While working in my
office waiting for the blizzard to arrive I concluded this would be a good time
to post on my blog. This column is co-authored
with Professor Karen de Bruin and her colleagues in the French Section of our Department
of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. Like most people I found the recent terrorist
attacks in Paris and the surrounding area, which began with an attack on the
French satirical publication Charlie
Hebdo, to be a disturbing reminder of the fragility of peace and our social
order. These attacks should also remind us that modern transportation, social
media, translation software and the internet tie us more closely together than
ever before. Consequently, our
increasingly global society requires us to become more sophisticated and
responsible than ever with regard to how we understand cultures, languages and
cultural products. It is in the spirit of sensitivity to cultural difference
that this post will suggest starting points from which a university-wide
discussion of Charlie Hebdo tragedy could
begin.
Charlie
Hebdo is a weekly French caricature
newspaper that positions itself on the left of the French political spectrum. Since
Charlie Hebdo emphasizes caricature, one needs a solid understanding of
the French language and also familiarity with French current events, politics,
religion, history, language and culture in order to understand it. The
journalists and caricaturists at Charlie
Hebdo see themselves as defenders of both secularism (laïcité), a founding value of the French Republic, and freedom of
expression. But more importantly, they see themselves as promoters of humor.
They pride themselves on poking fun at people, ideas, events and phenomena, and
religion. They mock all political parties, regimes and religions, and they are
especially provocative in their criticism of extremism. Though the vast
majority of satirical articles and caricatures in Charlie Hebdo, have to do with a broad range of contemporary
politics and current events, they have recently targeted the National Front
party (Marine Le Pen’s party whose rhetoric often unfavorably targets
immigrants in France) and radical Islamists.
Four of France’s
greatest and wittiest caricature artists were killed in the attacks. These four
artists, and especially Cabu and Wolinski, were intellectuals, journalists,
artists and humorists of the first order. Their caricatures almost always
embodied what is known in France as “second-degree humor, ” which is a mix of
satire, wit, play on words, suggestion, repartee and implicit or explicit
mockery. It is the very basis of French humor, and has been for centuries, but it
can lead to multiple interpretations, and almost always requires a deep knowledge
of context. The fact that second-degree humor is integrally part of the French spirit
explains in part why regular targets of the caricatures in Charlie Hebdo, like former president Nicolas Sarkozy, the current
president François Hollande, former Prime Minister Alain Juppé and current
Prime Minister Manuel Valls chose to participate in the large protests against
the terrorists.
It is also important
to recognize that French republican values are very much
rooted in “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” much as American values are
rooted in “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The French perspective
on religion has roots in the French Revolution of 1789 and its first
constitution that established freedom of conscience as an inalienable right. In
1958, the French constitution went further to defend secularism more generally
stating: “France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic. It
insures equality before the law for all of its citizens independent of origin,
race or religion.”
Consequently,
the French State believes that while everyone has the right to practice a
religion, people also have the right to not have religion imposed upon them. Many French people do not
identify with the political and anti-clerical stances of Charlie Hebdo, but by the same token, they may not consider the
newspaper offensive, either - they consider it French. On the contrary, the terrorists
who carried out the attack apparently considered Charlie Hebdo to be not only deeply offensive, but also a threat.
These are just some of
the things that must be considered as we try to make sense of what happened in
France, as we should as a university. Learning language for professional
reasons is only the first step toward learning about another culture. Language
learning that strips the study of language from the study of culture, and that
allows learners to judge the world solely from the perspective of their own
values and presuppositions, will only impoverish our global understanding. As
academics interested in the promotion of global learning and competency, we
have a responsibility toward our students, our communities, and our mission to
understand the world’s increasing globalization to promote the study of
language in tandem with the study of culture. At the very least, this holistic study
will allow us to learn and to judge grand challenges from different vantage
points than our own. It might also just diminish the risk, even if slightly, of
future attacks like the one on Charlie Hebdo.
