Agency (mis)recognition in international violence: the case of French jihadism

The three stages of misrecognition and agency

The Phenomenology of Spirit traces the thought process from consciousness to absolute knowledge. Hegel’s aim is therefore not to analyse the struggles of real social groups. Hegel himself, however, takes up some of the categories of the master–slave dialectic presented in The Phenomenology of Spirit and in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right in order to explain inter-state conflicts. He considers that the value of a political community is reflected in the ability of its citizens to risk their survival to assert their sovereignty. ²⁰ Hegel’s premise throughout The Phenomenology of Spirit is the idea that actors are in the quest for self-consciousness. What seems crucial here is that Hegel presumes that recognition requires autonomous agency that has to be exteriorised in the outside world.

Let me reformulate, the Hegelian conception of (mis)recognition through agency: (a) escaping misrecognition by the destruction of objects; (b) escaping misrecognition by the sovereign power to act independently; and (c) escaping misrecognition through formative activity. ²¹

Recognition by destructive agency: the power to act negatively in relation to objects

Hegel develops the analysis of recognition in Chapter B, section IV, Selbstbewusstsein (self-consciousness), which he conceived as a step towards absolute knowledge, before the emergence of reason, mind, and religion. In the first stage of self-consciousness – the consciousness of having consciousness – consciousness is split. It now has two objects: the external object to it (sense-certainty) and the object reflected into itself. It stays at this abstract level. Consciousness therefore seizes life in order to become active and ensure its existence. Desire (Begierde) is for Hegel this concrete manifestation of self-consciousness, which first comes into contact with the organic world (eating, drinking, reproducing). ²² Thus, in the first stage, self-consciousness tries to obtain a sense of the self by consuming and destroying objects.

Absolute sovereignty: the power to act independently

In consuming the object, the subject annihilates the very thing by which it claimed its identity and must therefore permanently reaffirm its self-consistency (Selbstbestandigkeit) beyond consumption. ²³ In order to stabilise itself, the subject turns itself into to another subject. The quest for recognition through the desire of the other’s desire becomes the essential condition to reassure oneself of the existence of self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein). The subject no longer wants to assert itself only through its own negation or destruction, but rather through the absolute domination over another self. The subject intends to have itself recognised through the lowering of others to the role of slave, by depriving them of their independence. The master becomes the master because, according to Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit, he is able to assert his value by exposing himself to death. ²⁴ This assertion is linked to agency insofar as the master proves that he is not driven by other forces but only by his own will. In his capability to give his life the master proves his independence from social determination. The master then asserts his self-consciousness through negation of the value of his own life as well as that of others.

On the contrary, the slave becomes a slave by choosing to save his life rather than giving away at all costs his being and therefore revealing his dependence on life. At this stage, the slave is not able to perform agency. He is driven by fear of death and he can give nothing of his ‘self’, that is to say something that belongs to him and that might reveal and express his own self-consciousness. The absolute negation of the slave’s independence – its assignment to the opposite pole of heteronomy – presents a strong form of misrecognition. Conversely, recognition presumes the recognition of independence. Entirely dependent actors – heteronomous – cannot be recognised and will struggle to arrive at self-consciousness. Even the master will finally fail to obtain pure recognition because it is impossible to be recognised by inferiors.

Formative doing of the slave and mutual recognition of the reciprocity of the power to act and to give

One could ask how the master might recognise the slave and whether this could be related to increased agency capabilities of the slave. As mentioned by Frederic Jameson: ‘it is not quite accurate to say that the Master is thereby the truth of the Slave, for the Master has become a mere drone, for whom the Slave labors and whom he provides with the luxuries and necessities of life’. ²⁵ What seems for Hegel decisive is that the master loses by his parasitic existence and inactivity, a sense of the self. In the meantime, the slave realises his own existence. Central to this process of recognition is the formative doing of the slave. As noted by Hegel: ‘so too servitude in its consummation will really turn into the opposite of what it immediately is; as a consciousness forced back into itself, it will withdraw into itself and be transformed into a truly independent consciousness’. ²⁶ The key to this independent consciousness is work:

