MEASURES OF VIOLENCE: TERRORISM IN CAMUS, DIB AND BEYOND

hiddleston, jane;

This article opens by identifying the vocabularyof ranking and proportion in recent discussions of terrorism, in particular after the attacks of September 11th 2001, and goes on to question the viability of this sort of language. Readings of literary works by Albert Camus and Mohammed Dib demonstrate how difficult it is to differentiate between justifiable and excessive levels of terrorist violence, as in both cases brutality some how paralyses attempts to rationalize, analyse and measure what might be acceptable or appropriate. While Camus seems to want to explore a defensible form of violence, when the socialist revolutionary Kaliayev assassinates the despotic Grand Duke in Les Justes, closer inspection of the play uncovers a persistent sense of doubt around this question of justifiability; moreover, Camus’s writings on terrorism during the Algerian War of Independence are fuelled by affect much more than by the rhetoric of calculation. Concomitantly, Dib’s short story ‘La Nuit sauvage’ traces the curious relationship between a brother and sister as they move to throw a bomb at a brasserie in Algiers, and yet here the oneiric representation of the terrorist act deflects any attempt by the reader to take sides