The Quebec Culture War

For several decades, Quebecers were divided between sovereignists and federalists.

But overall they had one thing in common: they considered Quebec to be a nation-state, that of the Quebec people.

Some wanted it independent, others wanted to associate it with Canada in one way or another. But in both cases, they saw in Quebec the political expression of a nation, centered on what is now called the historic French-speaking majority.

When Jean Lesage launched his slogan “Maîtres chez nous”, everyone knew who the “we” was in question, and no one disputed that Quebec was his territory.

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Nationalism

This view of things dominated Quebec political life until the 1995 referendum.

But following the defeat of the separatists, the national question gave way to the question of identity.

The us has become blurred. The very legitimacy of the Quebec people was called into question.

It is in this mutation that Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard, a young 21-year-old intellectual of exceptional intelligence and culture, is interested, who publishes his first book, The identity schismat Boreal.

It is not only an exceptional book, but the most important book to have appeared on these questions for a decade. Who dives into it retraces the history of our last two decades and puts, as they say, words on our ills.

Beauregard shows how the terms of political debate have changed. This is what he calls the cultural war for the Quebec imagination. At the heart of Beauregard’s thesis, we find a strong intuition: whoever masters the definition of the concepts, words, notions by which we define our collective existence is in a hegemonic situation. He forces his opponents to come and fight on his land.

Which camps clash in this Quebec culture war? Let’s answer schematically: nationalists and multiculturalists.

For the former, Quebec must remain the nation-state of the Quebec people. They are very much in the majority in the population, but in the minority in the media and marginal in the university and places of ideological power. For the latter, the historic French-speaking majority is no longer anything more than one community among others in plural Quebec. They are a minority in the population, but hegemonic in places associated with ideological power.

The strength of the CAQ is to have seized the nationalist current and to have given it a political expression without embarrassment or bad conscience, while the multiculturalist current has dominated our political and media life since 1995.

Has she been able to do something with it, beyond Law 21? You guess my answer. Not really.

CAQ

You absolutely must read The identity schism to understand where we are collectively.

François Legault should read it to understand the deep reasons for his success. Beauregard is clear: the nationalist camp must absolutely win the culture war for the people of Quebec to survive.

And the nationalist camp will only win if it returns to independence, to break radically with Canadian multiculturalism.

This final lesson will be compelling to all who read this remarkable work.