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THE SMALL NATION WITH A BIG DREAM
Québec national myths (eighteenth–twentieth centuries)1
Gérard Bouchard
Québec is one of the 10 provinces of Canada. With eight million inhabitants, it is a minority culture accounting for 2 percent of the North American population and 23 percent of the Canadian population. However, Francophones within Québec constitute a majority: 82 percent of Quebecers have French as their mother tongue and between 72 and 75 percent of them are of French Canadian descent.2 Immigrants from France were the first Europeans to settle in the present territory of Québec at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Over the years, a French colony took shape (la Nouvelle-France), the economy of which was largely based on the fur trade with the indigenous people. In 1759, the French troops were defeated by the British in Québec city (the battle of the Plaines d'Abraham) and the colony fell under British rule. Later on, this event would be perceived as a major watershed in Québec history: the onset of a long period of political domination, resistance to cultural assimilation, and socio-economic decline.
The Francophone population managed to survive culturally and to preserve its major institutions, such as the Catholic Church, schools, and legal system. Meanwhile, other northern British colonies were founded north of the United States and, in 1867, they agreed to regroup with Québec to create a new country (the official accord, the British North America Act, is commonly referred to as the Canadian Confederation or Dominion). Interestingly, on the English side, the Confederation was perceived by some as creating a new nation-state, by others as an association of provinces, whereas on the Francophone side, it was defined as a union of two nations (Anglophone and Francophone). The controversy that ensued has never been resolved. That being said, the status of Québec as a sociological nation3 is now widely recognized, including through a vote by the Canadian government.4 As a province within the Confederation, Québec has its own government, its own tax system, and wields or shares various powers, especially in the fields of economy, education and culture, civil justice, public security, immigration, and welfare – yet, the distribution of jurisdictions between the federal and the provincial governments is another bone of contention.
Against this historical backdrop, I intend to briefly review the dreams – and more specifically, the myths – that have historically structured the Québec imaginary.5 I will show how they have alternatively enabled and disabled its population and, finally, I will try to characterize the present situation of this small nation with respect to its symbolic foundation: A void, a crisis? A state of strength and resilience? A restructuring transition?
A sociological approach of myth as a universal sociological mechanism
I will start with a few words about the conceptual framework that I have developed to support my analysis, including the concept of myth.6 First, my approach focuses on social myths as opposed to lyric or literary myths entirely built on fiction, away from specific social contexts and power relations – which does not mean that the former do not tap into the latter. Generally speaking, social myths are promoted by collective actors and they convey meanings, values, beliefs (religious or not), and ideals.7 In my view, this statement holds for both the so-called traditional communities (or “primitive” societies) and the modern nations.
Myths are also a distinctive type of collective representation on at least four grounds:
- Their first attribute is hybridity. Myths are always a mixture, unevenly calibrated, of reality and fiction, reason and emotion, truth and falsehood, consciousness and unconsciousness.
- A second trait is an intrinsic duality such that myths can both (i) be strictly contextualized, operating in a specific social and historical setting, and (ii) assume the form of universal features or configurations with very loose ties to social mechanisms and processes (for example, the myths of the initial chaos, the new-born savior, the traitor, the golden age, the metamorphosis, the lost Paradise, the renaissance, the exodus, and so on).
- Third, thanks to their deep emotional roots, there is a kind of sacredness about myths that confers upon their contents a self-constraining power. Because of this attribute, it is deemed preposterous to attack or to reject a prevailing myth (for example, Cartesian logic and rationality in the Western world as a source of progress, maleness in frontier societies, individual freedom in England, private property in the United States, racial equality in South Africa, or gender equality just about everywhere in the Western world).8 Any questioning of those creeds is likely to be met with an emotional, if not aggressive, response, rather than a cold, methodic examination. As a symbolic device, a full-fledged myth has the capacity to impose itself upon individuals rather than being chosen (which does not preclude that it can be instrumentalized by actors). Once firmly established, myths also possess the ability to perpetuate themselves, at least for some time, without the support of an enforcing institution. It is fair to say that, as a corollary, an idea, a message, becomes efficient inasmuch as it gets emotionally driven. The emotional and the sacred dimension of myths explain why individuals are ready to die for their nations or whatever lofty cause. This kind of ultimate sacrifice does not easily line up with theories emphasizing the rational/instrumental mindset of individual agents, supposedly only impelled by a desire to strategically serve their basic interest – unless one is ready to, quite paradoxically, enlist extreme emotion-driven behaviors under the banner of rational choice.
- Fourth, myths can produce energy that propels individual and collective behaviors and can be used either to promote or to resist social change. This is all the more so when myths are called upon to overcome a contradiction between two deep-rooted ideals. For instance, this is the case in the United States with the myth of the American dream. Up to the present time, this powerful symbolic device has allowed the mediation of the contradiction between individual freedom and social equality, two staples of the American creed. According to the myth, institutions must make sure that individuals are free to express their qualities and to improve their lot as much as they can. Therefore, social inequalities should be blamed not on the supposedly flawed structure of the American society but on individuals themselves. In other words, the burden of a major social shortcoming is transferred from the collective to the individual arena, thus reducing the likelihood of social unrests while giving a free ride to the social climbers and would-be tycoons. The magic here lies in the social acceptance of this transfer that makes individuals responsible of their fate, regardless of the enormous psychological cost entailed for the “losers.”
