goal: Write one practice citation entry in your class notebook using the Camus materials.
- It will probably take you 30+ minutes.
- If you’d like to do it in pencil, that’s fine, because you’ll want to make corrections.
- Use the info from your handout.
- Work with your table partners.
- Each student takes a piece of information, looks it up and shares with the group.
- Each student still must write their own in their notebook.
- I’ll come around helping, supporting and suggesting.
- OTHER INFORMATION YOU’LL NEED:
(don’t put in the http://)
- The argument for your pretend research paper is:
“The Argument in Favor of Camus’ Racist
Stance Against the Algerian Arab”
- Mrs. P’s thoughts: This article/report is essentially factual, but it does raise the question of debate around Camus’ view of race. He was a white French/Algerian man, born and raised in an Islamic country, yet he was considered a “black-foot” a “pieds-noir” which meant he was not Islamic, nor was he Arab (of Middle-Eastern descent)..
“He supported Arab aspirations for political rights, but he couldn't
imagine an independent Algeria”
This probably means that he couldn’t see France taking its hands off Algeria as a colony, leaving Arab people under a European country’s rule.
Eleanor Beardsley
Correspondent, Paris
Eleanor Beardsley began reporting from France for NPR in June 2004 as a freelance journalist, following all aspects of French society, politics, economics, culture, and gastronomy. Since then, she has steadily worked her way to becoming an integral part of the NPR Europe reporting team.
Beardsley has been an active part of NPR's coverage of the two waves of terrorist attacks in Paris and in Brussels. She has also followed the migrant crisis, traveling to meet and report on arriving refugees in Hungary, Austria, Germany, Sweden, and France. She has also travelled to Ukraine, including the flashpoint eastern city of Donetsk, to report on the war there, and to Athens, to follow the Greek debt crisis.
In 2011 Beardsley covered the first Arab Spring revolution in Tunisia, where she witnessed the overthrow of the autocratic President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Since then she has returned to the North African country many times to follow its progress on the road to democracy.
In France, Beardsley covered both 2007 and 2012 French presidential elections. She also reported on the riots in French suburbs in 2005 and the massive student demonstrations in 2006. Beardsley has followed the Tour de France cycling race and been back to her old stomping ground — Kosovo — to report for NPR on three separate occasions.
Prior to moving to Paris, Beardsley worked for three years with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. She also worked as a television producer for French broadcaster TF1 in Washington, DC and as a staff assistant to Senator Strom Thurmond.
Reporting from France for Beardsley is the fulfillment of a lifelong passion for the French language and culture. At the age of 10 she began learning French by reading the Asterix The Gaul comic book series with her father.
While she came to the field of radio journalism relatively late in her career, Beardsley says her varied background, studies, and travels prepared her for the job as well as any journalism school. "I love reporting on the French because there are so many stereotypes about them that exist in America," she says. "Sometimes it's fun to dispel the false notions and show a different side of the Gallic character. And sometimes the old stereotypes do hold up. But whether Americans love or hate France and the French, they're always interested!"
A native of South Carolina, Beardsley has a Bachelor of Arts in European history and French from Furman University in Greenville, S.C., and a master's degree in International Business from the University of South Carolina.
Beardsley is interested in politics, travel, and observing foreign cultures. Her favorite cities are Paris and Istanbul. www.npr.org/people/17796129/eleanor-beardsley
