Picturing the Charlie Hebdo Incident in Arabic Political Cartoons

Sadam Issa Sadam Issa

doi:10.13169/arabstudquar.38.3.0562

Abstract

This article investigates how the Arabic political cartoons picture the mocking cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by the French satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine.1 It is noticed that the cartoons utilize the Charlie Hebdo incident as a locus to deconstruct the unjustness and bias of the Arabic leadership and the international community in their dealing with some Arabic political issues. The surveyed cartoons also used the Charlie Hebdo incident as a locus to formulate the Palestinian “imagined community” (Anderson, 1991). I argue that the surveyed cartoons use the strategy of “differentiation” (Meyer, 2000) based on the self vs. other dichotomy to establish this deconstruction and imagined community. The study uses the semio-linguistic and visual rhetorical tools (Barthes, 1972), and self-categorization (Turner, 1987) to achieve this deconstruction, through an analysis of semiotic-discursive aspects of a small corpus of Arabic political cartoons. The findings indicate that promoting a discourse of fear and danger toward the inside and outside actors is what constitutes this self-other-based identity.

Highlights

Some scholars recently argued that there is a trend of relying more on images than on language to communicate messages (i.e., Mitchell, 2005)
The surveyed political cartoons have communicated the following themes in their response to the mocking cartoons published by the Charlie Hebdo magazine and to the shooting of its cartoonists: criticism of the Arabic leadership, criticism of the international community, Israel as the only beneficiary actor from the Charlie Hebdo incident, and criticism of shooting the cartoonists, and criticism of the mocking cartoons
The findings of the article indicate that the cartoons under question use different strategies to provide critique of the inside and outside actors who participated in the social and political definitions of the Charlie Hebdo incident

Summary

Introduction

Some scholars recently argued that there is a trend of relying more on images than on language to communicate messages (i.e., Mitchell, 2005). Mitchell (2005) termed this process the “pictorial turn” (11) when he said that “[p]ictures with captions were transformed into talking pictures” (21). This statement perhaps explains why some “[r]eaders might prefer image presentations of social issues as a fast and easy way to stay informed” (Giarelli and Tulman, 2003: 946). Cartoons are “sometimes able to convey a complex message in a much more immediate and condensed fashion than language” (El Refaie, 2003: 87). Political cartoons as “talking pictures” become the hallmark because of their accessibility by literate and illiterate alike, and, become an influential means of expression.

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion