Say His Name: Reading L’Étranger and Meursault, contre-enquête in the Age of Black Lives Matter

Abstract

This paper uses Albert Camus’ L’Étranger and its reimagining in Kamel Daoud’s Meursault, contre-enquête as a lens for examining racially-motivated police brutality in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement’s outcry against it. The parallels between the unnamed Arab’s death at the hands of Meursault in L’Étranger and George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police shed light on to the continued reality of systemic racism in the US. Meursault, contre-enquête offers up a cross-examination of L’Étranger which aims to flip the narrative and deanonymize the victim of the crime, in a similar fashion to Black Lives Matter’s #SayTheirNames campaign. In the first half of my argument, I critique the traditional reading of L’Étranger as a parable of the absurd human condition by considering ways that the white supremacy ingrained in the French colonial system enabled the particularly absurd outcome of Meursault’s trial. I then analyze the ways in which white supremacy and anti-Black racism in the US have similarly shaped popular discourse surrounding George Floyd’s death. I observe how this discourse attempts to rationalize the event rather than seriously consider the role systemic racism played in it. In the second half, I examine an alternative worldview presented in Meursault, contre-enquête, where individual experience illuminates universal injustices. I use this text as a tool for understanding how Black Lives Matter and its call for defunding police departments can lead the way towards a more empathetic notion of justice in the US.