It is at a time when the links between decolonial and deconstruction theories and the justification of Islamist terrorism are prodigiously bursting forth that we see the publication of an essay aimed at "deconstructing Camus". Olivier Gloag's work, Forget Camus is presented as follows on the reseller's website:
Oliver Gloag recalls visceral attachment – tinged with humanism – from Camus to colonialism and the settler way of life, which runs through his three major works: The Stranger, The Plague, The First Man.
https://www.babelio.com/livres/Gloag-Oublier-Camus/1509872
The re-enactment of the debate between Sartre, the preface writer of Fanon, and Camus at a time when the FLN claimed to be part of the resistance at a time when Palestinian terrorism claims to be part of the same heroic ideology in the same terms as those used by the militants of the 60s must draw our attention. To justify its most barbaric acts, the bellicose rhetoric of the theorists of the Palestinian Resistance will necessarily have to reactivate that of the FIS suitcase carriers, and this involves denigrating Camus.
Now, by coincidence, it is precisely at the moment when American exegesis calls for "putting an end to Camus" that we see the re-emergence on the left of the theorists of "the end justifies the means."
"Visceral attachment tinged with humanism" is a most perfidious expression, when speaking of Camus, aimed at belittling all of Camus's thinking: he would therefore be a "biological" man, incapable of dominating his emotions ("visceral") whose only philosophical thought ("humanism") would only be a pretext to camouflage his inability to think ("tinted"). And what courage to attack Camus 50 years after his car accident in Luzarches...
In short, we see here that far from trying to "forget Camus", Gloag's book seeks rather to "destroy" Camus as one would destroy the foundations of a base of resistance against the invasion of the world by the aspiration to war.
It's just that Camus is a bit of a thorn in the side of all the belligerents... He's someone who stands there like a rock in world literature because he was able to say once and for all that nothing, ever: nothing could justify murder. Not even the fight against the colonizer.
He recalls, in an era that wants to legitimize politics through science, that there will always be an incommensurable world between words and actions, between justice and vengeance. Wanting politics, which is a matter of opinion, to become a matter for philosophers: this is to renounce wisdom and to bring the world into a chaos from which nothing can emerge.
To forget Camus is to forget a certain popular wisdom that did not confuse justice and vengeance. Thus he wrote:
When the oppressed take up arms in the name of justice, they take a step onto the land of injustice.
Albert CAMUS (1913-1960), “The reasons of the adversary”, L'Express, October 28, 1955
Forget Camus? Prefer Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir? Kill Camus, again, to have the right to kill? This is a war issue that is certainly gaining a foothold in the rhetoric of contemporary intellectuals and spreading through the media. [1] and this propaganda is not an anecdote, far from it. It confirms what we already knew, namely that the war we are witnessing has been prepared on the benches of the university for thirty years; it has its theoreticians, its allies; it shapes the minds of the young generations to prepare them – by “forgetting” the past – to accept a sordid future by taking a step on the land of injustice.
This ideology of deconstruction, which was born with the worst of Monsters: Heidegger, is a deadly ideology that loves in man only his capacity to destroy. Camus prefers life, perhaps because it symbolizes hope. Many are those who have taken the side of death: the humanists, for their part, will continue to believe in man. So, no: we will not forget Camus!
