Charlie Hebdo and the French myth of sameness race and gender in the French secular imagination

Abstract

Through a study of the editorial line and content of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical publication, as well as public discourse about the magazine in the aftermath of the terror attack it faced in January 2015, this thesis aims to build an understanding of the French anxieties at play in relation to Islam as “the other”. It explores French secularism, known as laïcité, as a tool to manage diversity and create a state of sameness through a process of forceful assimilation that includes but is not restricted to the sexual shaming of North Africans and Arab Muslims living in France. By taking Charlie Hebdo as a case study, the research will zoom in on the representations of Muslim masculinity, femininity and the veil as a signifier of cultural difference that is perceived to threaten not only the normative French understanding of female sexuality, but also the purity of French identity in the postcolonial social imagination. In addition, it will examine the discourse circulating in mainstream and social media in the aftermath of the Islamist terror attack on the magazine’s headquarters to understand how and why “French” and “Muslim” have been constructed as mutually exclusive identities.