Such work is not so much productive but it is for Hegel an objectivation of subjectivity. Clearly this kind of work is not understood as repetitive, industrialised, and alienating. Work is interpreted by the young Marx as a process of externalising human abilities and reflects the rhythm of ‘handicraft production, insofar as the artisan is still able to recognise himself in the thing produced, in the matter thereby formed’. ²⁸

Hegel suggests that there might be at term a relation of mutual recognition. Such a situation would require a balance of agency. The two subjects are both ‘donors’ and ‘recipients’. It is only if both subjects accept each other as actors that they might achieve something close to mutual recognition. Hegel puts it, for self-consciousness, its ‘action is thus ambiguous, not only because it is an action against itself just as much as against the other, but also in so far it is inseparably the action of one just as much as it is as it is of the other’. ²⁹ Mutual recognition thus understands the other to be performing the same actions as itself. Such mutual recognition enables an empathic reciprocity of actors: the ‘I’ recognises itself in the other recognising the ‘I’.

Hegel’s consideration of (frustrated) recognition desire for the quest of creative agency is a particularly stimulating starting point. ³⁰ We can identity three stages in which actors cope with misrecognition through the exercise of agency. In the first stage subjects with no previous agency may prove their identity through consumption and/or destruction. In the second stage, subjects try to overcome misrecognition by the quest of recognition from other subjects through absolute sovereignty and their contempt of death. Finally, subjects may cope with misrecognition by formative work that enables them to achieve autonomous self-consciousness.

Of course it would be artificial to transpose the master–slave dialectic to the empirical study of French jihadism. However, Hegel’s work opens several paths for the study of international violence in general: first, violence/destruction/sacrifice through contempt of death might procure to misrecognised actors a sense of power/agency and therefore a sense of self. Second, while misrecognition is the normal condition of subjects, situations producing more misrecognition than others also exist. If we take the master–slave dialectic, the source of strong (mis)recognition is twofold. The first is related to lack of autonomy in intersubjective relations. Actors simply executing the orders of others will not be able to get a sense of themselves. In accordance with this perspective, I will later ask whether young Muslims engaged in political violence are more affected than other young Muslims in France by the perception that in world politics Muslims suffer from a lack of international sovereignty. ³¹ For example, do these young Muslims identify themselves with oppressed Muslims in Palestine, Syria, or elsewhere. The second source of misrecognition is more related to objects and the impossibility to exert creative agency through work. While for Hegel the slave is eventually able to carry out formative work to enable some self-consciousness, Marxists interpretations of the master–slave dialectic have pointed out that routinised, low qualified work leads to alienation and the impossibility to achieve a sense of the self. Our related question regarding jihadist young Muslims is to explore whether they have suffered more so than other young French Muslims from professional-social inactivity or are stuck in low qualified work.

Mauss and The Gift

While Hegel focuses on how subjects attempt to achieve self-consciousness in order to get a sense of the self, he provides no detailed answer to the question of how subjects prove their value in society. The Gift by Marcel Mauss ³² provides some points for discussion here. Nowhere better than Mauss’s Gift can we find such a wealth of empirical ethnographic information resonating with the philosophical fable imagined by Hegel. Marcel Mauss speaks of practices such as fights until death for prestige, in the case of potlatch, or less extreme fights in the case of kula. The comparison between The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Gift is striking. ³³ It allows us to provide to give an empirically founded response to the question of what constitutes the value that actors want to see recognised. Actors seek to have their generosity and their ability to give recognised.

I will mobilise in the following section this second theoretical resource to explore further the link between misrecognition and agency. I will contribute to Hegel’s insight that subjects strive to obtain a sense of their existence through effectivity of their agency with the Maussian perspective, that a valued contribution requires a kind of counter-gift from others, some positive feedback, or even gratitude. ³⁴ Finally, I will also show that for Mauss, misrecognition is provoked by inflated ideals of sovereignty. The origins of such a sovereign ideal are less rooted in world politics but what we would call today patriarchal socialisation.

