Renaud Camus

Renaud Camus
Born Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus
(1946-08-10) August 10, 1946
Chamalières, France
Language French
Nationality French
Education St Clare's, Oxford
Alma mater University of Paris
Paris Institute of Political Studies
Notable awards Prix Fénéon

Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus (/kæˈmuː/;[1] French: [ʁəno kamy]; born 10 August 1946) is a French writer of both prose fiction and political polemics. He founded his own minor political party, characterized as a blend of left and right politics. He has written about homosexuality and gay rights, and was involved for a brief time in an antisemitism controversy but expressed condemnation for both antisemitism and racism. Camus is known for the idea of the Grand Remplacement (the "great replacement" in English), which relates to replacement migration in the context of immigration to France.

Biography

The château de Plieux built in 1340, Camus' home in the south of France

He was born in Chamalières, Puy-de-Dôme, in the Auvergne region of France. He spent some time studying in England and traveling in the United States, particularly New York and California (he taught for a semester in a college in Arkansas). He quickly began to circulate among writers (Louis Aragon, Roland Barthes, Marguerite Duras, etc.) and visual artists (the Warhol circle, the New York School, Gilbert and George, etc.).[2] He is openly gay and an outspoken defender of gay rights.[2] One of his first published works (and the only one (partially) translated in English), with a preface by Barthes, is Tricks (1979; enlarged and revised in 1982 and 1988), a "chronicle" consisting of over-detailed descriptions of homosexual encounters in France and elsewhere. Fragments of other works were published in the 75th issue of Yale French Studies (1988).

He has formed a political party, "Le Parti de l’In-nocence",[3] which has changed its platform several times, mixing traditional leftist/socialist political values and conservative social values. It plays no role in French politics, but Camus adds position statements to the party’s website very often.[4]

Although he has a growing base of readers, he is not read widely. This is partly because of the difficulty of some of his work and partly because of his alienation from the literary establishment, in which he is well known, largely because of his journals. This alienation derives from his approach in his journals.

In his Diary of 1994 (published in 2000 under the title La campagne de France), Renaud Camus commented on the fact that the membership of a regular panel of literary critics supposed to cover a broad range of literary genres in a programme series ("Panorama") run by the French national radio (France Culture) comprised a majority of persons of Jewish descent who tended to exclusively focus discussions on Jewish authors and community-centered issues. This comment caused widespread controversy and drew much criticism from observers like the noted French journalist Jean Daniel,[5] who described Camus' remarks as anti-Semitic. Renaud Camus was supported by several prominent Jewish intellectuals, including French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut during the entire controversy, the latter underscoring Renaud Camus’ support for Israel. In 2012, he supported Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections.[2]

Subsequently, on several occasions, Renaud Camus was given the opportunity to clarify this comment, including on the radio where it was first broadcast. He said that his comment was meant to draw the attention of his readers to a literary programme run by a Governmental radio network which had supposedly narrowed its original scope to one almost exclusively dedicated to the literary production of the Jewish community, under the biased influence of some members of the panel in question. During the past few years, Renaud Camus has been often invited as guest by this radio station[6] in similar programmes to discuss literary and art topics. He lives in Château de Plieux (South-West France) where he organizes art exhibitions and runs his own political party, the Party of "Non-Nuisance" (Parti de L'In-Nocence).

In 2014 he was fined €4,000 in Paris for referring to some Muslims as "hooligans" and that they were "the armed wing of a group intent on conquering French territory", a case which he appealed.[7]

The Great Replacement conspiracy theory

Camus' tract for his 2014 "day of anger" manifestation against the "great replacement": "No to the change of people and of civilization and no to antisemitism"

Since 2010 Camus has been warning of the purported danger of the "Great Replacement" (Grand Remplacement), the supposed replacement of ethnic French people with immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.[8][9][10]

Bibliography

Chronicles

  • Journal d'un voyage en France, Hachette (1981)
  • Tricks: 25 encounters, Saint Martin's Press (1981) and Serpent's Tail (1995) [Tricks, Mazarine (1978) and P.O.L. (1988)]
  • Incomparable, with Farid Tali, P.O.L. (1999)
  • Corbeaux, Impressions Nouvelles (2000)

Novels

  • Roman roi, P.O.L. (1983)
  • Roman furieux (Roman roi II), P.O.L. (1987)
  • Voyageur en automne, P.O.L. (1992)
  • Le Chasseur de lumières, P.O.L. (1993)
  • L'épuisant désir de ces choses, P.O.L. (1995)
  • L'Inauguration de la salle des Vents, Fayard (2003)
  • Loin, P.O.L. (2009)

Writings on art

  • Discours de Flaran, P.O.L. (1997)
  • Nightsound (sur Josef Albers) followed by Six prayers, P.O.L. (2000)
  • Commande publique, P.O.L. (2007)

Political writings

  • Le communisme du XXIe siècle, preceded by La deuxième carrière d'Adolf Hitler, followed by Que va-t-il se passer ? and Pire que le mal, Xenia, (2007)
  • La Grande Déculturation, Fayard (2008)
  • De l'In-nocence. Abécédaire, David Reinharc (2010)

Theatre

  • Théâtre ce soir, éditions Jean-Paul Bayol (2008)

References

  1. ↑ "Camus". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. 1 2 3 François Bousquet, Qui veut lyncher les dissidents ?, Valeurs Actuelles, 06/09/2012
  3. ↑ (in French) Official site of "Le Parti de l'In-nocence"
  4. ↑ http://www.in-nocence.org/index.php?page=communiques
  5. ↑ Cf. Le royaume de Sobrarbe. Journal 2005.
  6. ↑ (in French) Renaud Camus on France Culture
  7. ↑ Sexton, David (November 3, 2016). "Non!". The Spectator. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  8. ↑ Chrisafis, Angelique (October 9, 2015). "Right-wing 'new reactionaries' stir up trouble among French intellectuals". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  9. ↑ Wildman, Sarah (15 August 2017). ""You will not replace us": a French philosopher explains the Charlottesville chant". Vox. Retrieved 20 August 2018. I think the replacement is, in general, a phenomenon. Islam [and Muslim migration] is just the form it takes in Occidental Europe especially, and especially in France probably. And it does make the matter worse because it is very strong, it’s a very strong culture and civilization with its own language and its own religion. But it's not essential to the very idea of replacement. And for instance, in Western Europe, the replacement is just as much by black Africa as it is by Northern Islamic Africans.
  10. ↑ Chatterton Williams, Thomas (4 December 2017). "The French Origins of "You Will Not Replace Us"". The New Yorker. Retrieved 20 August 2018. Camus's problem was not, as it might be for many French citizens, that the religious symbolism of the veil clashed with some of the country’s most cherished secularist principles; it was that the veil wearers were permanent interlopers in Camus's homeland. He became obsessed with the diminishing ethnic purity of Western Europe.
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