ABSTRACT

Jean-Paul Sartre’s thinking on violence evolved through his career while at the same time exhibiting some consistency. Any assessment of Sartre’s views on political violence should take into consideration the breadth of activities that Sartre regarded as political, and not just those acts or actors deemed to be political by established convention. Various forms of political violence are dramatized in The Flies. In a series of articles first published in Les Temps Modernes during 1952–1954, and later collated as The Communists and Peace, Sartre reflected on the degree to which “the Communist Party is the necessary expression of the working class, and in what degree it is the exact expression”. In the Preface to Frantz Fanon’s 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth, Sartre employs a number of ideas that he explored in The Critique, volume one of which was published in 1960.