Posted at 11:00 a.m.
When I saw his book in the releases of the season, the summary of which spoke of a redefinition of the Quebec political imagination in recent years around the new political parties that are Québec solidaire and the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), I was more than challenged. I quickly contacted its publisher, the house with the rich history that is Boréal, to send me a copy.
What was my surprise to learn that it was the first book of a young man of 21 years, student of the baccalaureate, “written in [ses] free time”, a book which openly claims conservative ideology, and which, well, defends it admirably well. It’s detailed, clear, fleshed out: in short, it’s the first work of someone that we will hear about for a long time in the intellectual milieu of Quebec.
It is, however, an essay which, at first glance, may seem to have been written “for his side”. But it’s for everyone, I think, really. As long as more progressive readers don’t come up against the first chapters and a few more voluntarily provocative flights (he quotes Parizeau’s famous phrase one evening in October in 1995, as well as the barely repeated title lately of a certain book by Pierre Vallières, repeatedly, as if to taunt), the logic and coherence of the Quebec center-right vision are crystal clear. It sets out the historical reasons for the recent establishment of conservatism in Quebec, many of whose roots are to be found in the reasonable accommodation crisis some fifteen years ago.
This turn reopened the throat of the eternal thirst for Quebec national roots, whose author traces the genealogy back to Lionel Groulx.
This genealogy traces the dominant paradigms of political debate in Quebec. For example: before 1995, the liberals worked very hard to sound nationalist. Afterwards, the PQ worked just as hard not to look racist. And since the story of frosted windows in a YMCA, a breach has opened a new Quebec culture war, whose victory rhymes with a redefinition of the terms of public debate. Nowadays, this war indeed brings us back to the inevitability and centrality of the idea of the nation-state, on the one hand, against, on the other hand, those who seek to maintain the dominant discourse pre -CAQ where Quebec’s historical roots were secondary to a more progressive American-style ideology.
“I’m not trying to say how things should be,” says Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard. Yes, according to him, politics today is done between belligerent silos, and no, dialogue is no longer possible these days, it seems. It’s all about gaining ground. But instead of lamenting it, Beauregard immersed himself in it.
I wondered, after hanging up with the author, if this idea of gaining ground in political warfare, to the detriment of dialogue and centrist nuance, was also the mode of operation of the intellectual world. Wasn’t I talking to someone, not taking the battlefield, either for or against them?
Certainly, I did not expect to hear about Preston Manning and John Diefenbaker in an essay on Quebec. This is perhaps his most surprising chapter, and therefore the most interesting: when, mirroring his main subject, the author retraces the tradition of those who, in Canada, have made national roots their battle horse, against a supposed post-national era. If the federal Liberals have been the natural party of government for decades, it is because they have succeeded in redefining the country’s imagination in their terms. It’s all about defining the terms of the debate, not winning it, and that’s hard to argue with, with the Conservatives themselves finding it difficult not to speak today in Trudeauist multiculturalist terms, refusing the deeply rooted assertion of identity and traditional in favor of a purely economic discourse, which is why this party seems to be in an eternal dead end.
According to Beauregard, we know that an ideology has won the culture war when its adversaries take power by defending the very ideas of this ideology.
At the heart of the dominant Canadian worldview, the author repeatedly names the ethics of care, this famous morality of care and concern for others from recent American feminist thought. He is right, this ethic percolates through every sentence of liberal public discourse. But the essayist acknowledged, during our conversation, that while Stephen Harper partly embraced the post-national Liberal agenda during his reign, it’s hard to imagine this Conservative leader thinking of anything near or near. far from the ethics of care. We laughed, Beauregard and I, thinking about that.
The major strength of this book is to recall that there is nothing wrong with national roots, with attachment to traditions, in short, with measured conservatism. The strength of these ideas is the following: they are a source of collective meaning. And it would seem that the majority of Quebecers are no longer satisfied with a political discourse that makes the economy of a clear discourse on the meaning of the word “we”. Sooner or later, a population, dare we say a people, wants to know where it comes from and where it is going.
At the very end of the book, Beauregard evokes a possible return to the table of the ideal of sovereignty. But when I submitted this idea to him, namely that the day when François Legault would return to that, it would be the end for him, my interlocutor fell in complete agreement. The war is therefore in the process of being won for their side, it is still necessary to know not to have the eyes larger than the belly.
The identity schism – Cultural war and Quebec imaginary
Etienne-Alexandre Beauregard
boreal
282 pages