Access to the Public Sphere and the Identity of the Subject of the French Nation

International audienceIn this paper, I will discuss the access of two French social movements who represent ethno-racial minorities, struggle for visibility and make demands for recognition, to the global public sphere as it is materialized in mainstream French media. Using the Foucauldian notions of "power" (power aims not only to limit but also to change and guide the behaviour of individuals) and "subjection" (it is through being subjected to power that the subject is produced as such), I will demonstrate that subaltern social movements can reach the public sphere - understood as both a scene of appearance that is constitutive of social reality (Arendt 1994) and a space of public debate (Habermas 1997) -when the collective identity promoted by their members fits into the normative frameworks that define what and who counts as "human" in French imagined community. In other words, it is through the promotion of a heteronormative collective identity, one that is attached to a certain political system, i.e. the Republic, that subaltern social movements can reach social visibility, carry a legitimate speech and participate in the public debate. These protesting groups thus become an "effect" and a "relay" of power in the constitution of the identities of the mainstream media's "public", a "public" who is a member of the imagined community ("Us")