The author is a historian, sociologist, writer, teacher at the Universimember of Quebec at Chicoutimi in the history, sociology, anthropology, political science and international cooperation programs and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Collective Imagination.
Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard’s book caught my attention because of the unanimously very enthusiastic reception the media gave it, and also because of the difficulty of the genre adopted. Synthesis test, identity schism. Cultural War and Quebec Imagination (Boréal, 2022) covers a wide range of complex issues relating to our society, with many returns to the past. I liked the idea of a bold young scholar not being intimidated by the magnitude of a challenge that sets even seasoned intellectuals back.
Synthesis is a demanding genre. You have to have a thorough knowledge of the subjects covered, master the thought of a host of authors and possess ample empirical knowledge. I also liked that a young essayist revive the reflection on a field already amply covered.
Falsehoods
I decided to proceed in stages, first checking the way in which the ideas of the invited authors are summarized. To keep myself on safe ground, I started with comments on my own work. To my amazement, I found that most of them are not at all faithful to my texts. Here are some examples.
According to the author, I would like to make Quebec “the United States of the North”, a country “based exclusively on political values”. I have never formulated such an idea. Like many intellectuals, however, I pleaded for the Americanness of Quebec, namely a culture open to its continental belonging (to the Americas) and not only to France. I took up an idea widespread in the nations of the New World anxious to reduce their European dependencies to also feed on their own roots.
I would have detected in the Rebellions “the beginnings of postnational Quebec”. Postnational? It’s the antithesis of anything I’ve written on the subject. I have never referred to the postnational except to distance myself from it.
On the subject of the patriots, I would have wrongly praised their conception of a nation open to all religions, to all “races”, “freed from ethnic references” – in the sense of an identity based on blood, hostile to ‘immigration. I wanted to recall, after many others, the remarkable fact that this nation dreamed of in the 1830s was already pluralistic.
I never proposed to “definitively cut the cord with Europe” (or to reject “all European heritage”). Rather, I wanted Quebec’s unequal relationship with Europe, mainly France, to be redefined to free it from its hierarchical dimension that has long inferiorized us. And you will kindly spare me here the odious of confusing my thought with that of PE Trudeau, as Beauregard does.
I would neglect the cultural dimension in my conception of the nation. How then to explain all that I have written on language, memory, identity, values, national myths? Even more, I would reject “any cultural criterion to qualify the Quebec nation”. The author refers on this point to one of my books (The Quebec nation in the future and in the past). He obviously misread (or did not read?) pages 20 to 30. And how can I ignore in all my publications and my public interventions all my reflections on national culture? My next book, which will be published soon, is called For national history…
The author evokes my “American-style independence”. Have I ever advocated for Quebec a violent revolution directed against Canada as the United States did against England? Have I ever proposed to base our nation solely on universal political values? I would nevertheless be in favor of an “American cultural appropriation”, whereas I have never deprived myself of criticizing this country.
I would reduce the French language “to the status of a common communication tool”. That’s what it should be, necessarily but temporarily (vulgarity less!) for non-French-speaking newcomers to Quebec. Cultural and identity resonances come next.
Beauregard is irritated that, in my Genesis of the Nations and Cultures of the New WorldI “constantly repeat […] that Quebec is, with Puerto Rico, the only new collectivity not to have acquired full sovereignty”. I think I’ve said it two or three times (in a 500-page book). This does not seem excessive to me considering the importance of this fact.
In Do nations still know how to dream?, I formulated a nuanced, cautious diagnosis of the current state of national myths (or transcendent values) in Quebec (p. 296 et seq.). I summarize the essence of my analysis: some myths have declined (notably the desire for political reconquest), while others exert a strong influence (freedom, democracy, feminism, social equality, pluralism, environmentalism, and others). Beauregard sums up my analysis in his own way: I would conclude that “a morose Quebec […] void of national myths” (p. 131).
I will be forgiven for having stopped there in my reading, fearing that the other authors challenged will be treated in the same way. It will have been noted, moreover, that there is no question here of agreements or disagreements on the hypotheses, ideologies or interpretations proposed; I have kept strictly to an elementary methodological dimension which raises an important ethical problem.
The essay is a different genre from the academic monograph. It gives more freedom, it authorizes to go a little beyond the established data to extend the spirit, the scope, to suggest new insights. In summary, it allows a dose of speculation thanks to which one can decide both on the land under study and on its horizons. But it forbids distorting the ideas of an author.