Alex's Project Proposal
More than simply geographical movement, however, my map will chart the passing movement of time. Superimposed upon the north African travels of Albert Camus will be a second trail – an imaginary Albert Camus of 2016. Our fantasy Camus will trace the footsteps of the man himself, and in this tracing we will mark the differences between 20th century Euro/Arab travel, and 21st century Euro/Arab travel – we will mark how time period informs the nature and possibility of physical movement. How, for instance, the real-life Camus was only in a position to move to and work in Paris because of an 1889 law naturalizing the children of Europeans in Algeria as French citizens, or how the road signs being entirely in French would have helped Camus enormously. We will see how European colonialism made the mid-twentieth century travels of Camus all the easier, and how the residue of a now-abandoned colonial project still affects travel today. I want to use the many movements of Albert Camus between France and Algeria – between the European and the Arabic – to interrogate how these two worlds interact with one another and to simply ask the question – what’s changed? How would the travels of the 20th century Camus be different from the travels of a 21st century Camus?