Misrecognition as depreciation of creative agency though lack of reciprocation

Mauss suggests that recognition requires social activity. In The Gift, he is mainly concerned with what constitutes the particular value of a subject and social group. While economists consider that value is produced by the accumulation of resources, Mauss argues that the social value of subjects depends on their ability to give or even to waste resources. Thus, it is through their ability to give something to others that subjects obtain a sense of their value. Similarly to Hegel, Mauss articulates social activity with a sense of a self. Mauss does not employ the notion of the gift as something limited to material objects but in a wider sense as something that you offer to others in the expectation to create a relation. Thus hospitality and offering precious or worthless objects belong to a same category of gift. It is important here to understand that for Mauss the gift is associated with a ‘hau’. In the indigenous society ‘hau’ means ‘spirit of the thing’ and is associated with he who gives. In other words a gift does not only present itself but also the person who offers it.

From what follows, it is possible to capture how misrecognition is produced. First of all, a subject can refuse a gift. In this case this refusal is not only the denial of a special object but also of the person who gave it. In the second case, the gift is accepted but not reciprocated. In both cases the ‘giver’ will feel that he is not treated with the respect he deserves. What links both – refusal to accept the gift and non-reciprocation – is that the ‘performed’ gift of the giver and therefore the giver himself is misrecognised. The expression misrecognition in this case is the lack of gratitude. Concerning the Trobriand Islands, Mauss alludes to solicitous gifts offered to gods and spirits that corresponds to some remuneration. As he notes: ‘They are marks of gratitude and hospitable welcome and must be reciprocated’. ³⁵

Thus the decisive contribution of Mauss with Hegel is that subjects do not only want to recognise themselves in their objects but also to obtain value from other for what they have done. People expect recognition in proportion to the gifts they gave or they are able to give. Thus, social actors yearn for the recognition of their value, ³⁶ along with the satisfaction of their interests, and this recognition implies their power to give. Mauss suggests in his analysis that the gift cycle with its three obligations to give, receive, and reciprocate is a source of social cohesion if the exchanges are balanced.

Patriarchal socialisation and the potlach ³⁷

Unlike most perspectives on recognition, the Maussian one suggests that expectations for recognition are not uniform rather depend on what actors believe they have given and/or are able to give in the future. ‘Powerful’ actors, or those who wish to be powerful, probably have an expectation for greater recognition than actors with fewer resources. The more actors have given, or consider they have given, the more likely they are also contest their subordinate position.

For Bourdieu, the ‘gift’ in question can be economic and cultural. ³⁸ However, the gift can also be moral and physical. Actors socialised into ‘virility’, may well display physical courage ³⁹ and engage in practices of ‘potlatch’. Mauss shows that actors socialised into patriarchal ideals such as North American tribes will not be satisfied with equal recognition in the cycle of the gift and counter-gift, unlike the more egalitarian dynamic of the Kwakuitl. The purpose of the potlach is not to obtain a counter-gift and to establish continuous relations. It is mainly antagonistic. The recipient of this gift should not be able to render it. Its main purpose is to establish total dominance over others and to humiliate them through ostentatious gifts. As noted by Mauss: ‘To give is to show one’s superiority, to be more, to be higher in rank, magister. To accept without giving in return, or without giving more back, is to become client and servant, to become small, to fall lower (minister).’ ⁴⁰ In such societies, the ‘value’ of men is related to their potential to display absolute dominance over others and to the ability to risk their own life as the master in his fight with the slave. Thus, while social relations and cooperation are critical to societies of Big Men who practice ceremonial exchanging, such cooperation is non-existent or highly secondary in societies of Great Men where prestige is accorded to warriors who have risked their own lives and caused the most deaths. ⁴¹

Operationalisation of Hegel and Mauss to the study of agentic misrecognition and jihadist violence

How might we transpose Maussian insights into world politics? In particular, will the ideal of inflated masculinity with its values of dominance and contempt for death render actors more sensitive to feelings of powerlessness and misrecognition than a less gendered socialisation?

