The world is going crazy. Here is a statement likely to reconcile the anti-woke like the conspirators, the generations above and those below, the Trumpists and the anarchists. Each blaming the other, opposite. For virtue dwells, it is well known, in its own court. Thus God blessed, it was believed, the two armies of the wars waged in his name on the battlefields. You don’t even need religion to kill yourself. Bad faith is enough. – It is he who derails, sir, not me! – Like at school.
But there is a way to denounce the new standards of propriety at Radio-Canada, which muzzle journalists, without denying the failure of the right to evolve in other fields. In short, enough to fight excess in all directions. It is she who blurs the view.
We shoot at hue and dia. Our affluent societies intend to remain so, while rebelling against the misdeeds of greenhouse gases and deforestation that kill green and brown creatures by forcing humans to migrate far from areas where they roast all round. We have our minds elsewhere. Already the grocery bill is climbing and the covid danger is once again inviting itself to the end-of-year festivities. And sail it titanic to his iceberg.
The compromises obtained in the snatch
What will be the compromises obtained in the snatch during the signing of the agreements of the United Nations conference on biodiversity in Montreal? It’s to do. But we will have to end up accepting the concrete sacrifices in our daily lives and questioning triumphant capitalism. Humanity has good intentions, but an unquenchable thirst for comfort. And minds are all mixed up. It creates dissonant chords. When nurses are suspended for eating a peanut butter sandwich or a donut in a CHSLD, it’s because the managers have fallen on their heads. Obviously, they will have been afraid of being insulted by fundamentalists of the box if they kept such scoundrels in their bosom. That says the atmosphere… Back to Miserables of Victor Hugo, when Jean Valjean went to rot in prison to have
stole a loaf.
We laugh our ass off in Quebec. So let’s laugh. It lets off steam without adjusting much. Invaded by a swarm of comedians, the cultural milieu also finds itself sandwiched between the two currents of the day: either the petrified status quo, or blind adherence to new social norms of tolerance.
The museum universe
Take the museum universe. If he seemed destined, beyond the upheavals of the hour, to keep a watchful eye on the safeguarding of his heritage by favoring informed decisions, the crisis at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa cries out something quite different. Minute turns are taken under the leadership of Angela Cassie, acting director since the departure last summer of Sasha Suda (herself highly contested). Goal of the brassiere-comrade: to decolonize the establishment. Of course, this museum must, like its peers, become a window on the world and further integrate the heritage of the First Peoples through its collections and access.
The fact remains that the sweepings are so vigorous there, and that the dismissal of the chief curator of Aboriginal art, Greg A. Hill, seems so incongruous to this sign that we remain bewildered. Enough to support the protesters. Many there protest against rapid and irrevocable changes, fearing, among other things,
weaken the public’s knowledge of the precious collections. The inevitable tip of the hat to Riopelle’s 100th anniversary was lip serviced there. Honoring another white man made management wince.
However, there is a way to open the game without dumping treasures from the past.
In the broom cupboards?
Artistic considerations are repressed within the very confines of a museum. Amazement! Will we soon have to relegate our flagship works to broom cupboards? Who takes the time to measure the enormous challenges of an institution dedicated as much to memory as to innovation? The basic analysis, the vision of the future, the judgment, these volatile substances born of the sense of history and culture, are losing popularity. It speaks to the devil…
So I read a little essay published by Statégikus which made me smile, despite the sometimes absurd leads and outrageous tone. Under the sweet title Towards the brutalization of the human species, its author, the Quebec engineer Romain Gagnon, knocks on all the drifts. That of the culture of banishment, that of the conspiracy theorists, that of the climatosceptics, that of the madmen of God and company. And seeing someone looking for seeds of common sense in the ambient madness without confining themselves to a single camp made me believe for a moment in the return of total questioning under the mist of the day.