This is the first of a two part series that attempts to read Albert Camus’ 1942 novel in a particular Algerian context. This first part outlines the argument. The second part will provide further background evidence to support this argument.

1.

In 1958, during the Algerian War, Camus published his Chroniques Algériennes, a collection of articles and essays on Algeria which he had written over the previous twenty years. That same year, Pierre Bourdieu, a young (and then still largely unknown) sociologist who had recently undertaken several years of field work in Algeria, published his Sociologie de l’Algérie. Out of this initial field work came a series of other studies, and one of particular interest here, titled: “The Sense of Honour”. This study was first published in English under the title, “The Sentiment of Honour in Kabyle Society” (in Peristiany (ed), Honour and Shame: the values of Mediterranean society, 1965). I’m using an expanded version of the same essay published in Bourdieu’s Algeria 1960 (translated and published in English in 1979).

This study by Bourdieu throws considerable light upon the Algeria context of Camus’ 1942 novel, The Stranger; a context which most readers otherwise ignore, and which may be worth recovering.

Am I justified in using a French sociologist to present a case from an Algerian perspective? In this, I am not going beyond what Edward Said himself has already authorised. In his caricature of Camus in Culture and Imperialism (1993) Said singles out Bourdieu’s work on Algeria for praise: ‘How different in attitude and tone is Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociologie de l’Algérie, also published in 1958, whose analysis refutes Camus’s jejune formulae and speaks forthrightly of a colonial war between two societies in conflict.’ In this, Said’s case against Camus is built upon two assertions, both centring on the identity of the Arab killed by Meursault in The Stranger: ‘True,’ Said states, ‘Meursault kills an Arab, but this Arab is not named and seems to be without history, let alone a mother and father.’ And again: ‘Camus’s obduracy accounts for the blankness and absence of background in the Arab killed by Meursault.’ Remarkably, Said offers no direct textual evidence from The Stranger to verify these assertions, and yet his assertions have been uncritically accepted as fact. In part, this is because this case is built upon what Said claims is absent from the text of The Stranger. One would think that this could be very easily tested simply by reading the actual text in order to see whether or not it contradicts these assertions, or provides a literary or cultural context that otherwise explains them. Of course, had Said (or, as importantly, any other reader since who has otherwise repeated Said’s assertions in lieu of actually reading The Stranger) read Camus as closely and carefully as he claims to have read (and approved of) Bourdieu’s Algerian sociology, then he (and others) would have realised how closely Bourdieu’s sociological descriptions are consistent with, and, in fact, complements, descriptions from Camus’ literary work.

That said, when several years ago I first developed the ideas and connections here, and not wanting to rely solely upon Bourdieu’s work, I corresponded with a scholar who hails from the Kabyle region of Algeria, Nabil Boudraa, who not only provided independent confirmation for the cultural accuracy of what is to follow, but he also said that these descriptions of the sense of honour from Bourdieu’s work generalises across Algeria.

In the second part of this series I will draw on several novels written by Algerian authors, contemporary with Camus, as well as from the decades that followed his death, which provide similarly consistent and complementary descriptions to what follows. These act to further embed Camus’ novel, and his own understanding, in an Algerian context.

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2.

The killing of the Arab takes place in the final pages of the final chapter (six) of the first part of The Stranger. This is not, however, the first time we encounter this particular Arab; he first appears in the novel in chapter three. There we also meet Raymond Sintès, who lives in the same building as Meursault. Raymond is a warehouse guard, but word on the street is that he ‘lives off women’. Raymond invites Meursault (who has recently returned from his mother’s funeral) up to his room for some food. ‘He said he’d been in a fight with some guy who was trying to start trouble.’ Raymond then tells the story of how the man started a fight with him on the streetcar, by calling Raymond ‘yellow’. Raymond gets off the streetcar and fights the man and, after the man goes down, Raymond was ‘about to help him up’ when the man starts kicking him from the ground. So Raymond knees him, and punches him a few more times, before the man finally says he has had enough.

‘“So, you see, [says Raymond] I wasn’t the one who started it. He was asking for it.” It was true and I agreed [says Meursault].’