In particular, I understand the notion of gift in International Relations not in its literal sense but in a Maussian spirit, as the social contribution of an actor to a given society. This contribution does not mean that an actor gives something in an altruistic way, it implies that the actor seeks to shape the (inter)national environment. This formative agency implies, on the one hand, being considered an actor in this society/system with a degree of autonomy, on the other, ⁴² it implies that these actors can contribute to this society in function of their capabilities. It is my objective to identify situations of extreme misrecognition induced by paralysed formative agency.

What constitutes a gift in world politics? ⁴³ In contemporary societies, the estimated value of an individual depends largely on his work. Thus, wage is an important indicator of the estimated contribution of an individual to society. According to a Hegelian perspective, work provides gratification to an actor in terms of his ability to contribute to a product. Thus, if work is precarious, less gratifying, and mechanical, it will weigh on an individual’s creative agency and value. ⁴⁴ Furthermore, drawing on a more Maussian perspective, I examine whether work is rewarded by an appropriated counter-gift (say in the form of a decent salary). Furthermore, in most societies, individuals are also evaluated by their ability to love and care for others, such as through finding a partner and founding a family. Thus, individuals who are unemployed or have precarious work and live in solitude are likely to feel little recognition.

Regarding world politics, I would like to explore the question of sovereign agency discussed in the introduction. As in any system of interactions, there are standards in international relationships that determine who is sovereign and what kind of actor can be recognised. The core of international sovereignty is diplomatic recognition of states. ⁴⁵ This recognition accords specific rights to its members. To the contrary, exclusion, such as through the non-respect of sovereignty, is a clear sign of a negation of agency, presenting a situation of blatant ‘misrecognition’. ⁴⁶ For instance, colonised people were not recognised as actors, and consequentially had no right to ‘give’. They merely received ‘gifts’ considered as valuable for great powers, such as the projection of their military and technological power. They were ‘civilised’, that is to say reduced to passive recipients. Conversely, the value of great powers was assessed according to the number of people ‘civilised’ under their control.

What does this perspective have to say about individual French jihadists who by definition are not collective state actors? My interviews suggest that French jihadists aspire to ideals of sovereign agency; indeed, they often identify with oppressed Muslims seen to have little of such agency. Individuals tend to identify with collective actors such as a religious community, a nation, or a state. For this study, I hope to demonstrate how jihadists identified with Muslim communities perceived to have little or no creative agency. Furthermore, in a more Maussian perspective, I will also pay attention to possible feelings of ingratitude, for example, with respect to the contribution of Muslims for France during the World Wars or in the context of colonisation.

Finally, in line with the conceptualisation of relative agentic misrecognition outlined in the introduction to this Special Issue, I will probe whether Muslims involved in jihadist violence are particularly attached to ideals of patriarchal society through, for example, physical domination, dominant behaviour, or contempt for death.

Research questions

Before analysing my empirical material I will briefly summarise my research questions concerning agentic misrecognition and how it relates to the theoretical perspectives of Hegel and Mauss. I examine four main thematics linked to agentic misrecognition.

1. 1. Subjective experiences. What are the subjective representations of jihadist actors, and especially what are their grievances? Are they expressed in terms of misrecognition? Are jihadist grievances due to the fact that they consider themselves both despised and exposed to the stigma of powerlessness? In line with the Hegelian perspective, do they consider that they are deprived of agency, visibility, and meaningful existence? In line with a more Maussian perspective, do they feel undervalued by French society?

2. 2. Agency expectations. What are the political objectives of jihadists? If the thesis in the introduction is on the right lines, at least in the medium term, jihadists should be influenced by a matrix of state sovereignty. Can we say that the sovereign agency expectations of jihadists are particularly high? Do they identify with state symbols and absolute ideals of sovereignty? Furthermore, are jihadists particularly attached to ideals of patriarchal society? Do Muslims engaged in jihadism participate in and practise, for example, fighting sports?

