Abstract
This thesis aims to show how prominent French commentators have represented Islam and Muslims from 9/11 to the 2015 Paris attacks, how uniform their representation has been, and what this representation reveals about French identity. My analysis will highlight a prevailing narrative by addressing interventions by commentators such as Bernard-Henri Lévy, Caroline Fourest, Gilles Kepel or Michel Onfray, together with rare alternative voices such as Tahar Ben Jelloun or Edwy Plenel. This thesis will reveal that this corpus promotes a French identity that is assimilationist, averse to cultural relativism, infused with colonial nostalgia, and selfportrays as résistante.Whereas previous scholarship, mostly from social sciences, has tended to define Islam as a culture and Muslims as people of varying degrees of religious devotion, ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ are defined here as respectively a set of religious beliefs and practices and people actively adhering to them. These definitions cohere with Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of ‘cultural humanism’, that is a universalist approach that upholds free will, as they discard passive cultural heritage in favour of active religious practice. Departing from existing literature focusing on the exclusion of Muslims defined by culture, this thesis argues that most French commentators have welcomed over the last two decades a form of ‘cultural Islam’, thus exacerbating the exclusion of practising Muslims.
The methodology used in this research, inspired by the work of both Richard Jackson and Charles Burdett, differs from the approach of existing studies by combining critical discourse analysis and the techniques of literary scholarship. Whereas Joseph Massad, influenced by history scholarship, argues that the representation of Islam inhered in the emergence of liberal Europe’s identity, I will thus analyse the language and imagery employed by French commentators to represent Islam and Muslims and argue that it reveals the version of French identity they seek to promote.
Date of Award | 25 Jan 2022 |
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Original language | English |
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Supervisor | Siobhan M Shilton (Supervisor) & Gino G Raymond (Supervisor) |