Zed Books After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, Racism and Free Speech

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. After Charlie HebdoTerror, Racism and Free SpeechBy Gavan Titley, Des Freedman, Gholam Kiabany, Aurélien MondonZed Books LtdCopyright © 2017 Zed BooksAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78360-939-0ContentsAcknowledgements, Introduction: Becoming symbolic: from Charlie Hebdo to 'Charlie Hebdo' Gavan Titley, PART I: THE CONTESTED REPUBLIC, 1 Charlie Hebdo, Republican secularism and Islamophobia Aurélien Mondon and Aaron Winter, 2 The meaning of 'Charlie': the debate on the troubled French identity Philippe Marlière, 3 After the drama: the institutionalisation of gossiping about Muslims Valérie Amiraux and Arber Fetiu, 4 A double-bind situation? The depoliticisation of violence and the politics of compensation Abdellali Hajjat, PART II: THE LONG 'WAR ON TERROR', 5 The whiteness of innocence: Charlie Hebdo and the metaphysics of anti-terrorism in Europe Nicholas De Genova, 6 The visible hand of the state Gholam Khiabany, 7 Symbolic politics with brutally real effects: when 'nobodies' make history Markha Valenta, 8 Extremism, theirs and ours: Britain's 'generational struggle' Arun Kundnani, PART III: MEDIA EVENTS AND MEDIA DYNAMICS, 9 From Jyllands-Posten to Charlie Hebdo: domesticating the Mohammed cartoons Carolina Sanchez Boe, 10 #JeSuisCharlie, #JeNeSuisPasCharlie and ad hoc publics Simon Dawes, 11 Mediated narratives as competing histories of the present Annabelle Sreberny, PART IV: THE POLITICS OF FREE SPEECH, 12 Media power and the framing of the Charlie Hebdo attacks Des Freedman, 13 We hate to quote Stanley Fish, but: "There's no such thing as free speech, and it's a good thing, too." Or is it? Bill Grantham and Toby Miller, 14 Jouissance and submission: 'free speech', colonial diagnostics and psychoanalytic responses to Charlie Hebdo Anne Mulhall, PART V: RACISM AND ANTI-RACISM IN POST-RACIAL TIMES, 15 Not afraid Ghassan Hage, 16 'Je Suis Juif': Charlie Hebdo and the remaking of antisemitism Alana Lentin, 17 Race, caste and gender in France Christine Delphy, 18 The ideology of the Holy Republic as part of the colonial counter-revolution Selim Nadi, About the contributors, Index, CHAPTER 1CHARLIE HEBDO, REPUBLICAN SECULARISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIAAurélien Mondon and Aaron WinterThe attack against Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January 2015 took place in a context in which Islamophobia had become increasingly mainstream in France. The widespread albeit uneven use of the slogan 'Je Suis Charlie' across France and the Western world represented for many an assertion of solidarity, and more specifically identification, with Charlie Hebdo and its championing of liberal Enlightenment and Republican values of freedom of speech. This reaction, we were told, was in response to the threat posed by Muslim extremists and terrorists. However, the boundaries between a critique of extremism and terrorism and that of Islamophobia (and anti-Muslim hate), as well as that between the defence of liberal values, Islamophobia and securitisation, have become increasingly blurry. The string of deadly attacks by those identified or self-identifying as 'Islamist' and linked to IS (however tenuous that link may be) which have taken place since in Paris, Nice and Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray have rendered them ever fuzzier. It is for this reason, and the mapping of these discourses and practices as they relate or are deployed in relation to Islam and Muslims, however loosely defined, that we employ our concepts of illiberal and liberal Islamophobia (Mondon and Winter 2017).The illiberal articulation of Islamophobia, or 'anti-Muslim' hate, is closest to traditional racism based around exclusivist notions and concepts of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion, as well as identity itself, and is commonly associated with the extreme right and authoritarian treatment of minority groups and rights. Liberal Islamophobia, on the other hand, apparently rejects but in fact displaces and conceals traditional