Resilience Against Terror in Europe: The Politics of Symbols after the January 2015 Attacks in Paris

Although the attacks of January 2015 were neither the first nor the bloodiest terrorist attacks to take place in a European capital, the public response may seem exceptional. Beyond the immediate security operations, the French State orchestrated the largest march in Paris since WW2, a march in which the EU and its member states were all represented by their highest dignitaries. Symbols tend to be an afterthought in political science analysis. However, based on a series of interviews with close advisors and members of the private offices of the French President and Prime Minister, and an analysis of public speeches and of the press, this paper argues that in the present case, symbols were central to the resolution of the social drama that struck French society. They were effectively mobilised by the French government to demonstrate the unity of the Nation and the resilience of the Republic when its core values – and symbols – were under attack. Thus, we analyse in turn 1) the breach in the social and symbolic order caused by the attacks; 2) how symbols are essential instruments of the policy response (we focus in this paper on the 11^th of January “marche républicaine”); 3) the staging of European solidarity in the defence of essential democratic values.