This undergraduate thesis examines French republican contradictions of universal egalitarian citizenship in the aftermath of three domestic terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016. These contradictions — analyzed as national antagonisms — have... more
This undergraduate thesis examines French republican contradictions of universal egalitarian citizenship in the aftermath of three domestic terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016. These contradictions — analyzed as national antagonisms — have become visible through state and public reactions, collectively instated to restore legitimacy to the Republic and sovereignty to its body politic. Public enemies and the social construction of public enemies are critical processes to the reconstitution of Republican authority. In times of crisis, the state and its collaborators exploit these public enemies to demonstrate the power of the sovereign body over a selected and stigmatized Other. This study explores the meanings of this exploitation, of both state violence and public aggressions against Muslim Arabs living in the French banlieue. It attempts to place violent exploitation within a specific reactionary movement that took place during the Third French Republic: revanche and the Ligue des Patriotes. Ultimately, this paper works toward a definition of a new French Revanchism in order to describe the forces of reaction that have beset and plagued the Fifth Republic in the year or so after terror.
