Uncivil War

Uncivil War is a provocative study of the intellectuals who confronted the loss of France’s most prized overseas possession: colonial Algeria. Tracing the intellectual history of one of the most violent and pivotal wars of European decolonization, James D. Le Sueur illustrates how key figures such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Tillion, Jacques Soustelle, Raymond Aron, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, Mouloud Feraoun, Jean Amrouche, and Pierre Bourdieu agonized over the “Algerian question.” As Le Sueur argues, these individuals and others forged new notions of the nation and nationalism, giving rise to a politics of identity that continues to influence debate around the world. This edition features an important new chapter on the intellectual responses to the recent torture debates in France, the civil war in Algeria, and terrorism since September 11.

“An illuminating study of French intellectual responses to the war.”—New York Review of Books, “Le Sueur’s great achievement is to reveal the complexity of the political and moral choices faced by intellectuals and, by extension, by the wider populations of Algeria and France.”—Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, “Le Sueur has provided an insightful and lively interpretation of an ongoing moral, sociological, political, and intellectual struggle taking place on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea.”—American Historical Review, “Uncivil War is indispensable reading for re-assessing the greater historical significance of the Algerian War.”—Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, "Feraoun is best known for a chronicle of events, titled simply Journal, that he kept during the eight-year war that led to Algerian independence in 1962. . . . His Journal makes clear Feraoun’s lucidity regarding the national question-an issue that has bedeviled our times and of which Algerian history has been in many ways prototypical."—Roger Kaplan, The New Republic

James D. Le Sueur is an associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the editor of Mouloud Feraoun's Journal, 1955-1962: Reflections on the French-Algerian War (available in a Bison Books edition) and The Decolonization Reader and The Decolonization Sourcebook. He contributed new material to Ben Abro’s Assassination! July 14 and Henri Alleg’s The Question, both available in Bison Books editions.