One of the regrettable ironies of the recent commentary from the Anglo-American center-left that has sought to reduce the picture of Charlie Hebdo to a bunch of old racist white men, hack cartoonists, and anti-Muslim, anti-semitic, misogynist and homophobic cranks, is how efficiently that reduction has elided the female, Maghreb, Jewish and LGBT voices on the staff of Charlie Hebdo. One of the victims of the attack who is virtually never mentioned is Moustapha Ourrad, longtime editor from Algeria. Theres also Elsa Cayat, a Jewish journalist and psychoanalyst. And fortunate survivors like Zineb El Rhazoui, a Moroccan journalist and rights activist, who did invaluable reportage on the Arab Spring, and who has been one of the most eloquent speakers on the tragedy, and the place of Charlie in the current French context. Read her articles, in tandem with those of someone like Caroline Fourest, editor of ProChoix and LGBT rights leader, who wrote for Charlie for years. Both El Rhazoui and Fourest are often controversial voices in the French political scene, but not for the reasons that center-left Anglophones may perceive at a gloss. Many of these voices are not bubbling up in the American and British press because, frankly, most of the commentators do not read or speak French, never knew of Charlie Hebdo before this incident took place, and have come to their understanding of the magazine through literally five or six images cherrypicked from the magazines decades-long history (and in some cases cropped or photoshopped to remove inconvenient captions or images that might clarify how the images were being positioned as a critique of racism as opposed to a mere performance of it). The attitude that one can be given some secondhand, contextless images in translation, a few hours with Google, and some pious assumptions about other peoples and cultures, and youre good to go – well, this ultimately results in the same sort of cultural erasure and provincial Western arrogance that the commentators purport to critique. Just give me three hours and Ill nail your culture to the wall! (Among the worst of these was former Jeopardy contestant Arthur Chus chestbeating rant in The Daily Beast where he admits to having browsed some online images in translation – he clearly had never read the magazine – and proceeds to plant a flag for the Internet while making clumsy assumptions about Charlie Hebdo across the board). For a more fleshed out perspective of the debates around Charlie from a Francophone perspective that is neither white nor Anglo-American-presumptuous, I encourage folks to follow and read François Luongs recent posts on the matter. The links he shares are informative and valuable.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 18:57:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015