Sartre's unfaltering support of anti-colonial movements, and his fearless condemnation of state sanctioned violence, have never been more prescient. Meanwhile, Camus' position during the Algerian war of independence should serve as a reminder that calls for truce too often overlook the force exerted by socially dominant groups to preserve the status quo, writes Oliver Gloag.
(Click here to read Ron Aronson arguing that Sartre and Camus' positions have been united in the recent protest movement.)
The outrage and anger at the filmed murder of George Floyd at the end of May, 2020 at the hands of the police ignited a movement that brought together a multitude of people from all races, social classes and nationalities in the streets of nearly every city in the United States - as well as major cities in England, Germany and France. The notion of formerly separate people becoming “groups in fusion,” which come together united by a desire for radical social change, was first theorized by Jean-Paul Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) – a radical re-adaptation of Marxism in the context of global anti-imperialist struggles of the post-war period. Sixty years later, it is more relevant than ever.
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