Making Ritual Enactments Political: Free Speech After the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

Nahaboo, Zaki (2020) Making Ritual Enactments Political: Free Speech After the Charlie Hebdo Attacks. In: Ritual and Democracy: Protests, Publics and Performances. Equinox Publishing, pp. 48-64. ISBN 9781781799741

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Abstract

This chapter discusses how free speech emerged after the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo. It provides a new interpretation of free speech as a material event, which is irreducible to liberal understandings of free speech as a critical or harmful act. The chapter begins by drawing upon theories of ritual enactments and political subjectivity, so as to better identify the creative political dimensions of protest movements. This offers a basis for witnessing how free speech materialized in the Paris ‘Je suis Charlie’ movement and the Srinagar protests against Charlie Hebdo. The emergence of slogans and objects in demonstrations indicated the transformation of free speech into an object that can be defended or destroyed. In turn, the material crafting of free speech into physical objects, such as banners and effigies, reveal free speech as a clash between iconographic and iconoclastic practices. This chapter develops our understanding free speech’s materialization in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo killings.

Item Type:	Book Section
Dates:	Date Event 4 August 2020 Published
Subjects:	CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-03 - politics > CAH15-03-01 - politics CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-01 - sociology, social policy and anthropology > CAH15-01-02 - sociology CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-01 - sociology, social policy and anthropology > CAH15-01-04 - anthropology
Divisions:	Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > College of Law, Social and Criminal Justice
Depositing User:	Zaki Nahaboo
Date Deposited:	27 Nov 2020 10:46
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2024 12:49
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/10405

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