The Event of 'Charlie Hebdo': Imaginaries of Freedom and Control ed. by Alessandro Zagato (review)

It is worth underlining that this book does not focus on Charlie Hebdo itself, the milieu of bande dessinée, or the way the shootings happened; but rather on interpreting worldwide popular, political, and media reactions to the events of 7 January 2015. As Bruce Kapferer points out in the Afterword, the central theme is the 'crisis of egalitarianism' (p. 95), not surprising given that this is an offshoot of the European Research Council-funded Egalitarianism project of the University of Bergen. The seven chapters, plus Introduction and Afterword, consider themes that include Western thoughts on tolerance (Axel Rudi); the broader context of political satire (Jacob Hjortsberg); legal aspects of blasphemy (Theodoros Rakopoulos); Private Eye's reaction (Kapferer); the contradictions and hypocrisies of the #jesuischarlie movement (Mari Hanssen Korsbrekke); postcolonial exclusion with deft reference to La Haine (Alessandro Zagato); the broader notion of democratic tolerance (or not) (Knut Rio); and, more specifically, the case of eight-year-old Ahmed, who was racially abused for claiming to align with the terrorists rather than with Charlie (Maria Dyveke Styve). Working from a perspective of social anthropology, as might be expected, this accessible text draws mainly on contemporary and journalistic sources, reading often as enticing personal reaction as opposed to academic analysis. There are drawbacks in that the volume has a certain amount of repetition — references to Voltaire's misattributed quotation about not supporting an argument but defending the right for it to be put forward, or Spartacus as the source for 'je suis Charlie' — and at times drifts to journalistic approximations (La Libération for Libération; Charlie Hebdo's title as being a reference to Charles de Gaulle, rather than the more banal homage to Schultz's Charlie Brown). Nonetheless, at a time when the Traité sur la tolérance has seen countless pamphlet reprints for sale in the Métro, readers might find this current volume equally thought-provoking. And its ideas are still edgy now, even if Charlie Hebdo has been overshadowed and displaced by the attacks of 13 November 2016, the social unrest regarding the projected loi travail and SNCF reforms, and, more recently, the killings in Nice on 14 July.