INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING POLITICAL MYTHOLOGIES
In the early 1980s, the Front National (FN) introduced in its discursive arsenal the figure of Joan of Arc as a symbol of nationhood, ancestral heritage, Catholic devotion, and national pride. (1) Since 1988, the FN has held its annual march on May Day to honor Joan of Arc, holding much-publicized events to commemorate the occasion. The party's founder and former president, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was not the first to see in "la Pucelle" a symbol of an age-old culture and an emblem of patriotism. From Jean Jaures and Charles Peguy to Maurice Barres and Louis Aragon, to name a few, "the Maid of Orleans" may well be placed among these "sites of memory" (Nora) that have constituted French national identity--a site, however, as Michel Winock rightly observes, of a highly "disputed memory" (1997a, 4442). Yet, the FN's Joan of Arc gradually came to stand for a particular kind of nationalism, which appears to be differential--if not exclusionary--in nature. As former FN deputy Bruno Megret writes in National-Hebdo (May 7, 1987), "Joan of Arc is there to tell us that we belong to a community of our own, which is different from that of other people and of which we ought to be proud, because it belongs to us and to our ancestors" (in Winock 1997b). (2) Along similar lines, in Jean-Marie Le Pen's 2017 May Day speech, Joan of Arc marks the contours of the French nation as an organic, homogeneous entity, as against an unspeakable alterity that appears to prey on France. (3) Although Jean-Marie Le Pen's expulsion in 2015 for controversial remarks about the Holocaust initiated an attempt to "un-demonize" (dediaboliser) the FN and to move past its revisionist, imperialist, and racist overtones, the party demonstrates publicly an intense heteroglossia, especially with regard to issues that relate to gender and sexuality, which sets up an opposition between its ultraconservative, hard-right base and the party line, which seeks to broaden its support among the general electorate. (4) The postelectoral loss of influential party figures such as Florian Philippot (Marine Le Pen's closest adviser) and Marion Marechal-Le Pen (the third generation of the Le Pens' ruling dynasty) is indicative of these significant tensions.
However, despite its defeat in the 2017 presidential runoff and its poorer-than-expected score in the 2017 legislative elections, one is led to recognize the transformation of the FN into a major factor in the French and European establishment over the past two decades--especially amid the Middle East crisis and the overall wave of terror that has shaken major French cities since 2015, as well as the party's gradual...