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First pages of the Cécile Canut Conference at NY University on Maison Française, February 9th 2015 : translated by Félix Danos.Cécile Canut, CERLIS, Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité"Africans" and "Roma" in France...  Instrumentalization of ordinary xenophobic discourses  Making Barbarians Such an ordinary xenophobia ?What is going on in France ? Are we experiencing the return of hatred and racism, the rise in xenophobia ? How far are the French State and media involved in the succession of xenophobic sequences that we have been witnessing since the beginning of the 21st century ? Are these sequences only linked to the current situation, and the rise of the extreme right, or rather the result of a long and complex history, particularly of colonial history as it has transformed France[1] ?Since it was Manthia Diawara who first proposed to address this issue here in New York, by linking it to my different fields of study, I would like to thank him doubly : first for his solicitude, and secondly for the relevance of this question. This question is indeed timely ! The events that France has underwent in this beginning of 2015 are the opportunity for a number of scholars and researchers to grab hold of these issues and to stand against the realism and pragmatism defended by our political leaders.Dans la suite de mes travaux, I would like to show first that the objects of hatred, are constructed as subjects reified into identity-fictions (the « Roma », « Africans », « Jewish », « Arabs », « Muslims », « migrants », « illegal aliens », etc.), and second that are somewhat interchangeable from the point of view of the population division at hand in France, whether they are considered foreigners from the inside (Roma, Europeans and children of immigrants) or from the outside (Africans, migrants...). The question is not to compare the supposed groups or communities, but to understand the process of excluding certain individuals within the Nation through discourses stemming from various enunciators (instances de parole), and each time depending on the historical social and enunciative contexts they are based on.Indeed, it seems important to me to examine both the discursive processes at work within the political class and the media since the beginning of the 2000's, and their effects on daily social and language practices. These processes and their effects are what I call elsewhere "le langagiaire"[2] -"the languagiary"-, which shapes social praxis, and involves both discourses and actions, as much against assumed "Africans" (and often against so-called French of "African" or "foreign origin"[3]) as against assumed "Roma" (who are in fact poor Romanians and Bulgarians living in slums, and whose links with the French "gens du voyage" ("travelers") are deliberately put forth since 2010). Whilst pressure from the police has been studies in French low-income neighborhoods (repeated identity check, disproportionate sentencing for the same offense[4], etc.) and to a lesser extent in the slums where the infamous "Roma" dwell (daily harassment, miscellaneous hassle, repeated eviction[5] ...), few researchers in sociolinguistics have taken interest in the ordinary manifestations of spiteful or even hateful discourses and actions against the populations that are thus categorized. La question qui nécessite d’être posée consiste à se demander si les agression… Can verbal or physical assault and the arson of slums by angry local residents ("riverains") not be the result of a xenophobia-tainted political scene since 2002. Ce qui nous amènera à nous interroger sur la circulation des des discours raciste and understand the linkage between the expression of ordinary racist discourses, the diffusion of spiteful comments by the press and the specific instrumentalization of xenophobic discourses by the political elite ?Follow the conference on : http://www.nyuiaaa.org/[1] Todd Shepard, 1962 Comment l'indépendance algérienne a transformé la France, Essais Payot, 2008.[2] Cette notion correspond au mouvement qui fait s’exercer en même temps l’activité de production et d’interprétation, du sens et de la forme, dans une interdépendance totale avec les formations discursives et les dispositifs socio-politiques au sein desquels la parole (entendue au sens très large du verbal, du paraverbal et du non verbal) émerge tout autant qu’ils les construisent en les répétant, les reproduisant, les prolongeant, ou à l’inverse en les déconstruisant pour en créer de nouveaux. Voir : Canut Cécile, 2010, « De l’Afrique des langues à l’Afrique des discours, les voix du langagiaire », Cahiers d’études africaines, L (2-3-4), 198-199-200, Paris, EHESS, p. 1163-1189.[3] Rancière J., 2011. Certains Français sont systématiquement renvoyés par l’État et les médias, à leur origine étrangère (« les Français d’origine étrangère », « deuxième, troisième voire quatrième génération » …).[4] Voir le dernier ouvrage de Didier Fassin L’Ombre du mondeUne anthropologie de la condition carcérale, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, coll. « La Couleur des idées », 2015, sur « la condition carcérale » et à propos notamment de la discrimination clairement opérée par la justice. Sur les quartiers, voire par exemple les travaux du sociologue Laurent Mucchieli.[5] Olivera M., Roms en (bidon)villes. Quelle place pour les migrants précaires aujourd’hui ?, édition rue d’Ulm, Paris, 2011; Fassin E., Fouteau C., Guichard S. et Windels A. , Roms &#38; riverains ,une politique municipale de la race, La fabrique, 2013.