Justice on Trial: Colonial Morality and Existential Rebellion in Albert Camus’ The Stranger

Albert Camus’ The Stranger unfolds within thecontested terrain of colonial Algeria, a space where the ethicsof empire and the hallmark of absurdity intersect. This paperexplores how the novel’s articulation of estrangement isinscribed within the violent architectures of colonial life inAlgeria. We argue that the protagonist’s refusal to performthe rituals of societal belonging and his ultimate sentencingfunction as both a rupture within and an exposure of imperialjustice. The trial of Meursault, apparently about the murderof an Arab, who was rendered silent and nameless, becomesa theatre of colonial power, where the imperial justice systemenforces “moral conformity” while maintaining racial violence.Meursault’s refusal to feign remorse or align himself with thevalues of the settler society position him as a figure of defiancewhose authenticity unsettles the colonial order. This paper arguesthat The Stranger stages a confrontation not merely between anindividual and the absurd, but between the philosophical projectof existential rebellion and the dehumanizing project of empire,critiquing the entanglements of absurdism with colonial power.This qualitative research applies an interdisciplinary approachthat combines postcolonial theory and existential philosophy tooffer a novel approach to The Stranger as a text that interrogatesthe moral and political logics of empire while remaining deeplyattuned to the absurdities of the human condition.