3. 3. Internal agentic (mis)recognition: work and family. Do individuals engaged in jihadism tend to carry out repetitive, mechanical work or does work provide them with gratification in terms of their ability to contribute autonomously to a final product? As suggested in the section on the Hegelian perspective, actors with subordinated and mechanical work may have difficulty to reach self-consciousness. Furthermore, drawing on a more Maussian perspective, I will explore whether subjects are engaged in an exchange cycle of gift and counter-gift and examine whether jihadists exercise a profession with a possibility for positive reciprocation from others. Clearly professions with intense social interactions and are valued highly by society should correspond well to the idea of the Maussian gift. ⁵⁰ This could be the case for high- and low-skilled employment, for example hairdressers, teachers, or doctors. Individuals integrated in chains of reciprocity have opportunities to feel valued. Furthermore, if individuals are also appreciated in relation to their ability to love and care for other, I ask whether jihadists invest in personal relations and whether they are integrated in an exchange cycle of friendship?

4. 4. International agentic misrecognition. I argue that jihadists tend to identify with oppressed Muslims having little agency and who aspire to sovereign agency. The theme of deprived agency closely reflects the heteronomous situation of the servant at the start of the dialectic. In a more Maussian perspective, I will also examine whether French jihadists feel that past contributions of Muslim communities to France or modern civilisation are believed to be negated. For example, do they consider that Muslims are not respected for their achievements in wars? More recently, this could also be extended to the place of ‘Muslim contribution; in France’s success in the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Thus, the underlying thesis is the following: regarding the case of French jihadists, it is hypothesised that the gap between agentic expectations and realisation will be particularly prominent and this is likely to produce perceptions of misrecognition. Such misrecognition is based on the perception that French and ‘Western’ societies do not sufficiently value contributions from Muslim individuals and groups. The misrecognition agency gap will be particularly important if strong sovereign ideals fuelled by patrichal socialisation go hand-in-hand with limited social agency.

The first step is to explore the experienced dimension of jihadist engagement, emphasising the link between capacity to act and feelings of ignorance. ⁵¹ As a second step, I will consider the sociological and normative dimensions that motivate feelings of powerlessness among jihadist actors. To put it simply, frustration and violence are essentially the result of a discrepancy between a transnational, patriarchal socialisation, stimulating agentic expectations and the ability of these actors and the Muslim community to contribute to national and international society. I associate patriarchal socialisation with activities such as watching action films, joining gangs, and practising combat sports. I contend that this is not associated with a specific religion. The jihadist’s opportunity to exercise agency might be limited by a professional situation characterised by little investment and implication, which is poorly valued by others. Feelings of injustice and powerlessness are also fuelled by contact with discriminated Muslim populations abroad. This discrepancy does not necessarily lead to violence but constitutes a breeding ground for jihadist engagement.

Ideals of state sovereignty

Even our interviewees with a generally low level of education are concerned with the ideal of state sovereignty, which remains a matrix of their political fight. After all it is clear that most of them do not condemn the political form of the Islamic State. We can observe identification with a demarcated territory, an administration, a regular army, and a flag. Thus, one of the detainees, Abel, critiqued French people for their lack of patriotism. This negative view of French disunity is repeated several times, leading to a glorifying speech of the patriotic posture, here assimilated to the Russian nationalism:

Some jihadists, linked to al-Qaeda and criticising the excessive violence of ISIS/Daesh, divulged their fascination for the Organization of the Islamic State, whose modernity and fighting success seemed to galvanise them. This point supports Bert Klandermans’s intuition that the success of a social movement lies in the hope of success that one places in it, a well-known phenomenon of the self-fulfilling prophecy. ⁵² For another detainee, Paul, it is precisely the state centric character of ISIS that is attractive:

Thus, Paul opposes the scenic grandeur of ISIS that fascinates him compared to Osama bin Laden (al-Qaeda)’s outdated style.

The matrix of the sovereign state form a part of the interviewee’s critique of Western imperialism, which they often oppose to the right to political autonomy. So for Elie who insists that he did not leave France to die as a martyr: ‘I stayed a few days after the offensive, it was tough, but it was not planned because I did not go there to fight and die.’ However, to a certain extent Elie shows a fascination for the Islamic State. For Elie, their fight is part of a broader fight against a ‘predatory imperialism’ and the attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State in Europe are considered legitimate as they intend to punish the States, which intervened in Iraq and Syria led by France: ‘There is no need for an expert to know that is obvious, this is a legitimate response because we must also see what is bombed in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan … everywhere hospitals are bombed.’

