Vive Quebec!: New Thinking and New Approaches to the Quebec Nation

Jeffrey J. Cormier is an assistant professor of sociology at Queen’s
University.

The present generation of Quebec nationalist intellectuals is faced with
a new and troubling quandary. The question they have set for themselves,
especially pressing in the wake of Jacques Parizeau’s 1995 slip about
“the ethnic vote,” is “how do we define the Quebec nation when the
challenge that comes from increased globalization threatens it
externally and the pluralism that results from immigration threatens it
internally?” Traditionally the notion of “nation” referred to a
people with a common culture, tradition, and memory, living within a
clearly demarcated territory. The basic problem is how to build and
strengthen the more or less homogeneous unit of the nation while at the
same time remaining tolerant of ethnic and cultural diversity.

It is this very issue that 15 of Quebec’s leading intellectuals
address in Vive Quebec!, a collection of essays edited by Le Devoir
associate editor Michel Venne, which was originally published in French
under the title Penser la nation québécoise. Philosophers,
sociologists, historians, and theologians all attempt to redefine the
Quebec nation in a way that recognizes the francophone national majority
while at the same time accepting the pluricultural nature of present-day
Quebec society. Most contributors admit that the best way to achieve a
plural, more tolerant Quebec is to have a sovereign state, but there is
no consensus. Politics takes a back seat to a largely theoretical
discussion on the development of Quebec as a cultural nation.

The irony is that this newly defined “Quebec question” is in
essence a reformulation of the Canadian question. It is frustrating to
see Quebec intellectuals rejecting—as almost all of the contributors
do—the Canadian solutions of multiculturalism and federalism in favor
of such awkward notions as “interculturalism” and “Quebec
republicanism.” Nevertheless, Vive Quebec! is an extremely important
look at current discussions taking place among Quebec intellectuals.