Once a month, from the pens of writers from Quebec, “ Le Devoir de literature” proposes to revisit, in the light of current events, works from the ancient and recent past of Quebec literature. Discoveries? Proofreadings? Different look? A choice. An initiative of the Académie des lettres du Québec in collaboration with The duty.
The political philosophy of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) consists of a nationalism anchored in culture and identity, having however renounced the political dimension offered by the neonationalism of the Quiet Revolution and the political project of independence. Contemporary nationalism thus seems to fall back on the celebration of singularity, pride or even resilience which are at the heart of Quebec identity. These aspects are obviously essential, but invoking them like a mantra perhaps borders on political impotence.
I do not intend to deal with the more immediately political consequences of this version of nationalism, which it is easy to see is unlikely to serve the interests of Quebec within Canadian federalism, which has already and already indicated the little fear she inspired in him. It is from a different angle that I want to debate this question through this “Duty of Literature”.
If it is true that the CAQ version of Quebec nationalism finds its sole fuel in evoking the values, history and pride that it should instill in us, it should be noted that this propensity to evoke national virtues , like the self-celebration of collective resilience, is very old in Quebec historical consciousness.
Can we try to paint a portrait of this old propensity by going back to the political situation which is at its origin? I believe that we should find traces of it in François-Xavier Garneau, one of the most eminent thinkers of the French-Canadian condition in the 19th century.e century.
François-Xavier Garneau, national historian
The 19the French-Canadian century consecrated Garneau “national historian”. Histories of Canada were written well before that which he published in three volumes between 1845 and 1848, but none had achieved this mastery and had shown the eloquence which still strikes the reader of Today. Republished in 1852 (with a fourth volume), in 1859 and in 1882, the work will later be the subject of four editions in Paris between 1913 and 1944. Those who read this History of Canada from its discovery to the present day will understand the reason why its author has been elevated to the rank of founding father of French-Canadian literature. They will find there the beautiful style of the writers of these ancient times, inclined at times to a certain grandiloquence.
Garneau’s work has been the subject of an intense historiographical debate since the publication of the first volume, in 1845. I do not intend to repeat in depth the terms of this debate, any more than biographical elements, which would take me too far from my subject and would exceed the length allocated to this article. Suffice it to recall that this work was both praised and criticized.
Praised to the skies upon its publication by a progressive petty bourgeoisie, the book, resolutely modern, is inspired as much by Voltaire and Michelet as by Guizot. This is also why he is suspect in the eyes of the clergy and the conservative fringe of this same small bourgeoisie. This first edition is particularly severe regarding the role of the Church and the imperium that it would have exercised on the community, in addition to making France responsible for the anemic development of New France.
A character marked by the ambivalence which runs through all French-Canadian thought in Lower Canada in the aftermath of the Act of Union, Garneau, despite the modernism which underlies his approach, is paradoxically associated with French-Canadian conservatism, whose influence on the community has been so deplored. How many times have we not taken up this imprecation, taken from the conclusion of the work, so full of meaning and in which we found one of the roots of French-Canadian conservatism?
“May Canadians be true to themselves, may they be wise and persevering, may they not allow themselves to be seduced by the brilliance of social or political novelties! They are not strong enough to make a career out of this. It is up to great peoples to put the great theories to the test: they can give themselves complete freedom in their fairly spacious orbits. For us, part of our strength comes from our traditions; let us move away from them, let us only change them gradually” (1852, vol. 4, p. 317).
This call for immobility and the cultural freezing of a community threatened with disappearance will constitute the recipe for survival for a long time.
A constant in Quebec historical consciousness
I leave aside the strictly historiographical dimension of theHistory of Canada by Garneau. I focus more on the identity dimension of the work. As I said, 175 years later, I seem to find there the early expression of certain themes of Quebec historical consciousness from which it is possible to draw the thread down to us and, more precisely, to the discourse politics and identity of the CAQ and Prime Minister Legault.
The themes of survival or what I have elsewhere called the “desire to last” are an integral part of Quebec historical consciousness. Let’s read Garneau and his celebration of resilience, a pivotal element of the ideology of survival. In the “preliminary speech”, he says of the French Canadians “that they have preserved this characteristic trait of their fathers, this energetic and elusive power which resides in themselves, and which, like genius, escapes the cunning of politics as at the edge of the sword. It is preserved, as a type, even when everything seems to announce its destruction.
Garneau also evokes, in this same preliminary speech of the very first edition, “the pride of the great people from whom they descend and which animates them while they are threatened, makes them reject all the capitulations that are offered to them”. In the 20the century, it was Lionel Groulx who would be one of the main laudators of French-Canadian resilience, he who celebrated survival and the unwavering desire to continue our “great adventure”.
The history of Canada that Garneau paints is that of an oppressed and unjustly devalued people. In his letter to Governor General Elgin in 1849, he wrote about his History of Canada : “I undertook this work with the aim of re-establishing the truth so often disfigured, and of repelling the attacks and insults to which my compatriots have been and still are daily the object of men who would like to oppress them and exploit them all at once. » Angry pride and a disgruntled reminder of the vanities of the past, these are the reasons for collective impotence which only finds enforcement in this evocation of the greatness of the vanquished people and whose only exploit, in the middle of the 19the century, is not yet dead.
From Garneau to us, don’t we find everywhere the trace of this restless nationalism more concerned with the sustainability of the community than with projects for the future? From Garneau’s rhetoric to that of Prime Minister Legault, it’s a bit of the same music that reaches our ears. Both contemplate the past, finding there reasons for greatness and pride. But, in both cases, it is a matter of pride without a plan and an incantatory celebration running empty.
The 1960s denounced in very harsh terms the emptiness of the ideology of survival and the paralyzing traditionalism that it would have entailed. But this judgment is undoubtedly too harsh about Garneau and his generation, that of men trapped by the unfavorable situation into which a history of oppression had plunged them and in the waters of which they struggled.
The fact of having weathered many storms and still being a part of world history is in itself an achievement considering the planned disappearance of the French-Canadian world since the Conquest, and even more so with the Act of ‘Union. We are indebted to Garneau, and to others with him, for being able to still debate the future of Quebec today while the prophecy of the Durham report has still not come true. But precisely, the most essential question for us in today’s Quebec is to know what we are prepared to do with the considerable room for maneuver that we have since acquired.
From Garneau to us
It is not a question of overwhelming the party in power in Quebec by accusing it of practicing nationalism without a plan, especially since it is not the first to adopt this posture. What runs through the history of Quebec from Garneau to us is this disposition lodged at the heart of the historical consciousness of our community which has ensured that, for 175 years, we have practiced a defensive nationalism without an emancipatory perspective. In this, we can say that the period which opened with the Quiet Revolution and which ran until the 1995 referendum was the exception rather than the rule.
These few decades of Quebec history have been the only ones since the rebellions of 1837–1838 to have associated nationalism with a political project charting a future for the Quebec nation.
Garneau, one of the first theorists of the ideology of survival, finds in contemporary nationalism and its great exponents continuators who are not very far from his conception of pride and resilience. A difference, however, separates Garneau’s nationalism from that which prevails today. Garneau writes his story in an extremely unfavorable situation following the failure of the rebellions and he has little choice but to propose a strategy of withdrawal into an imagination of grandeur.
Today’s nationalists have much broader perspectives before them. There is hardly any explanation for our nationalism without a project other than a culpable indifference to the history to be made.