If the other is often simply described as a kuffar against whom the use of violence is a priori legitimate, we can also observe that they accept the idea of a political group unified by sovereign will. The way in which jihadists unify the adversary reflects their adherence to the principle of general will embodied in state action. In a somewhat surprising way, one interviewee believes that the attacks of November 2015 are part of a democratic script because the French elected a government bombing Muslims. The choice of the Stade de France as a target also seems coherent because no ‘good Muslim’ should support the French team. In short, multiple identities and loyalties are seen as impossible, and even with respect to sporting activities, this interviewee imagines a sort of unity between people and national symbols. Similarly, the interviewees’ framing of the other is highly reductionist. Seven of the thirteen actors seem animated by conspiracy theories about world politics, which is not the prevailing cognitive variable but remains important. Enemies are often presented in aggregates. See the following excerpt from Elie’s interview:

This framing does not leave much room for compassion because the opponents are totally depersonalised and appear as a hostile collective.

Violence as destructive agency

Concretely, a violent act is connected to the objective of regaining recognition through agency, which is first reflected in their justification of violence. Two types of arguments can be identified. First, violence seems to be a mean of subjectifying the Muslim world. Thus, one of the interviewees praised the attacks on 9/11 because he said that it awakened the Muslim community. Choukry said he was fascinated by the 9/11 attacks because it was symbolically strong, demonstrating the desire of Muslims to take back control. He opposes the strategy of al-Qaeda, based on the return of pride, to the one of Daesh, which he considers as too violent: ‘9/11 awakened Muslims, while the Bataclan stigmatised them.’ Justifications often go hand-in-hand with self-presentation as sovereign and dominant when the interviewees believe for example that Western countries would not have the courage to confront the Muslim world because it is much less ‘effeminate’ than its decadent adversaries.

In a more ‘humanitarian’ register, still linked to the affirmation of an ability to act, the armed engagement in Syria presented a way to help the ‘Muslim brothers’ and to save innocent lives, mainly children and women. Elie commented:

It is also striking to see that almost all of our interviewees refused to consider themselves as victims. They insisted on their lucidity and the free will in their political engagement. They fiercely rejected the sociological discourses insisting on their stigmatisation in French society, which they considered as infantilising. ⁵³ The concern to be accepted as ‘sovereign’ was central. In short, despite these variations, there is a clear articulation between violence and the desire to project a sovereign, ‘powerful’, and noble image of oneself, to escape the stigma of weakness and to be recognised as a true ‘giver’ in national or international society. ⁵⁴

Grievances: the wound of powerlessness

The interviewees generally confirm what we call misrecognition through denial of the ability to act. This denial is characterised by a feeling that others (French society) do not give to a group the opportunity to shape it through an autonomous ability to act. A large majority of interviewees share the idea that they and the Muslim community suffer from discrimination. Among the most influential factors in the psychological sphere, emphasis on the discrimination of the Muslim community and the minimising of the Muslim status in France is noteworthy. Even if only one interviewee stressed this aspect, the others considered that being Muslim is a problem in France and that they have experienced discrimination.

If we examine in more detail what feeds such a feeling of discrimination, it seems that international grievances (reference to international conflicts) play a decisive role. In a substantial number of cases, interviewees demonstrated a strong sense of anti-imperialism. If we look even more closely at the interviews, we can observe a lexical field of frustration and a feeling of powerlessness: the Muslim community in the world would have long been reduced to slavery and domination, and now the time has come to revolt. As one interviewee declares:

The feeling of powerlessness also stems from a feeling among the interviewees that they continue to live in a situation of colonisation in France. Several of them seemed ashamed at having parents that ‘make carpets’ for French people. Achir describes his parents as good workers, only concerned with the financial aspect but completely disinterested in politics:

Labri seemed troubled by his identity: ‘I am someone lost, I don’t know where I come from.’ This led him to conduct research in Algeria and France on his paternal and maternal family roots. In a slightly different register, Larbi recounts a few episodes of violence from a father described as ‘a great drinker’, ‘a party boy’, ‘a gambler’, while minimising the impact of these episodes on him. He also criticises his father for abandoning his cultural particularity. Finally, Abel compares him to his uncle from Algeria ‘He was a shepherd, he meditated a lot, worked constantly and educated his children.’ Abel is quite critical of his parents, whom he accuses of abandoning their religion and of overly complying to the demands of society: ‘For them, to be upright it’s going to school and working in order not to do anything stupid.’ Finally, Paul also critiques his mother: ‘When she converted to Protestantism, she forced me to go to church, but I didn’t find any pleasure from going.’

