ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 first explores Camus’s writings that culminated in the 1946 series of Combat articles entitled Ni Victimes ni Bourreaux, in addition to his response to his critics. It then turns to the question of existentialism’s basic premise of freedom through a discussion of Camus’s and Sartre’s debate over commitment and the historical role of writers, a debate that became public in 1951, after the publication of Camus’s L’Homme révolté. This essay along with other works provides the contours within which I develop the main cast of characters in Camus’s writings on revolution: le policier, le fonctionnaire, and le réfractaire, or l’artiste, and their counterparts in Rachid Bouchareb’s 2010 film, Hors-la-loi . This depiction of the FLN’s French Federation during the battle in mainland France illustrates the central points of contention in Camus’s and Sartre’s debate over the means and the ends of revolution. In this film, as in Camus’s writings, creation, as opposed to nihilism, is advanced as an ethical principle, which takes us to the heart of the independent artist’s revolt: the development of counternarratives.
