Said on Camus. posted by Richard Seymour

In Blaming the Victims, Edward Said takes issue with Michael Walzer's facile waffling on 'just wars' and Israel-Palestine. In particular, he upbraids Walzer for recuperating Camus on the Algerian question - the Camus who chose his mother over 'terrorism', who could not support the FLN's struggle for independence and who could never wholeheartedly condemn French colonialism. Camus is celebrated for supporting 'people' rather than a 'cause' which turns out to be 'absolutist politics'.

In a series of interviews, published as Power, Politics & Culture, Said returns to the question of Camus:

I attack Walzer on this point about intimacy and belonging because of where he got it from. He got it from the Algerian connection. It was an attempt to revalorize, as he said, Camus's choice of his mother over "terrorism". What I found wrong with this - as most of the time when justifications for morally fallible and hypocritical choices are advanced - is that there's a factual inaccuracy at the base of it (you will note that I have no trouble talking about the factual). He was making it seem as if all his life, Camus considered himself an Algerian and supported the demands of Algerian independence, and it was only when he was asked to choose between the terrorism of the FLN and his mother's life, that in the end he chose the community of the pied noirs. That's a factual lie. I've studied it - the whole case of Algeria is a very interesting one - and it's true that in his early writings on Algeria Camus condemned French colonialism. But he condemned colonialism the same way Conrad condemned colonialism in Africa. Conrad condemned the abuses of the Belgians, and he condemned a little bit of the excesses and pretensions of the English, but he saw no alternative to colonialism. He said that this is the fate of this continent and this people, to be colonised by - I'm putting it crudely - their betters. And in fact when it came to writing about the existence of an Algerian nation that should not be colonized by France, of an Algerian-Muslim people, Camus always denied its existence, in exactly the way in fact Walzer and his cohorts have denied the existence of a Palestinian nation. Camus is explicit on this point. If you look at his Chroniques Algériennes, he says, "Il n'y a pas de nation algérienne. Ça n'existe pas." Which is to say that this entire nation, which has been "underdeveloped", to say the least, milked, abused, exploited by France for 130 years, didn't constitute a nation in the eyes of this Frenchman of Algiers. And therefore he chose his mother. All of this background Walzer removes from the account. So to say it's a matter of belonging is simply to overlook what kind of belonging it is. There's belonging and then there's belonging. One can certainly belong to communities in ways that don't always involve rapacity, exploitation, and the denial of equal rights to other communities.

I thought this was very interesting point, not just for what it says about Camus, but for what it says about attitudes to anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggles in general. There is a peculiar kind of Western hypocrisy in which no one wants to be an imperialist - heaven forfend! - but even many who oppose it would rather see hundreds of thousands of the victims of imperialism killed than support them doing anything about it. It is the politics of no-fault, no-guilt rebellion. One opposes the bad guys on all sides and hopes for some good guys (who? The UN? Don't make me giggle and fall off my fucking stool!) to take care of things.

Given that France & the US are now embroiled in a bloody colonial exercise in Haiti under the rubric of the UN, we are about to see a repeat of the Iraqi 'dilemma'. Reports today suggest that Haiti is sliding into chaos , because the removal of the elected President in a US-sponsored coup , and the jailing of elected officials including the legal Prime Minister has left the death squad merchants, genocidaires, sweat-shop bosses and drug-runners free to slaughter Aristide's supporters. The UN has temporarily extended the mandate for the 7,400 troops and police under its command, and doubtless the argument for maintaining the troop presence will involve reference to the chaos that the troops have already unleashed. Such is the position of the International Crisis Group, who call for the UN to assume executive powers of law in the occupied country.

Suppose a mass revolt began against this reign of terror. How many pale liberals would be busily washing their hands, urging the UN or the 'international community' (ha!) to do something, to calm the situation down? Who would even have the chutzpah to point out that the 'international community' brought this about? Colonialism, it seems, did not end - it just took a respite.