Charlie Hebdo changed the way the French say ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’
Death in Paris
Memorialization has always played a key role in modern cultural memory, and this is particularly clear in Paris. As a city, Paris is separate from the rest of the country, yet it also represents the French Republic. Even the name for the region of Paris, “Île de France” (Island of France), expresses isolation while proclaiming to stand for the nation as a whole. Paris has come to be accepted as a cultural hub, as the French center for fashion, publishing, and language.
Death and terror have a long history in Paris. Even the word “terrorism” originates from “The Terror”; a period of violent purges of those opposed to the new national ideals in the wake of the French Revolution. From the subterranean, bone-lined Catacombs to the Place de la République, the display and commemoration of death has always been a feature of the French capital.
Yet it is perhaps fitting, in the internet age, that the most recognizable memorials for the Charlie Hebdo attack are not just static landmarks, but visual, virtual and transient. One year after the attacks, commemorative plaques were dedicated by then-President François Hollande, and a tree was planted in the Place de la République, creating a living memorial.
Charlie Hebdo also ran a cover commemorating the dead, while targeting religious extremism: a blood-spattered, God-like figure runs away with a Kalashnikov, under the slogan “one year on, the assassin is still out there”. Solidarity sales of the struggling publication grew following the attacks – though they lessened on the first anniversary, and dwindled again with the second – and the covers marking each anniversary have spread across social media.
This year, the publication will run another cover, commenting on the enduring impact of memorializing the attack and the continued cost of free speech. In some ways, the magazine itself has become a symbol, and each of its anniversaries covers a new thread woven into the new French identity.
The politics of memory
Whether or not Parisians agree with Charlie Hebdo’s editorial line, it is likely that they will gather in the Place de la République – as they have in previous years – to express their solidarity with the victims, and their defiance in the face of violent extremism. And so the square itself has become one of France’s longest living memorials; a place where people gather to light candles and place flowers and notes.
Paris’s many sites of public remembrance express what it means to be French – and provide a site to contest it. The monuments of Paris have often highlighted ideological issues around memorialization in the city. The Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation has been criticized for presenting the Jewish experience of WWII as one shared by all in France. The Panthéon – a prominent tourist center for French cultural history – houses only five female members alongside its 76 men.
The same is true of the Charlie Hebdo memorials; in 2015, flowers and notes were not the only things left on the statue at the center of the Place de la République. It was also scrawled with graffiti condemning terrorism and extremism in all its forms. Likewise, the mural outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo, depicting the victims of the attack, was recently defaced with Hitler moustaches – a protest, perhaps, against the victims’ new-found hero status.
Elizabeth Benjamin is Lecturer in French, Coventry University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution / No derivative).
