Historian, sociologist, writer, teacher at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi in the history, sociology, anthropology, political science and international cooperation programs and holder of the Canada Research Chair on Imaginaries collectives.
We have not finished exploring the thought of Fernand Dumont, this intellectual monument. It is a very rich, very deep, complex thought, which has followed a sometimes unpredictable course. In a text published here on December 31, I recalled that, during the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, he strongly supported the Quiet Revolution project. I also pointed out that, soon after, he said he was extremely critical of what she had been, as well as of her heritage as he saw it.
In many e-mails that this reminder earned me, correspondents were very surprised. I therefore believe it useful to return to the subject, this time to show the deep pessimism of his vision of Quebec at a period of his life. It is a vision that he expressed above all in two articles, one in 1969 in the prestigious French journal Mind (July-August), the other in 1974 in the review Now (June-September).
These writings, apparently little known, are important. They testify both to the immense hopes invested in the Quiet Revolution and to the extent of the disappointments that followed among certain contemporaries. Mr. Dumont had the honesty to express himself with great frankness and a great deal of lucidity on this last subject. His words are very harsh, but you have to read them, because they make you think.
These texts also reveal the torments that can accompany a high-flying intellectual who has closely identified with the destiny of his nation and who has sometimes painfully experienced its ups and downs. They also show the immense role of emotions, of sensitivity in intellectual life, an activity that seems to depend only on reason.
A generous and reliable guide
However, I warn the reader that the content of these texts nourished by disenchantment hurts, especially for those who, like me, are part of the heirs of this man, who was a generous and sure guide for his contemporaries. I hesitated a great deal before reproducing excerpts here. But it seemed to me that somehow they were part of his journey. Here are a few statements.
“Current Quebec society is fundamentally morbid. »
“We are in the realm of aberration. »
About “the great hope” of the 1960s, Fernand Dumont writes: “the sap of my twenties mingled with the debacle…”.
He makes fun of “certain intellectual ‘elites’ who will continue to speak international French with a hint of an exotic accent and will increase the numbers of the race of stateless people”.
He evokes those who think of going into exile because they “do not feel strong enough guts to witness the extinction of a people”.
It counts among the legacies of the 1960s “the empty ‘freedom’ of which our society, left and right, has made a new ideal”.
He does not seem to despair of Quebec culture, recalling that ” [l]The arts, like flowers, often flourish on decay”.
The “lost people” (he refers here to Quebecers) “will continue their career as a lumber-nation”.
Wondering if “a French-Canadian guy” will survive, he “bets […] that the attraction of the American empire will be stronger”.
All Elsewhere
Still about the 1960s, he wonders if we might not have “made, after all, a vast college revolution”. After “the exalted feast”, shall we not “enter into a quieter agony”?
We were perhaps only doomed, he continues, to “a mutation of language, thus confessing… the impotence already inscribed in our history”. He evokes “the swamp of our domestic bickering”, he sees “the hour of decisive options pass” and “confess [s]one deeper pessimism”. The literature of American universities interests him “infinitely more than that which comes from here”. Looking for the place of our “home”, he replies that “in the fall of the Quiet Revolution, we are all somewhere else”. On abortion, he is saddened that a pregnant woman can “demand the doctor to send the youngest back to nothingness”.
Fernand Dumont has accustomed his readership to thinking with finesse. We will agree on the abrupt nature of these judgments, but it should not distract us from the profound message they carry: a state of disarray, a pain that cannot leave us insensitive. That said, questions inevitably come to mind.
One wonders how to connect these disillusioned, very harsh remarks with the substance of his generally hopeful writings. Then you have to ask yourself if they really reflect reality. I am thinking of the recent collective work by Stéphane Paquin and X. Hubert Rioux (The Quiet Revolution 60 years laterPUM) in which a battery of experts concludes that the Quebec model that emerged from the Quiet Revolution was, in many respects, faithful to its aspirations and its promises.
And are these judgments the work of a centre-left intellectual, a label that has often been associated with this humanist who advocated socialism? The deep pessimism running through these texts is surprising. But is it a good gateway into the personal universe of man – a complex universe, certainly, grappling with tensions, contradictions? Finally, how can such a strong thought bend (or break?) in this way? These texts are impressionistic, but precisely for this reason, can we not see in them unvarnished testimonies?
I will not attempt to answer these questions. I did not belong to the circle of intimates of Fernand Dumont and do not pose as a specialist in his thought. Those who are can enlighten us.
The Dumont Enigma
The disenchanted judgments of these articles are not isolated. In 1976, he stated that ” [s]e finds at stake the uprooting of our own thought”. In 1980, he wonders if we are interesting enough to attract immigrants. In 1995: “Is a nation like ours worth continuing? In 1998, referring to the achievements of the Quiet Revolution in social matters, he speaks of “bullshit”; the people would have been deceived. Does the expression agree with the social policies adopted in the 1960s (democratization of education, hospital insurance, emancipation from trade unions, revision of the legal status of women, advancement of Francophones in the sphere of ‘job…) ? The sociologist Fernand Dumont was certainly aware of this. Obviously there was something else. But what ?