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Comment by zvmaz | Hacker News Reader

The Algerian writer Kateb Yacine had interesting things to say about Camus [1]. As he says, it is true that in his novels, Algerians are almost non-existent, although the novels happen in colonial Algeria and he himself lived amongst them. Another brilliant Algerian writer, Mouloud Mammeri, had similar things to say about Camus [2]... These then colonized writers had different perspectives on Camus' outlook.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WBHq-m5WHQ

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P1eA8NeUKU

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> As he says, it is true that in his novels, Algerians are almost non-existent, although the novels happen in colonial Algeria and he himself lived amongst them

The term "Algerian" itself would need to be defined. Camus was born in Algeria, he would have called himself Algerian, just like someone born in Corsica would call themselves Corsican.

What is certainly true is that the society (like many colonial administrations) was racist and highly stratified. the pieds-noirs (descendants of immigrants from western europe) were "below" the french expats/public servants and their families (but could get a leg up from the former, as did Camus), but "above" the arab community (who themselves would look down on the kabyle, who themselves were above the other berberes etc..)

It is important to highlight that there were other minorities in Algeria like the jews [1] that adds more pictures to that society structure and colonialism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Algeria...

Algeria was a part of France. He was a French writer, writing about French culture.

But Camus was a big witness of the misery in Kabyle region where he intelligently and objectively reported about the difficulties of the population.

It's somewhat ironic that both interviewers are critiquing Camus as ~ colonial-washing Algeria -- in French.

What's the point in bringing up Camus stating he would save his mother over Algeria as something telling about his work?

When I read l'etranger I found the emptiness of the world lead me into feeling the absurdity as an emotion versus a thought experiment.

Algeria has a lot of identity issues, the intelligentsia almost exclusively communicate in french, while the lower classes speak a mutant hybrid of Arabic-French-English (the English is mostly present with zoomers due to internet exposure)

"the lower classes speak a mutant hybrid of Arabic-French-English"

Very interesting, since English is a sort of mutant hybrid of Norse-Germanic-French. I wonder how long before a unique "Algerian" language emerges. I wonder how that compares to how long it took english to develop, i'd wager algerian will develop a lot quicker thanks to globalism/internet/etc.

'Algerian' is already recognized as a distinct spoken and kinda-sorta-written language/subdialect (people call it dziriyya). When it comes to writing it regular people basically just mix Arabic chat alphabet and French characters in order to communicate on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc but you won't see this form of writing on anything official, or when writing in pen & paper

One could compare Arabic dialects/languages [0] to Slavic languages about 700 years ago. The dialects/languages are actively diverging due to different cultural ties and influences each country experiences, but due to the internet there's a regular cultural interflow keeping a certain level of mutual intelligibility with other "Arabic-speaking" groups.

In this metaphor Algerian is probably Polish or Czech in the 14th century.

[0]: This is a loaded and inaccurate term used here for brevity.

_The Meursault Investigation_ is a worthy follow-up read to _The Stranger_.

And yet Camus was expelled from the french communist party because he didn't agree with the white-washing of french colonialism of Algeria by the Popular Front.

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