La médiatisation de « l’affaire de la burqa » en France : stratégies de visibilité et crise iconique

Abstract

This article examines the media construction of a certain form of Islamic public visibility by analyzing the French regional and national press coverage of the “Burqa affair” (2009-2010). By means of a semiotic approach, and with reference to the notions of “visibility-invisibility,” “face,” and “iconocrisis,” the paper seeks to demonstrate how the Burqa affair raises questions about contemporary regimes of visibility and publicity (making public). Considering the media staging of Islam as a site of deployment of strategies of visibility, the article demonstrates how the niqab is (re)presented as both an ostentatious and an opaque sign, and as such, as the antithesis of a French Republican conception of national identity.