La mer et le soleil [Ressource électronique] : réflexions sur les tropes et la politique chez Albert Camus et Assia Djebar / Laura C. Klein-Topan

Ph. D. : French : Irvine, University of California : 2011

Bibliogr. p. 98-116

This study examines how the sun and the sea in the works of Albert Camus articulate spaces that are both fictional and political. The analysis places the production of the Algerian and Mediterranean space in the larger frame of postcolonial debates. Chapter one, "La Mer et le soleil- le devenir d'un paysage" demonstrates how the productions of Mediterranean and Algerian landscapes in the earlier texts of Camus acquire different political values and thus lead to questions that will be crucial in the critical reception of Camus after the Algerian independence. The second chapter "Le Premier homme- fiction et la question du transnational chez Albert Camus" turns away from the early texts in order to address the postcolonial questions. I show that the Algerian space invoked both in Le Premier homme and in some articles of Chroniques algériennes confronts the postcolonial accusations of critics who saw in Camus' attempt to fictionalize Algeria a reflex of the European colonial desire to possess the Algerian territory. Here I argue that a conception of "l'Algérie de la justice" in the political writings and of an imaginary Algeria in the autobiographical novel, complicates the conventional debates about Camus' colonialism in that they contain features of hybridity and transnational elements. The final chapter "Assia Djebar: lectrice d'Albert Camus" turns to a new type of postcolonial reception that we can find in contemporary Algerian writers like Assia Djebar. In order to acquire a better understanding of the Algerian contemporary period marked by violence and oppression Djebar examines Camus's literary work and his humanitarian activities during the war of independence. Such a generation of new readers thus proposes a new postcolonial approach that tends to rehabilitate Camus.