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Negotiating French Muslim Identities Through Hip Hop, Mich Yonah Nyawalo

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

In The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity, Gérard Noiriel contends that in France, the modern idea of the nation emerged as a means to subvert the dominant influence of the nobility, whose rule was underwritten by the aristocratic idea that “the nation was founded on ‘blood lineage.’”1 Noiriel posits that “the revolutionary upheaval discredited not only the old order but everything that harked back to origins, so much so that the first decrees abolishing nobility were also directed against names that evoked people’s origins: an elegant name is still a form of privilege; its credit must be …