Gauging Meursault’s reaction to his first story, Raymond then asks Meursault for some advice, ‘because [he] was a man.’ Raymond then tells a second story, about this ‘lady’ who is his ‘mistress’:  “I knew this lady... as a matter of fact, well, she was my mistress.” But straightaway Raymond links this second story with the first story: ‘The man he’d had the fight with was this woman’s brother. [Raymond] told me he’d been keeping her.’ This admission immediately casts some doubt on his previous assertion that he hadn’t started the fight with the man; for we now know that, in fact, this man had probably sought Raymond out because of some matter with his sister. In other words, there is already some background to this initial incident which Raymond initially omitted from telling Meursault (and the reader).

Regarding the woman, Raymond paid for her room and board, and gave her a little money on the side, but he found that she was spending more money than she had been given. He therefore suspected her of cheating on him. ‘“So I left her. But first I smacked her around. And then I told her exactly what I thought of her”... He’d beaten her until she’d bled.’ The advice Raymond sought was if Meursault thought she was cheating on him and what would he do in his place. ‘What bothered him was that he “still had sexual feelings for her.” But he wanted to punish her.’ He was going to cut her face and ‘mark’ her. Or set her up to be caught by the vice squad and charged with prostitution.

In the end, Raymond’s plan was to write her a letter, one that would make her feel sorry for what she had done and have her come running back to him. He was then to make her believe they had made up so he could get her into bed again and then, at the last minute, he would ‘spit in her face and throw her out.’

Raymond asks Meursault to write the letter for him, and Meursault agrees. Crucially, it is only at this point, after Meursault had already agreed to write the letter, that a particular fact is revealed: ‘When he told me the woman’s name I realized she was Moorish. I wrote the letter.’ In other words, it is only at this point in the narrative that Meursault (and the reader) discovers that Raymond’s mistress is Arab. And, therefore, it is only at this point in the narrative that Meursault (and the reader) learns that the man who Raymond fought with on the streetcar was Arab; the woman’s brother who had sought Raymond out because Raymond had been keeping his sister, then had beaten her and thrown her out.

Here, in chapter three, the seeds are sown for what will take place in chapter six. Far from the killing of the Arab being performed against an ‘absence of background’ the events leading up to the murder scene are built up over four chapters. And these events revolve around the fact present in the novel that this Arab – apparently ‘without history, let alone a mother and father’ – does have a sister, and it is in his capacity as her brother, and more generally, in fulfilling his familial role, that he finds himself on the beach that day facing Meursault.

3.

Bourdieu opens his study, “The Sense of Honour”, with three brief vignettes, recounting various interactions between Kabyle men, and he uses these as the basis of extracting what he calls ‘the rules of the game of challenge and riposte’. What is interesting about this ‘game’ for the current analysis of The Stranger, is that this initial episode, regarding Raymond Sintès, his mistress, and her brother, would not be out of place amongst Bourdieu’s vignettes. That is, but for one respect: Bourdieu’s study is concerned with men from the Kabyle region of Algeria, indigenous to the area, while The Stranger discusses an analogous situation, involving the mistress and her brother (both Arab), but including characters, although native to Algeria, that culturally hail from elsewhere, such as Raymond (Spanish) and Meursault (French). How to explain this inclusion into ‘the game of challenge and riposte’ that revolves around a sense of honour?

Bourdieu’s study first appeared in English in a collection of essays published in 1966, which was concerned more broadly with the values of Mediterranean society as a whole. In his introduction, editor J.G. Peristiany makes the following observation:

The fact that, on being provoked, a Greek Cypriot, a Bedouin and a Berber may answer ‘I also have a moustache’ as the least common denominator of equality between all males, does not necessarily point to affinities between their cultures. In this context it is the comparison of the male-female relationship and that of the roles of the sexes within these societies that points both to the significant analogies and to the equally significant differences.

Bourdieu makes a similar point in his own study by distinguishing between the ‘order of challenge’ and the ‘order of offence’, with the latter being associated more closely with what is unique to each culture, while the former is more broadly recognised across these cultures. This distinction is essential to the following analysis. In many respects, this order of challenge and riposte is one of the ways that individuals from different cultural backgrounds negotiate their living together. Crucially, implicit in this negotiation is a recognition of the differences between these cultures, while at the same time, it is grounded in a shared sense of humanity. If that sounds overly pacific, it’s not: this negotiation is based on the threat of conflict, often leads to actual conflict, and that shared humanity is grounded in gender inequality and violence. As will be shown, in the second part of this series, this is something Camus was very much aware of, and, in many respects, his novel draws critical attention to.

