Posted at 11:00 a.m.
I watched with great interest Francine Pelletier’s recent documentary, Battle for the soul of Quebec, featuring sociologist Jacques Beauchemin. I had come across his name in connection with younger thinkers he influenced, such as Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard and Mathieu Bock-Côté, but I had never read his books.
In the film, he is presented as the intellectual source that tipped Quebec nationalism towards a more identity-based side. His first work, Too much history, had marked Pauline Marois a few years before her accession to power to such an extent that she requested a meeting with the man. It was during this interview that he insisted on the fact that it was necessary to remove the bad conscience linked to the historical roots of our identity, because the pluralist civic nationalism, then in vogue, did not arouse any real collective passion. . Whatever one may think of all this, there is something deeply exciting for an intellectual to see a colleague having such a direct impact on his homeland.
Beauchemin told me on the phone that he didn’t like the documentary. For all sorts of reasons, but above all because it portrays his thinking in a caricatural way. He laughs when it is said of him that he is a conservative nationalist, or an identitarian, he who writes very nuanced passages where he defends the welfare state and the pluralism of openness in Quebec.
Reading his first book and then his most recent, A quiet resignationto demystify the character above all, it is indeed a clearly expressed thought, both carried by the French-Canadian past and taking note of Quebec modernity, that I found.
Through the two books, separated by 20 years of reflection, one idea remains almost intact: that of lasting. It is this desire not to disappear that has fueled all the major French-Canadian and Quebec resistance movements since 1840, following the defeat of the Patriotes. “We lost, now what do we do not to disappear? Following the two referendum failures, noted by the author who believes that it is over, although history may surprise us one day, we find ourselves in the same position. On this point, he told me to differentiate himself from his famous student Bock-Côté, who still recently prophesied a third appointment with history following some confrontation between François Legault and Justin Trudeau.
The importance of lasting
Several tracks are possible to last, of course. But from a philosophical point of view, why is this so important? Isn’t there a way to escape in the opposing idea that everything is subject to disappearance, sooner or later, in an ever-changing world? Of course, what lasts offers the possibility of meaning, as evidenced by the dedication of the most recent book. “To Marion, who from the height of her eleven years is, like Quebec, inhabited by the feeling of being there forever. The individual and the collective thus collide in the author, another important vector of meaning, by which he formulates the following analogy, namely that after 35 years of intense national agitation between 1960 and 1995, Quebec lives for 25 years in a certain chronic fatigue.
Indeed, Beauchemin takes from time to time more philosophical tangents in his work, quoting for example Hannah Arendt on the need for political action of a collective subject who assumes beyond the wait-and-see attitude in the quiet permanence which still stalks the average Quebecer. His works take on an admittedly polemical tone, deconstructing the theses of many of his contemporaries (Gérard Bouchard often goes through his gentle grinder), whereas in my opinion they are at their best when they fly just a little higher, in a calm at the same time lucid and sharp, detached from the intellectual debates of the moment, simple springboards for his own ideas.
So, what is this famous Quebec identity made up of, when we read the one who has largely founded his omnipresence for 15 years in the concerns of public decision-makers? I did not find great outpourings on secularism, and not a single word on Islam, nor any opening towards a harder right.
The identity here is, according to him, to be found in the French language, of course, and also in an acceptance that the Catholic institution, rightly criticized during the Quiet Revolution, helped to preserve social cohesion.
Walking through the streets of my neighborhood, as I read, I no longer heard the church bells in the same way, just like the street names of beatified men. It is also a question at Beauchemin, well, of the reception capacity and the famous Quebec bon vivant, which I had not heard of for a while. This aspect, which puts forward a certain lightness of Quebec identity, did me a lot of good. Not that the threat of disappearance does not exist, but simply that there is a way to defend against it without going to war against anyone.
Too much history (2002)
Jacques Beauchemin
VLB Editor
216 pages
A quiet resignation (2020)
Jacques Beauchemin
boreal
218 pages