Responding to terrorism with peace, love and solidarity: ‘Je suis Charlie’, ‘Peace’ and ‘I Heart MCR’

Abstract

This article explores the affective responses to terrorist attacks in Western Europe, visually manifested through the memes ‘Je suis Charlie’, ‘Peace’, and ‘I heart MCR’ . By invoking the universal peace and solidarity signs, these responses mobilised an iconic repertoire that framed the responses as peaceful retaliations to terrorist attacks in solidarity with the victims and in that respect, helped to visualise and foster positive emotions in times of crisis. Indeed, the memes were articulated as the antidote (love) that can defy the brutality and hatred of terrorists. This article challenges this view in two ways. First, the article argues that the visual interventions constitute technologies of emotional governance that police subjects about whom to love, to whom solidarity should be extended and when and where those feelings should be displayed. Second, drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze on Francis Bacon, this article demonstrates that by propagating iconic representations of solidarity, peace and love, ‘meming’ attends to the logic of the sensational and the cliché and thereby falls short of contesting terrorism through sensing peace, love and solidarity. Finally, the article addresses how the violence of sensation can release the invisible forces that can be made productive in celebrating life.

Emotions and war on YouTube: affective investments in RT’s visual narratives of the conflict in Syria

“…A wealth of scholarship has demonstrated that visual media help to shape possibilities in global politics (Hansen 2011;Heck and Schlag 2013;Hoskins and O'Loughlin 2010;Merrin 2018). Yet, despite this, very little IR scholarship engages with how people actually interpret, make sense of, and express emotions towards the visual media that they view (Beattie et al 2019;da Silva and Crilley 2017;Eroukhmanoff 2019;Gillespie et al 2010;O'Loughlin 2011;Pears 2016). This paper addresses this gap by demonstrating how the concept of 'affective investment' can benefit the study of visual global politics.…”

Visual narratives of global politics in the digital age: an introduction

“…Social media is also used by radical far-right actors to promote racism, misogyny, and conspiracy theories that have resulted in acts of violence in places such as Charleston and Christchurch (Conway 2020). At the same time, social media is integral to how people nowadays respond to terrorism through expressions of solidarity (Eroukhmanoff 2019). International organisations have also been drawn to social media to rally global public support for policies such as the UN's Sustainable Development Goals; to secure funding; and to disseminate a shared and coherent foreign policy, as in the case of NATO (Wright 2019).…”

Memes, brands and the politics of post-terror togetherness: following the Manchester bee after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing

“…These attacks now enter people's lives not only via broadcast and printed media but also via social media. The latter allows people to rapidly respond to terrorism by, among other things, digitally sharing expressions of togetherness (Eroukhmanoff, 2019). The use of social media in this way can also occur later, including around anniversaries, when terror attacks are often commemoratively reactivated .…”

“…Hybrid togetherness has characterised the public responses to numerous terror attacks. For example, the public response to the January 2015 shootings at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris saw people come together under the banner of the 'Je Suis Charlie' slogan and logo not only on social media but also in the urban spaces of the French capital and other cities (Eroukhmanoff, 2019). However, 'Je Suis Charlie' was also fraught with political tensions and its inference of a universalist frame of belonging was critiqued for erasing social difference and hegemonically amplifying certain groups' perspectives over those of others (Payne, 2018;Lentin, 2019).…”