Restrictions on a jihadist’s ability to act

Concerning a jihadist’s ability to act, we focused on work associated with the idea of the master–slave dialectic as the catalyst of self-consciousness and of the ultimate value of the slave. As stated, the depreciation of the contribution made by an individual/social group to society does not only result from unemployment but also from precarious work that cannot be considered as a vocation, a Beruf. In short, any work that is perceived as merely servile and precarious without any major social ties with employees or society at large can be considered as a source of agency frustration. Potential frustrated agency is also caused by the identification of an individual with Muslim groups in precarious employment, as was the case for Mohammad Sidique Khan, an educator and instigator of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, who strongly identified with unemployed people, prostitutes, and drug addicts from his British Pakistani neighbourhood of Beeston. ⁵⁶

What can be perceived in the international system as an extreme denial of an actor’s ability to act? Perhaps, the exposure of actors to torture or government oppression. Muslim actors can identify themselves with oppressed groups through travel or the Internet. Of course, we believe that not all actors act in a uniform way to such disparagement. What determines the violent action is also the positive perception of physical force as an appropriate response to determine the group’s social value when facing challenges to its honour. We believe that individuals socialised into a patriarchal environment are likely to respond to challenges to their honour with force; a man must always impose himself through his physical strength and contempt for death. Such a socialisisation will lead to a particularly strong claim to exercise a kind of absolute sovereignty. ⁵⁷

Precarious professional situations and experiences of powerlessness

First of all, individuals seen as radicalised often come from stigmatised social groups: underprivileged neighbourhoods characterised by failing schools, petty crime, and claims about abusive and disrespectful police controls. However, in our small sample only a minority of people fell into this profile. Our interviewees can be characterised by their ‘biographical availability’, ⁵⁸ that is to say their lack of investment in professional and personal relationships. This availability is also characterised by precariousness/absence from work and absence of a partner and children. It is a strong explanatory factor for nine of our interviewees. None of the interviewees appear to be engaged in family life that might prevent them from taking part in a violent act.

As mentioned above, the subjective experience of the interviewees often reflects the feeling that France does not include Muslims in its Republic, the contribution made by French Muslims is not recognised. Choukri, while affirming his adherence to ‘French values’, insists at the same time on his suffering as a Muslim and likens himself to a ‘circus freak’:

Achir refuses to acknowledge that democracy, which he believes does not function, can prevail over Islam:

For Omar, a whole system of thought is attributed to ‘republicanism’ specific to France, which prevents Muslims from climbing the social ladder:

Generally speaking, they are complaining about a lack of integration and the idea that the French do not consider the Muslims as belonging to their society, which is accompanied by complaints about a lack of professional opportunities. ⁵⁹ The lexical field of the population reflects a feeling of misrecognition with repeated reaffirmations that ‘We are not sheep’, ‘We are despised’, that the ‘cops’ are racist and that the offenses endured in public places are motivated by their religion. The feeling of powerlessness is reinforced by the fact that almost all of the respondents who were second-generation immigrants stressed the ‘sheep-like’ behaviour of their parents.

The perception of ingratitude of Muslims contribution to French society

In our sample there is also the strong idea of ingratitude towards what Muslims contributed to French society in general. There is the widely accepted idea in our interviews that whatever Muslims do for France, they are not recognised for it. Many of our interviewed jihadists consider that Muslims have contributed to France’s wealth and international standing. Knowledge of past achievements of Islam civilisation is in great part due to personal readings (such as François Burgat’s work) ⁶² and jihadist propaganda. It is not my proposal here to examine the mechanism that explains how jihadists are exposed to such propaganda that has always a historical reference in social reality. I will only point to the narrative underlying the basic perception that Muslims have ‘given’ a great deal to France but are not at all rewarded for this gift. Thus, for Elie, the massacres in Palestine can be compared to those committed by French forces in Algeria and he emphasises that he was simply excluded from his class of history when he referred to such colonial atrocities.

