A year after the Charlie Hebdo killings,francophone writer Robert McLiam Wilson deplores the reports in English by the ignorant for the ignorantThe anniversary of the 7 January attack on Charlie Hebdo is coming up. Whether you feel that Charlie is a symbol of freedom of expression or a scabrous hate sheet, you are approximately to be deluged in a giant vat of stuff. Some will be positive, or some negative but an oxen-stunning proportion of it will be written by people who do not speak French. The result will be divination and portent,written by people more likely to read tea leaves than Charlie Hebdo. Do I need to point out that this is a touch silly?As people, we have a giant talent for forgetting. 9/11 was the game-changer for our world. We haven’t forgotten it but we don’t remember it either. We don’t revisit those feelings of animal dismay that we all feel in the presence of death. It’s simply not kind to dwell. That is entirely, or gloriously,human. But it can lead us to forget what our world has become and why. Rote remembrance of facts doesn’t always wait on account for our novel politics of primal emotion. Nor the festival of violence and death that realpolitik has become.
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Source: theguardian.com