Posted at 2:00 p.m.
As the documentary shows Battle for the soul of Quebec by Francine Pelletier, the debate on national identity has undergone several changes since the Quiet Revolution. The beginnings of a turning point in this collective discussion are on the horizon. No one knows for the moment whether this trend will last, but the conditions for a rebalancing of forces between the different nationalist movements are being put in place.
In a recent text1, the sociologist Jacques Beauchemin returns to what he sees as the causes and the purpose of the so-called “identity” turn of nationalism; a turning point of which he was one of the designers.
Taking up the thesis of the “bad conscience” of Quebec sovereigntists that he has defended for more than 20 years, Beauchemin argues that identity nationalism is neither backward-looking nor particularly conservative. According to him, it was above all a question of “restoring the legitimacy of the historical French-speaking majority as a political subject aspiring to a certain continuity of its historical course” so that the people of Quebec – like “all the other peoples of the world” – can “looking towards the future by referring to the long history of the community and seeing itself as a historical actor”.
civic nationalism
Beauchemin presents identity nationalism as being the simple logical extension of nationalism, first French-Canadian and then Quebecois; a trajectory that would have been somewhat interrupted by the bad conscience of the nationalists in the wake of the defeat of the sovereignist camp in 1995 and the declaration of Jacques Parizeau on the “us” and the “ethnic votes”.
This story, however, ignores an embarrassing fact. Identity nationalism was, among other things, a critique of the nationalist movement that had hitherto been dominant in Quebec, that is to say nationalism that I will describe here as “civic” for the sake of efficiency. In 1995, civic nationalism was the main vector of the sovereignist project; think of the vision defended by Lucien Bouchard and Mario Dumont. Remember that civic nationalism includes in the national “us” all the citizens of Quebec who call themselves Quebecers, regardless of their ethnicity, the language spoken at home, their religion or their political orientations.
The great ethical aspiration of civic nationalism was to show how national affirmation could be combined with respect for individual rights and recognition of diversity.
Civic nationalists also sought consistency. If the principle of the self-determination of peoples anchors the legitimacy of Quebec nationalism, the latter must also recognize the legitimacy of Aboriginal nationalisms. They were also actively trying to show that nationalism does not necessarily drink from the dangerous logic of resentment and scapegoating.
Civic nationalism thus predated the 1995 referendum. If it is true that civic nationalists repudiated Parizeau’s phrase, this was essentially because they were at odds with their vision; a vision patiently theorized by political scientists and political philosophers like Guy Laforest, Alain-G. Gagnon, Jocelyne Couture and Michel Seymour before and after the 1995 referendum.
From a personal point of view, my rejection very early in my adult life of exclusive and vengeful nationalism could have made me switch to the side of anti-nationalism, which was once a real intellectual option in Quebec. It was partly because of the work of civic nationalists that this did not happen.
Restore what legitimacy?
Thus, it is difficult to accept Beauchemin’s idea that the “legitimacy of the historical French-speaking majority as a political subject aspiring to a certain continuity of its historical course” had to be restored. It was precisely because civic nationalists recognized the existence of a majority that they were concerned that it respect the rights of minorities. These nationalists vigorously defended the right of the Quebec nation to self-determination.
They tried to convince critics of Bill 101 that it respected the principles of liberalism. Civic nationalists have no difficulty in recognizing the people of Quebec as political actors eager to project themselves into the future. To claim that they have denied the people of Quebec the “right to say ‘we’” is unbelievable.
Historians of ideas, sociologists of intellectuals, literary scholars and other researchers have their work cut out for them. They should help us understand how we have moved from the debate of the 1990s to the populist and conservative nationalism of today. The episode of the reasonable accommodation crisis is obviously a pivotal period. This is where the rise of identity nationalism began. Be that as it may, the concerns expressed by Beauchemin in his text do not lead directly and necessarily to the Charter of Values and other identity tensions to which we are now accustomed. Choices have been made, and these choices must be explained and justified.