“What’s going on in Quebec ?!”
Posted at 6:00 p.m.
I came to interview this Scottish University professor, but first asked questions.
His name is James Kennedy and he teaches political science at the University of Edinburgh. We are in the middle of a referendum campaign on Scottish independence in 2014 and the scholar is shaking his head while reading the news from Quebec.
The man is an expert in nationalism. He did his doctoral thesis in McGill, Montreal in the middle of the 1995 referendum campaign.
His thesis is to say that contemporary nationalism in Quebec and Scotland differs from traditional nationalist movements almost everywhere in the world with their progressivism. Renనే Lewesk’s party, the Quebecois (PQ), and the Scottish National Party (SNP) were both deeply immersed in Anglo-Saxon liberalism and distanced themselves from racial nationalism.
But on that day in September 2014, the teacher did not recognize the PQ he was reading. What is this “Charter of Values”? He would ask me.
As a good educator, he did not like to comment remotely on this identity change of the new PQ, which was condemned by Parijou, Bouchard et al. But his scientific model seems to have taken over the field
The idea of the Quebec “country” took a conservative and identity-based turn in the last generation. In a documentary1 It aired on Radio-Canada on Saturday evening, with Francine Pelletier clearly telling her the slow ethnocentric skid – which was for me, at least, for most of the people she interviewed.
Sociologist Jacques Bouchemin, a major player in the intellectual shift in dominant nationalist discourse, has not come to light much in recent years. He was not only the thesis supervisor of Matthew Bock-quote, but also the speechwriter for Pauline Morois.
According to Bouchemin, after two referendum failures (1980 and 1995) and after the defeat speech of Jacques Parijou condemning “money and race votes”, Quebec nationalists developed a kind of “bad conscience.”
Bouchemin, by contrast, advocated a “re-adjustment” to the affirmation of the French-Canadian “we” in the middle of the party Quebecois’ speech – which was not hostile to him “other”. , But who is no longer afraid to call himself so.
Pauline Morois was fascinated by the idea and was the author of an important speech by Bouchemin, the first woman Prime Minister. For intellectuals, it is a question of coming to terms with Quebec’s “long history” in which progressive environments from the Silent Revolution were considered disgraceful. The role of the church, in particular, is condemned without distinction, but is inseparable from the national “survival”.
If we listen to the words of sociologist Gerard Bouchard, who is also in the documentary, this “re-adjustment” is a break from the liberal spirit that expanded the Quebec National Project from the Silent Revolution. According to him, Quebec is still living through the “ruins” of referendum failures. This “extravagant nationalism” designed to “allow everyone to identify with themselves in a collective ideal” has its day.
When we wanted to revisit the “Great Darkness” and revive the old nationalist discourse of the past, the political scientist Jean-Pierre Coucher noted the turning point of nationalism in intellectual circles. This was followed by Mario Dumont and his useless action Democrat du Quebec creating the “reasonable accommodation” crisis from the outset in 2006, as if Quebec’s spirit had been wiped out by staggering minorities. This led to the formation of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission.
Until then, the modern vision of “country” seemed to be defined around a territory, Quebec and the common language, French. But all of a sudden, “secularism” emerged as a fundamental national problem. According to Koucher, in fact, it was xenophobia and hostility towards Muslim women in particular that was included in the acceptable public speech.
The party won third place in the 2007 Cubకోcois election and wanted to respond to Mario Dumont with this new speech – which is prevalent in the CAQ government today.
Obviously 9/11, 2001, and realized that Islamic terrorism could strike in the heart of Western countries.
However, Gerard Bouchard said during his 2007 tour of Quebec with Charles Taylor that he was impressed by the quality of Quebec’s “civil culture” at these popular conferences; “98% of what we hear makes sense”, but it’s 2% of the objectionable and unacceptable things we see in the media the next day.
This Balanced Report calms the situation – perhaps innocently, as people like me are convinced.
Former Minister Louis Harrell has revealed that this change of identity has led him to quit the party Quebecois. For new leaders “the desire to invest in relationships with cultural associations or Cubans of different origins has lost all interest”. For her, it was a dead end.
Former candidate for party leadership Pierre Cerre spoke of the “tragedy”. The “Quebec Citizenship” project was promoted by Jean-Franకోois Lizzie, who wanted to submit immigrants to the Quebec exam, and all this change “closed the party to modernity, to the new Quebec that was developing around it”.
How can the younger generation not prove them right by watching the party leave Cubacois – well represented even in the documentary?
Historian and journalist Jean-Franకోois Nadeo speaks directly about ” Make America Great Again Cubacois: A retrospective perspective, rooted in “manic conservatism”.
It is interesting to note that historian Pierre Anktil speaks of a return to the anti-colonial vision that marked nationalist discourse before the 1960s.
You would guess that I adhere to the main purpose of the documentary, which mourns this contraction, this withdrawal of a particular Quebec nationalism.
But if anyone thinks about this question, this film seems more than relevant to me. It is necessary.
1. The battle for the soul of QuebecOn Tou.tv or Saturday night at 10:30 pm on ICI Télé
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