CAMUS, ÉCRITURE BLANCHE AND THE READER, BETWEEN SAID AND BARTHES

Nottingham French Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 55-66

  Harrison, Nicholas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 79954836911     PISSN: 00294586     EISSN: 20477236     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3366/nfs.1999.006     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. In addition to Said's work see, for instance, Bouguerra, Djemai', Dunwoodie, Erickson, Hughes, King, O'Brien, and Smets.
2. 'Arabs' are constructed in the book as a somewhat threatening presence, as unpredictable and inscrutable. This starts when Raymond tells Meursault that he has been followed all day by 'un groupe d'Arabes' (p. 67), and Meursault in turn describes them to Marie as 'des Arabes qui en voulaient à Raymond' (p. 79). The fact that the Arabs - or at least some of the Arabs - carry a knife reinforces Meursault's and our perception of potential violence, and perhaps connotes primitiveness and treachery.
3. The 'Arabs' are almost completely unindividuated. Despite being told that Raymond's mistress's name indicates to Meursault that she is 'mauresque', for instance, we are never told her name; and with regard to the group of Arab men we are told only that one is her brother. Nor is he named in the course of the trial: and there are, of course, no Arab witnesses.
4. Some of Barthes's work, notably in Mythologies, does engage with the issue of colonialism. For an extended and subtle treatment of Barthes's relationship with French colonialism, see Knight.
5. Said is similarly equivocal about whether or not he is criticizing Camus as an individual (or, to put it another way, whether he uses 'Camus' to mean a person or a body of work). He criticizes O'Brien for letting Camus 'off the hook' (p. 209), for instance, but states later that his intention is not to 'blame' Camus (p. 212).
6. The Collins dictionary defines a sociopath as 'a person afflicted with a personality disorder characterized by a tendency to commit antisocial and sometimes violent acts and a failure to feel guilt for such acts'. Evidence that this is not a bad description of Meursault is sufficiently apparent that it seems unnecessary to cite it here. Various counterexamples indicate, however, that he is more fully 'socialized' and less exceptional than is generally acknowledged - partly because he shows some sympathetic (and ordinary) characteristics, partly because others too can be insensitive, and partly because, as O'Brien points out, he is, like anyone else, capable of lying. At the very start, for instance, the reader's impression of brutality comes partly from the telegram ('Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués') rather than from Meursault; and when he arrives in Marengo, he wants to see his mother immediately but is forced to meet the director by the concierge ('J'ai voulu voir maman tout de suite. Mais le concierge m'a dit qu'il fallait que je rencontre le directeur' (p. 11)). Similarly, his boss seems to resent the fact that he is taking time off work, though Meursault notes that this could scarcely be refused given that he has 'une excuse pareille'; and when he is in prison and the topic of his mother is brought up by the lawyer, he remarks: 'Il m'a demandé si j'avais eu de la peine ce jour-là. Cette question m'a beaucoup étonné et il me semblait que j'aurais été très gêné si j'avais eu à la poser.' (pp. 101-02). Despite this he also notes that he would like to have the lawyer's sympathie, 'non pour être mieux défendu, mais, si je puis dire, naturellement' (p. 103). Further examples can be found.
7. Comparably, Meursault's conversation with the concierge is reported as follows: 'Il avait soixante-quatre ans et il était parisien. A ce moment je l'ai interrompu: "Ah! vous n'êtes pas d'ici?'" (p. 15)
8. Mme Masson is marked out as 'La petite Parisienne' (p. 85).
9. These issues of allegiance and identification are also doubtless in play when Meursault is struck by the idea that he is being killed 'au nom du peuple français', and perceives it to be arbitrary that the sentence is ascribed to 'une notion aussi imprécise'que le peuple français' (p. 167).
10. The surnames of various characters in L'Etranger - Pérez, Salamano, Marie Cardona - serve as a reminder that a large section of Algeria's European population was not of French origin. I am indebted to Eddie Hughes for pointing this out, and for other helpful comments on a draft of this essay.