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4.

‘In order for there to be a challenge,’ Bourdieu states:

the challenger must consider whoever he challenges to be worthy of being challenged, in other words, capable of replying to the challenge. In short, he must recognize his opponent as his equal in honour. To challenge someone is to acknowledge that he is a man, an acknowledgement which is the prerequisite for any exchange and for the challenge of honour insofar as it is the first step in the exchange. It is also to acknowledge him as a man of honour, since the challenge, as such, requires a riposte and is therefore addressed to a man deemed capable of playing the game of honour and of playing it well, which presupposes, first, that he knows the rules and, secondly, that he possesses the virtues needed to comply with them. The sense of equality in honour, which can coexist with actual inequalities, inspires a great number of practices and customs and is manifested particularly in the resistance offered to any pretension to superiority. (emphasis added)

From this, Bourdieu draws three corollaries:

1. ‘The challenge bestows honour . . . . There is nothing worse than being ignored: thus, not to salute someone is to treat him like a thing, an animal, or a woman. A challenge, by contrast, is “a high point in the life of a man who receives it” (El Kalaa). It is an opportunity for a man to feel he fully exists as a man, to prove his manliness (thirugza) to himself and others.’

2. ‘The second corollary is that he who challenges a man incapable of replying to the challenge, that is, incapable of pursuing the exchange that has been opened, dishonours himself.’

3. ‘The third corollary, the counterpart of the second, is this: only a challenge (or insult) issued by one’s equal in honour is worthy of being taken up. In other words, for there to be a challenge, the man who receives it has to consider the man who makes it worthy of making it.’

This leads to a series of cultural rules for such activities as fighting:

The rules of honour [are] also used to govern fighting. Solidarity required every man to protect a kinsmen against a non-kinsman, an affine against a man from another faction (suf), a fellow villager, albeit from a rival faction, against an outsider, and a fellow tribesman against a member of another tribe. But honour forbade several men to fight against a single man; and so countless devices and pretexts had to be used in order to renew the quarrel on one’s own behalf. Thus the slightest quarrel always threatened to widen in scope. (emphasis added)

It is precisely this widening in scope of the initial quarrel between Raymond and his mistress’s brother in chapter three that, as we will see, leads inexorably to the brother’s murder at the hand of Meursault in chapter six. But to begin with, what is significant about the initial scene, where Raymond relates his stories to Meursault, is that it is only at the end of the story, only after Meursault had already agreed to write the letter to help Raymond get his mistress back, that the fact that the mistress and her brother are Arab is revealed (to both Meursault and the reader). Up until that point, Raymond had only been dealing with a ‘man’, a ‘guy’ and a ‘woman’, a ‘lady’, his ‘mistress’. This is significant because, as has already been suggested, for the order of challenge and riposte what matters is not the cultural background of the participants, but that they are ‘a man’ within that cultural background. Recall also that it was only after gauging Meursault’s reaction to his first story, regarding the first altercation with the brother of his mistress on the streetcar – perhaps confusing indifference with understanding and approval – that Raymond then asked Meursault for some advice, ‘because [he] was a man.’  

It is in this context, of the challenge of order and riposte, that we can then examine more closely the unfolding logic of the relationship between Raymond, Meursault, and the brother of Raymond’s mistress, as it develops over four chapters of the novel. We have already considered chapter three, when Raymond first meets the brother. He also solicits Meursault’s help in persuading his mistress to return to him, so that he can punish her.

