After Charlie Hebdo

As the world looked on in horror at the Paris terror attacks of January and November 2015, France found itself at the centre of a war that has split across nations and continents. The attacks set in motion a steady creep towards ever more repressive state surveillance, and have fuelled the resurgence of the far right across Europe and beyond, while leaving the left dangerously divided. These developments raise profound questions about a number of issues central to contemporary debates, including the nature of national identity, the limits to freedom of speech, and the role of both traditional and social media.

After Charlie Hebdo brings together an international range of scholars to assess the social and political impact of the Paris attacks in Europe and beyond. Cutting through the hysteria that has characterised so much of the initial commentary, it seeks to place these events in their wider global context, untangling the complex symbolic web woven around 'Charlie Hebdo' to pose the fundamental question - how best to combat racism in our supposedly ‘post-racial’ age?

• 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 & Aaron Winter
  • 2. The Meaning of 'Charlie': The Debate on the Troubled French Identity - Philippe Marlière
  • 3. After the Drama: The Institutionalization of Gossiping about Muslims - Valérie Amiraux & Arber Fetiu
  • 4. A Double-bind Situation? The Depoliticization 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’ Makes 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 & 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 ‘Postracial’ 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