Another perception of ingratitude relates to criticism of French republicanism. The interviewees considered that French ‘laicité’ is a pretext for suppressing contributions made by Muslims to France. Such is the case of Ghassan who complained of feeling stigmatised in his work because of his ‘Muslim beard’. Somewhat paradoxically, one might argue that the extreme French ideal of a sovereign nation that is ‘one and indivisible’ produces in a dialect the aspiration for absolute sovereignty among French militants of the Islamic state.

Patriarchal socialisation and jihadist commitment

A large number of radicalised Islamists have undergone a ‘patriarchal’ socialisation that makes them particularly sensitive to an incapacity to act in society. This socialisation could be seen to predispose them to react with ‘firmness’ or even with violence to ‘offenses’. However, I am not suggesting that a violent reaction is an automatic response to misrecognition. Options are plural: apathy, political mobilisation, or non-violent resistance.

The cult of manhood may be characterised by the belief that a ‘real man’ must be dominant in social relationships, prove and use his physical resources, and be willing to risk his life to preserve his honour and protect his own kind. As mentioned above, we note that most respondents evolve in an environment that can be described as ‘highly masculine’: body building, practise of combat sports, interest in technical studies or socialisation in youth gangs. From a subjective point of view, the respondents often expressed their desire to be physically and morally strong and not to appear like ‘wimps’ like their non-Muslim compatriots. In the same way, we noted a strong rejection of homosexuality. The fact that a growing number of women leave for Syria does not necessarily invalidate the role of the hero protector’s identity for radicalisation. It seems that some women encourage this dominant role of the protective man or even partially identify with masculinity. The evolution of the international scene and especially the situation in Syria provides a catalyst for the activation of self-identity as a protective hero. A large number of young people feel that it is their duty to protect their ‘brothers’ who are loosely attacked by a perverse and unscrupulous regime while seeing in the inaction of Western governments the proof that Muslims are merely objects of Western domination.

It would be interesting to dig deeper into the role of a patriarchal socialisation in the jihadist career. We noticed ‘a warlike virilism’ assumed by about half of the respondents. In responding to our question about the purpose of war waged by jihadists in the face of an objectively superior military apparatus, Abdel points to the impossible Western victory over many military sites and the intrinsic weakness of a West without ‘War capital’:

Abdel adds to this historical observation his disdain for a Western society, turned towards satisfaction of immediate pleasures and spiritually incapable of engaging in an effective war:

Abdel also practises combat sports like the vast majority of jihadists we met: ‘I used to do a kind of Muay Thai boxing mixed with other martial arts … I also did Thai boxing and normal boxing … here … basically, that’s it!’ This attachment to aggressive sporting activities is coupled with a discourse rejecting victimisation: ‘A true Muslim does not complain, it is a basic rule. He does not have to say they did this to me or they did that to me.’ Paul, in the same way, emphasises his sporting practise and does not hesitate to link it directly to his militant commitment: ‘I really like sport; I started at 13, I was doing boxing, Thai boxing, yeah, I always played sports … it was important to prepare [Question: prepare for the fight]. Yeah, get ready for jihad. The moment when I prepared myself the most was when I was with the Chechens in Egypt.’ Paul is referring to his shared apartment with Chechen iihadists in Cairo for several months where they practised martial arts.

Arguably, then, jihadist misrecognition is shaped by frustrated agency ideals of ‘patriarchalism’. Experience of misrecognition can be resumed as the result of an extreme gap created by a difference between inflated agency expectations fuelled by ideals of sovereignty and patriachalism and limited possibilities to express creative agency in French society, which I have argued here is largely due to repetitive, mundane work as well as identification with oppressed Muslims in world politics seen to be deprived of any sovereign agency.