Albert Camus: le souci des autres by Ève Morisi (review)

This mercifully brief addition to the plethora of publications coinciding with the centenary of Camus’s birth is partly based on two previous studies by Ève Morisi. Distinguishing Camus’s souci from Foucault’s and from Heidegger’s Sorge, Morisi argues that for Camus ‘[le souci des autres] est, d’une part, inquiétude, anxiété, trouble, et, de l’autre, attention, sollicitude, soin’ (p. 35). The body of the text is divided into four chapters, ‘Les Miséreux’, ‘Les Condamnés’, ‘Les Frères ennemis’, and ‘Les Taiseux’. In ‘Les Miséreux’, focusing on Misère de la Kabylie, Morisi rejects the characterization of Camus as a colonisateur de bonne volonté. She argues that, although he did not question the French conquest of Algeria or escape from essentialist and paternalistic discourse, he defended ‘active’ assimilation (in other words, the extension of civil rights to indigenous Algerians). Claiming that Camus did not support French ‘domination’ (p. 58), she concludes that Misère is anti-colonialist — a claim that clearly depends on how one defines the terms in question. ‘Les Condamnés’ examines Camus’s opposition to capital punishment, frequently referring to Morisi’s earlier collection of his writings on the subject, Albert Camus contre la peine de mort (Paris: Gallimard, 2011; see French Studies, 66 (2012), 576–77). Skipping over the details of Camus’s disillusionment with the épuration, Morisi does not mention his earlier support for the execution of the former Vichy Interior Minister Pierre Pucheu, the first leading collaborationist to be executed under de Gaulle’s jurisdiction. She does, however, include some less familiar material, quoting a letter by Camus that prefigures his controversial declaration about defending his mother before justice, and an outspoken comment on the Arab colonization of Algeria by the Berber writer Kateb Yacine (p. 92 note 2). ‘Les Frères ennemis’ discusses the Cain and Abel theme in Camus’s work, exemplified by the relationship between Meursault and the ‘Arab’ in L’Étranger. Uncontroversially, Morisi sees Camus as presenting the Algerian soil as both the origin of the conflict between Europeans and indigenous Algerians, and what unites them. Unfortunately, in taking issue with postcolonial interpretations of L’Hôte, she also feels the need to retell the story. ‘Les Taiseux’ focuses on ‘Les Muets’ but brings in additional autobiographical elements from L’Envers et l’endroit, Le Premier Homme, and other writings. Morisi refers to a number of thinkers in the course of her study, from Agamben to Rancière and Todorov, but gives only one mention to Levinas (also absent from the bibliography). Perhaps the most damaging omissions, however, are the lack of any reference either to Colin Davis’s searching studies of Camusian ethics in relation to the Other, or to Camus’s 1958 preface to L’Envers et l’endroit (1937), in which he made the astonishing admission that since writing the work he had learnt less about what he called ‘les êtres’ than about himself, although he had at least learnt that they existed. Overall, Morisi’s book offers some balanced judgements, but too often tends to quote at length (one quotation runs to nearly two pages) with little or no comment or analysis.