”Allah Akbar! On a tué Charlie Hebdo!”
Allah is great and we have killed Charlie Hebdo.
After the Attack on French Satirical Magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, the world reacted by stating, “Je suis Charlie”.
Who is Charlie, I wondered and decided to make “Charlie” into a study on the vulnerability of social reality with a goffmanian cynical sociological reading.
I thus use the case of “Charlie” as a way to conduct a double inquiry into human consciousness and the vulnerability of social reality, asking why we see “radicalization and not “stigmatization” while at the same time reflecting deeper on epistemology, ontology and axiology.
I shall endeavor to offer an alternative view on how to use theory, method and empirics by making my thesis mainly theoretical. My aim is to challenge traditional research discipline by proposing an alternative way to reflect on epistemology and ontology
I will question the dominant discourse of “radicalization” by introducing the hypothesis of “stigmatization” as a way to “see Charlie”. The stigmatization frame is a way of reflecting on the place of our “moral responsibility” as well as on where we “place” morality when we “see”. My work is philosophical-theoretical reflection on how we “see” social reality, both as social actors and as researchers. While implicitly, I might have taken a stance by the mere existence of the hypothesis of a “stigmatization” frame I have not conceived of this thesis as a political manifesto.
Rather, I have been curious to “see” what “Charlie” could tell me about the vulnerability of social reality. and I borrow the words of the invisible hand that led me through this thesis, the hand of Erving Goffman;

“I can only suggest that he who would combat false consciousness and awaken people to their true interests has much to do, because the sleep is very deep. And so I do not pretend here to provide a lullaby but to sneak in and watch the way people snore”
(Goffman, 1974; 1986, p. 14).

In this thesis, I shall “watch people snore” by asking; Who is Charlie.