It seems fashionable, in the current Quebec government, to display its thoughts by going beyond the filter of the media. On two occasions, ministers have recently defended their cause in open letters, whether to support the merits of their approaches to “green” energy in the battery sector without going through a BAPE examination or to a plea in favor of their vision regarding the rights of owners and tenants.
I weigh my words: it’s fair game. Like American presidents who like, when times are serious, to make a “ address to the nation » speaking directly to the camera for a few minutes, the authors of these two texts, Pierre Fitzgibbon and France-Élaine Duranceau, respectively Minister of the Economy, Innovation and Energy and Minister responsible for Housing, took the path of literature, preferring it to that of cinema, to put themselves on stage before the nation’s public without an intermediary.
Criticism of the media – and the desire to go beyond their cabin to convey a message to as many people as possible – is a posture that can work, even if I do not share it. I personally believe in the importance of an independent and strong fourth power (and even militant at times, within reasonable limits) to ensure an essential counterweight to a very strong majority government, which had a first term marked by oblivion. of what the word “opposition” means.
But it is possible, I insist, to defend a thinning of media power — and a thinning of democratic counterweights — by having great confidence in the government and its leading businessmen and women. They know how this stuff works, so let’s shut up and follow our leaders. It’s possible to think like that.
But. But it is not possible, if we think like that, to claim to understand anything about art. The instrumentalization of words to reinforce an existing power (and not to create a new one) is nothing more and nothing less the definition of propaganda. I will explain, for anyone who needs it: Pierre Fitzgibbon and France-Élaine Duranceau are not writers. They are business people, leaders, people of power. Now, literature and words are a power in their own right, a different power, and whoever uses them knowingly knows that they must never be more than simple means to an end.
Activists and storytellers do not necessarily become writers. Activists and storytellers are everywhere, in the street in front of the metro to sugarcoat a quest for thirty cents, in Parliament until they slam the door, in classrooms, in hospitals and businesses, around from a fire or a kitchen table.
In life, dear Fitz, we don’t write stupidly to campaign and tell stories. I invite you to look at page one of a creative writing lesson plan, please. We write to gain power. In the words of Neige Sinno, author of Sad Tiger, we write because we can. Even if you pretend, you can’t. You have neither the skills nor the energy. You will build this factory, like your colleague Duranceau did Bill 31, because you can. I couldn’t do that. But we write because we can. I am not at all elitist: I claim my field of expertise. It is artistic, while yours is seriously provincial.
When you say, dear Fitz, that “people who want to invent stories should write novels, activists should publish essays”, you trample on Quebec identity, which your government pretends to try to defend. Our identity lives in these stories, in these essays, in these poems and in these plays.
Have you seen the play The last tape, by Olivier Choinière? I bet not. A tired man turns his back on society. When I hear you, I understand it, but I work very hard not to do the same.
What are the last three Quebec essays that you read? So read a book by my friend Mustapha Fahmi: no militancy, only wisdom, which you sorely lack in your rejection of literature out of hand.
The elections are far away, they say. Either. But at least on the other side, in this old party resurrected last year, we feel a real concern for Quebec culture and identity, and not vaguely anti-immigration and anti-religious signs born in focus groups without worldview.