In chapter four, Meursault is in his room with his girlfriend, Marie, when they hear a fight break out in Raymond’s room, and a woman screams. Raymond is beating his mistress. ‘There were some thuds and the woman screamed, but in such a terrifying way that the landing immediately filled with people.’ The police are called. A policeman questions Raymond and when Raymond acts smarmily, the policeman slaps him, knocking his cigarette out of his mouth. ‘The look on Raymond’s face changed, but he didn’t say anything for a minute, and then he asked, in a meek voice, if he could pick up his cigarette.’ Soon, the cop tells Raymond he should be ashamed to be so drunk that his hand is shaking, but Raymond explains: “I’m not drunk, officer. It’s just that I’m here, and you’re there, and I’m shaking, I can’t help it.” Why is Raymond shaking? Because the policeman slapped him and he didn’t retaliate to this insult; because he had lost face in front of his ‘pal’, Meursault. This is shown in the next paragraph, after the police leaves and Raymond goes and speaks with Meursault, and he is thereby relieved when Meursault explains that he didn’t expect Raymond to retaliate and that therefore he hadn’t lost face in the circumstances: ‘Then he asked me if I’d expected him to hit the cop back. I said I wasn’t expecting anything, and besides I didn’t like cops. Raymond seemed pretty happy.’

In chapter five, Raymond calls Meursault at work to invite him to the beach on the weekend. But this is but a pretext to call him at work and tell him something else: ‘He’d been followed all day by a group of Arabs, one of whom was the brother of his former mistress. “If you see him hanging around the building when you get home this evening, let me know.” I said I would’.

In chapter six, Meursault and Marie accompany Raymond to visit Raymond’s friend (Masson) and wife who live at the beach. They decide to catch the bus to the beach:

We were just about to leave when all of a sudden Raymond motioned me to look across the street. I saw a group of Arabs leaning against the front of the tobacconist’s shop. They were staring at us in silence, but in that way of theirs, as if we were nothing but stones or dead trees. Raymond told me that the second man from the left was his man, and he seemed worried. But, he added, it was all settled now. Marie didn’t really understand and asked us what was wrong. I told her that they were Arabs who had it in for Raymond. . . . We headed toward the bus stop, which wasn’t far, and Raymond said that the Arabs weren’t following us. I turned around. They were still in the same place and they were looking with the same indifference at the spot where we’d been standing. We caught the bus.

At the beach, they all swim and go to the house to eat lunch, and then Meursault, Raymond and Masson (Raymond’s friend), go back down to the beach for a walk. They see two Arabs on the beach coming toward them, and Raymond identifies one of them as the brother. What is interesting here is as they approach the Arabs, Raymond immediately applies the rule of fighting regarding not attacking your enemy two to one. As Meursault describes the scene: ‘We didn’t change our pace, but Raymond said, “If there’s any trouble, Masson, you take the other one. I’ll take care of my man. Meursault, if another one shows up, he’s yours.” I said, “Yes,” and Masson put his hands in his pockets. The blazing sand looked red to me now.’ Raymond then goes up to the brother and says something to him (a ritual insult?), and the brother makes a move as though to head butt Raymond. So Raymond strikes, calling on Masson who attacks the other Arab. In the struggle the brother pulls out a knife and slashes Raymond’s arm. The Arabs then back away with the knife, holding the three at bay, before turning and running.

Raymond is taken to a doctor who lives nearby and he returns with his arm bandaged and in a bad mood. Afterwards he goes off to the beach alone, but is followed by Meursault. They come across the two Arabs again, one of them playing a flute. They see Raymond and Meursault approach, but do not acknowledge their presence. Raymond has his hand in his pocket, his fingers wrapped around a revolver (although this fact is not mentioned in the text at this point, and so the reader is not yet privy to the presence of a gun). The toes of the flute-player are tensed, as though waiting for something to happen. ‘But without taking his eyes off his adversary, Raymond said to me, “Should I let him have it?”’ It is at this point that Raymond and Meursault enter into a brief discussion, which can only be understood in terms of the behaviour required by the order of challenge and riposte. It is also here that the gun is revealed:

I thought that if I said no he’d get himself all worked up and shoot for sure. All I said was, “He hasn’t said anything yet. It’d be pretty lousy to shoot him like that” [note: it is against a sense of honour]... Then Raymond said, “So I’ll call him something and when he answers back, I’ll let him have it.” [note: the necessary ritual insult] I answered , “Right. But if he doesn’t draw his knife, you can’t shoot.” Raymond started getting worked up. The other Arab went on playing, and both of them were watching every move Raymond made. “No,” I said to Raymond, “take him on man to man and give me your gun. If the other one moves in, or if he draws his knife, I’ll let him have it.”

