Description

Enemy of the Disaster is the first authorized translation to appear in English of Renaud Camus' political writings and includes his notorious 2010 speech, "The Great Replacement." Though forty-two years have passed since his work was last translated into English, Camus is endlessly and irresponsibly discussed in the media, his vast and complex oeuvre reduced to a single phrase devoid of all context. In the English-speaking world, at least, he is the opposite of an author; he is a floating signifier, a rumor, an element in someone else's narrative.

This volume aims to change that. Spanning the years 2007-2017, its ten chapters present a very different Camus, one freed from the opportunistic glosses of “friend” and foe alike. Instead of a conspiracy theorist, the reader discovers a committed opponent of conspiratorial thinking of all kinds. Instead of a proponent of rightwing terrorism, one discovers the founder of a political party devoted to the promotion of civic peace. Above all, one discovers in Camus a man of culture, of the high European culture that he sees everywhere in retreat amid a generalized debasement of humanity.

The book opens with a critical Introduction by its editor, Professor Louis Betty of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Betty seeks to free Camus from the various polemical misrepresentations to which he has been subjected in order to situate him in the context of recent French debates concerning immigration and identity, debates that have only become more intense since Camus first entered the fray. Each chapter is thoroughly annotated to help non-French readers better navigate what might be unfamiliar references.

Enemy of the Disaster will prove a precious resource to any serious student of contemporary France. The issues it addresses, however - issues, not just of immigration and identity, but of culture, education, and the future of humanity itself - resonate well beyond the French context. These are issues with which we all, sooner or later, will need to reckon. By showing us what we have so blithely abandoned in our mad embrace of an increasingly posthuman future, Renaud Camus helps us do just that.