11. Conversely, his mother remarks at one point: 'Les Français sont bien braves' (p. 73). For Henri (Jacques's father, who went off to fight for France in the First World War and was killed there), France was, Jacques notes, 'une terre inconnue' (p. 31)
12. Henri's widow (Jacques's mother) has never been there and has never seen her husband's grave. The war meant nothing to her: as Jacques explains in a remark that builds to a somewhat exaggerated climax, 'elle n'avait jamais entendu parler de l'Autriche-Hongrie ni de la Serbie, la Russie était comme l'Angleterre un nom difficile, elle ignorait ce qu'était un archiduc et elle n'aurait jamais pu former les quatre syllabes de Sarajevo' (pp. 68-69).
13. Similarly, there is a passage (pp. 136-37) where Jacques discusses the exotic, almost mythical quality of the stories in his schoolbooks about children wearing woolly scarves and carrying firewood in the snow.
14. See Dunwoodie, Chapter 5 on 'The Mediterranean of the Ecole d'Alger'.
15. Clearly the solidarity between Meursault and Raymond could be analysed as a matter both of 'race' and of gender.
16. English usage pushes the confusion still further, permitting reference both to Othello and to Muslims in India as 'moors'.
17. Stéphane Gsell, quoted by Servier (p. 13). Naturally I run into similar descriptive problems throughout this essay; the reference of terms such as 'native Algerians' and 'White' is no more stable or satisfactory, but I have tried to avoid an undue proliferation of inverted commas.
18. In the second paragraph Meursault tells us 'Je prendrai l'autobus à deux heures' (p. 9); in the third, 'J'ai pris l'autobus à deux heures' (p. 10).
19. He stays in the perfect tense (and on the same time plane, so to speak) for the rest of the first chapter. Chapter 2 begins in the same tense, and from 'today' again: 'J'ai eu de la peine à me lever parce que j'étais fatigué de ma journée d'hier' (p. 33).
20. The narrative then moves on to the next day; we are told that he and Marie spent the night together. Chapter 3 begins: 'Aujourd'hui j'ai beaucoup travaillé au bureau' (p. 43)
21. Chapter 4, introducing a slightly greater temporal distance, starts: 'J'ai bien travaillé toute la semaine' (p. 57), a distance reduced in later references to 'hier' and 'Ce matin' (p. 58).
22. There are numerous other examples: Chapter 2 of Part 11 begins, for instance: 'Il y a des choses dont je n'ai jamais aimé parler. Quand je suis entré en prison, j'ai compris au bout de quelques jours que je n'aimerais pas parler de cette partie de ma vie. Plus tard, je n'ai plus trouvé d'importance à ces répugnances' (p. 113). Shortly afterwards, after hearing of Marie's visit, we read: 'C'est peu après qu'elle m'a écrit. Et c'est à partir de ce moment qu'ont commencé les choses dont je n'ai jamais aimé parler' (p. 119). This somewhat different use of the compound tense again suggests that the past is being viewed from a more distant, continuing present, with the benefit of sense-making hindsight.
23. See also Abbou and Pariente.
24. Meursault's account of the mesmerizing effects of the weather - one of the characteristics of the narrative that particularize its North African setting - creates similar problems of'recuperation': if it were truly an immediate influence which completely removed his responsibility as an agent, he could have no sense that it was an influence, and could not narrate it as such.
25. There is a comparable moment when Meursault is invited to admire the defence's performance. Meursault notes 'J'ai entendu: "Magnifique, mon cher." L'un d'eux [the lawyer's colleagues] m'a même pris à témoin: "Hein?" m'a-t-il dit.' There is evident irony in the fact that Meursault is treated not only as a third party, but that he is turned into a 'witness' in the context of his own trial.
26. These readings themselves open the text to the criticism that it is unrealistic: as Conor Cruise O'Brien pointed out as long ago as 1970, it is highly implausible that the defence does not play on the settlers' fear of 'the Arab', and that Meursault is condemned. In O'Brien's words, 'What appears to the reader as a contemptuous attack on the court is not in fact an attack at all: on the contrary, by suggesting that the court is impartial between Arab and Frenchman, it implicitly denies the colonial reality and sustains the colonial fiction' (pp. 22-23).
27. For a discussion of this matter in relation to Barthes's reading of Sade, see Harrison; and in relation to film, see Bordwell.