Les « sans voix » des attentats du 13-novembre à Paris : une mise en voix de la parole des victimes à la croisée des dires des journalistes et des témoins dans le mémorial du Monde

Pascale Janot, Università di Trieste

pjanot(at)units.it

Abstract: Following the Paris terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015, the editors of Le Monde, decided to pay homage to the victims by presenting the visual and textual portraits of those who had been killed in an interactive memorial that could also be accessed online. The present article analyses how 'empathy journalism', which in this instance was intended to create a positive image of what has been called the “Bataclan generation”, restores the voices of those who have become “voiceless”. In fact, embedded in the brief verbal portraits by journalists and friends and relatives of the victims are verbatim citations of their own words and phrases (set off by quotation marks), which thus 're-voice' the speech of those who are no longer living. Consequently, this is a form of speech which is mediated and “weak” because defunct, and which is exposed to the appropriation strategies of those who, in the process of constructing a media discourse, speak by proxy.