The author is a historian, sociologist, writer and retired teacher from the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi in the history, sociology, anthropology, political science and international cooperation programs. His research focuses on collective imaginations.
Impotence: here is a double-edged word which, when applied to Quebecers, can offend sensitivities, but can also open a way to better understand what we have been and what we are. Several intellectuals have mentioned it in the course of their work (F. Dumont, P. Vadeboncoeur, G. Miron, J. Bouthillette, V.-L. Beaulieu and many others), but without really exploring it, exception of a few Marxist authors. Among historians, I do not know of any in-depth study that has been devoted to it.
In two books (The two canons2003; helpless thinking, 2004), I approached this theme, but from a restricted angle, that of contradictions. By reading the works of various French-Canadian essayists of the 19e and XXe centuries, I had been struck by the presence of many contradictory statements. I thought I found the source of it in a social fact.
I have always thought that these two books, which have received their share of criticism, have given rise to a misunderstanding. In the first, critics saw a personal, iconoclastic attack, given the aura that surrounded (and still surrounds) Lionel Groulx. However, I noticed that the substantial record of contradictions that I had compiled and of which I have reproduced numerous examples was little contested. But if the examples abounded, they were not enough, it seems, for us to see there a real theme of study. The second book has attracted more general criticism. My analyzes would have discredited French Canadian thought by projecting an unattractive, even contemptuous image of our intellectuals.
These reviews have always amazed me. What I had done was not a charge against our intellectuals. I have never accused them of obscurantism. I in no way considered them laggards prisoners of an Old Regime mentality. I in no way questioned their qualities, their personal abilities. And above all, I was careful not to find any psychological or pathological disturbance in them, as Fernand Ouellet did with the character of Louis-Joseph Papineau.
In the case of Groulx, in particular, I took care to bring out his great qualities as a humanist, in particular the elevation of his thinking and the strength of his writing, which is always inspired. I also respected the ardor and tenacity he had shown in defending the nation, as well as the courage he showed when threatened with sanctions or censorship because of his ideas. These qualities and merits brought out more sharply the paradox of his many reversals in his analyzes and in the directions of action he proposed.
My general approach, clearly formulated, was intended to bring to light a reality with serious consequences. I drew attention to an important cultural fact that I derived not from the idiosyncrasies or infirmities of the authors, but from social coordinates, fractures in the form of structural blockages inscribed in the ecology of our society (if I may this metaphor to designate the relationship of a community with its environment in the most general sense of the term).
I found in these culs-de-sac the reasons why intellectuals of high caliber, very cultured, the best of their time, had difficulty settling on an ideal and a direction of action for the future of French Canada. Why did they choose sometimes on one option and sometimes on its opposite? Why this apparent impossibility to pursue and defend the same path?
Structural factors therefore, coordinates that were linked to the situation of this society, more precisely to the diversity of possibilities that solicited thought but at the same time eluded. Here are some examples.
– There was a strong attraction to agriculture and rural life. Until the 1940s, sages assured that beyond the peripheral regions, Quebec still had very vast and very rich spaces to clear, enough to establish countless parishes. This avenue, which would ensure the salvation of the nation, also accorded with the teaching of the Church and of some of the elites who saw in rurality the natural setting of Christianity and of French Canada. On the other hand, it was also very clear that the city and especially industry, a source of prosperity, were in full growth and were shaping the future. But these material advantages threatened the moral framework of our society. In addition, this lane was already occupied, the “ours” would perhaps only be valets there. We must also have suspected a little that at the limits of the already populated lands there were certainly vast open spaces, but unsuitable for cultivation.
– The reconquest and the colonialism it had established created another form of blockage expressed in the back and forth between the ideal of an autonomous nation, independent even, but difficult to access, and a Canada that offered security, stability, careers, but at the same time a lowering.
– The third example opposed, on the one hand, the reference embodied by venerable France (“our motherland”) with its almost carnal relationship inscribed in our ancestry (“in our blood”) and that of the American continent which furnished our daily.
– A final example opposed tradition and modernity. Here, the anxiety linked to the condition of a fragile minority, nourished by its homogeneity, slowed down the momentum towards modernity, which nevertheless retained its attractions and also proved to be promising.
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu spoke of alienation about these double constraints that weighed on thought. I rather feel empathy for these captive intellectuals. In these four cases, once again, the contradictory and the helplessness that it expressed did not come from cultural deficiencies, but from structural impasses with which the course of our history was strewn and which formed part of what I called the ecology of our society.