What follows is a sort of standoff, the interplay of challenge and riposte, the threat of conflict, and its resolution, which ends with the Arabs backing away. ‘So Raymond and I turned and headed back the way we’d come. He seemed better and talked about the bus back.’ Once more, Raymond’s behaviour – his sudden change of mood, from being worked up to being happy - can only be understood in terms of the order of the challenge, and the fact that, for him, at least, it has been resolved. Here is a man who has only a short time before been cut by a knife in a fight; he sees an opportunity for revenge, and re-enters into the ritual of challenge with the responsible party. But combat does not even have to take place for him to regain his honour, to save face: it is enough that the other person, the brother, has backed down and not accepted the challenge. Perhaps by having finally cut Raymond, the brother also considers the matter resolved. Straightaway, Raymond ‘seemed better’ and talked about other things. As far as he is concerned, the matter is now dropped.

And so it was for Meursault, too. But in the final scene of the first part of the novel, what we see is the formal logic of the order of challenge and riposte played out, almost against the will of the participants, Meursault and the Arab. Here Meursault goes for walk and once more comes across the brother, this time sitting alone: ‘Raymond’s man had come back.’ But he was sitting unthreateningly, and perhaps for him, too, the matter was over. Besides, he didn’t have a problem with Meursault: only with Raymond.

I was a little surprised. As far as I was concerned, the whole thing was over, and I’d gone there without even thinking about it. As soon as he saw me, he sat up a little and put his hand inside his pocket. Naturally, I gripped Raymond’s gun inside my jacket. Then he lay back again, but without taking his hand out of his pocket. I was pretty far away from him, about ten metres or so. I could tell he was glancing at me now and then through half closed eyes.

It is at this point that the sun in his eyes causes Meursault step forward, which unintentionally enters him irrevocably into the formal order of the challenge, leaving the Arab no recourse but to respond in kind. ‘I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn’t get the sun off me by stepping forward. But I took a step, one step, forward. And this time, without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun.’ The reflection of the blade in the sun appears as if the man is closing in on Meursault, who then pulls the trigger. ‘I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day,’ he says.

5.

Even if we end the analysis at this point, it is enough to refute the claim that the Arab ‘seems to be without history, let alone a mother and father’ and is therefore characterised by a ‘blankness and absence of background.’ By configuring the interactions between this Arab and Raymond and Meursault, across four chapters, and along the lines of an Algerian honour-bound order of challenge and riposte, Camus endows this figure with not only an historical and cultural background, in general, but more specifically, with operating within a very strict set of familial obligations. Here the Arab is not acting as an individual (and so his individual identity, his name, is secondary), but as a brother of a dishonoured sister, trying to regain his family honour, to save face in the context of a broader Algerian culture. And yet, in Said’s haste to condemn Camus of supposedly suppressing the nameless Arab’s background, Said himself suppresses the most salient point of the first part of the novel: that this Arab not only has a sister, but his sister does indeed have a name. Raymond tells her name to Meursault, and it is only upon hearing her name that Meursault realises that the woman is, in fact, an Arab. That the reader is not privy to her name conspicuously suggests an important element in the story – and one which Said was happy to ignore – and that is the silent role of women in the honour-bound order of challenge and riposte. By suppressing the existence of the sister in the novel, Said obliterates the very point of honour in the story, as well as the point of entry into the structuring presence of this aspect of Algerian culture presented in the novel.

According to Bourdieu, the order of challenge is inseparable from the underlying order of offence, and this is always associated with protecting the sacred, the point of honour, or nif, which, literally means ‘nose’, the family honour, and the women in particular. In The Stranger, Raymond’s relationship with his mistress brought dishonour upon her, but more importantly, it brought dishonour to her family. She was unmarried, sexually involved with a non-Arab man, and was under suspicion of being a prostitute. The brother was attempting to restore this family honour (nif); literally, to save face. And it is at this early point in the story that the inexorable logic of the order of challenge and riposte – long before Meursault even becomes implicated – is brought into play, until it reaches its fatal conclusion.

Next week, in the second (and final) part of this series, we will consider several other novels written by Algerian authors, to further embed Camus’ novel, and his own understanding, in an Algerian context. In this, we will also consider how Camus was very much aware of the role of gender inequality and violence at the heart of this order of challenge and riposte, and how The Stranger draws critical attention to it.

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