Altogether, those four characteristics ground the distinctiveness of myth as both a semiotic and a social feature. For instance, myths differ from ideologies in that the latter are a vehicle of myths, in addition to being informed by them. The same goes with philosophical systems, historiographical constructions, literary narratives, and utopias, which are other ways to express and to promote myths, in addition to being sustained by them.
National myths, as I said, can produce both an enabling and a disabling effect; they can generate energy or lethargy depending on the past experiences of a society9 and the context involved. One way or another, they have the power to impact, heavily and for a long time, the course of a collective life. Universal myths do so by ascribing fundamental meanings to life and death, to the origin and the fate of the universe. As regards social myths, they feed identities and belongings, they set forth visions of the past and the future of a society, they promote symbols that allow for collective mobilization (for better or worse10), they foster resilience,11 and they reinforce social ties so that they may bring together even competing or conflicting actors.12 Given the objectives of this book, I will focus on social myths that structure national imaginaries.
Needless to say, myths operate in a very complex way. According to my approach, each society relies on a set of founding or master myths,13 that is, basic, comprehensive, and relatively stable symbolic configurations that act as a matrix and dictate the production of secondary or derivative myths more amenable to change.14 As I will show below, every once in a while, the master myths of a nation need to be retranslated into a new set of derivative myths more attuned to the ever-changing contexts and to the new challenges that emerge. Besides, derivative myths can themselves act as master myths (at a second level) insofar as they give rise to other derivative myths. Consequently, the structure of a collective imaginary may be seen as a complex pyramidal architecture comprising layers of myths, both master and derivative. This structure allows for a piggyback or leverage strategy: attempting to promote a new myth, a social actor will present it as a corollary of, or in continuity with, an old, well established master or derivative myth, as a way to facilitate the accreditation process. Distinguishing between master and derivative myths also helps to account for the mixture of embrace of and division over national myths: the master myths are mostly consensual, but they can inspire conflicting secondary myths (citizens may endorse different visions of justice, the ideal of political sovereignty can be defined in competing agendas, and so on). Finally, from the foregoing, one should understand that not only derivative myths can change. Master myths move as well but at a much slower pace; they are designed for the longue durée. In other words, just like derivative myths, they are created out of specific junctures by individuals or groups pursuing their goals (material or not, egoistic or otherwise), but since they change slowly, they tend to appear perennial and un-contextualized.
Expectedly, a substitution at the level of the secondary myths creates a situation of instability and insecurity. Yet, a substitution or a significant change at the level of the master myths is far worse. That explains why nations can be reluctant to engage in such undertakings and try to avoid or to delay this moment (one thinks of Republican France faced with ethno-cultural diversity).
The notion of master myth echoes a general statement by Hobsbawm (1990), signalling that nations cannot be understood “unless also analysed from below, that is in terms of assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interest of ordinary people” (p.11). The distinction between master and derivative myths is aimed to elucidate this layer of assumptions and longings. It also sheds light on a puzzling double characteristic of myths as we know them: they are at once ephemeral and long-lived. By the same token, this distinction helps us understand how a society may constantly adapt and change, sometimes through radical ruptures, while still keeping a sense of continuity and stability essential for its survival. Finally, since it is assumed that every collective imaginary is made up of master and derivative myths, the distinction circumvents the primordialism/modernism (or ethnic/civic) dichotomy that still pervades the literature on nations.
Typically, a myth is the product of a dynamic configuration composed of the seven following elements, which combine to articulate a powerful message. Together, they account for the mythification process:
- A structuring event or episode (let's call it an anchor). It is a particularly meaningful, determining experience that took place in the near or distant past of a collectivity. Very often, it is a misfortune, a trauma, but it can also be a positive or gratifying experience.
- An imprint, that is, a deep emotion left by the anchor in the collective consciousness. For instance, in the case of a traumatizing episode, the imprint will be informed by a wound and it will foster an enduring emotion that will express a suffering.15
- A translation of the imprint into an ethos (values, principles, ideals, beliefs, worldviews, aspirations, attitudes). For example: the quest for equality, social justice, and democracy can be generated by a feeling of injustice linked to an experience of colonization. Similarly, an episode of collective humiliation can provoke a craving for and an assertion of pride; the memory of slavery will result in a cult for racial equality and human dignity; a nation that has experienced and survived a civil war will be particularly sensitive to issues related to unity; a fragile cultural minority permanently concerned about its future and constantly fighting for its survival will value solidarity, integration, consensus, commitment, loyalty; a nation that has not courageously behaved under hardship (invasions, military confrontations, natural disasters) will feel shameful and, as a consequence, it will value and yearn for pride and self-respect and will develop a deep sensitivity regarding these issues. The ethos can feed on a wide array of feelings or emotions, depending on the nature of the anchor and the way a population responds to it.16
- The construction of a narrative and a continuing process of remembrance designed to magnify the anchor, to activate or reactivate the imprint, and to stimulate the ethos by re-actualizing them in accordance with the ever-changing contexts. Rituals are particularly instrumental in this regard, not as a way to heal the wounds but, on the contrary, to reopen them and to reload the myths.
- The sacralization of the ethos, as a consequence of intense commemoration. Here takes place the most complex and intriguing part of the mythification process: a cognitive shift (which there is still a lot to learn about). The sacralization of the message requires that reason takes a backseat and emotion takes over as the main driving force.17 Through this stage, the message becomes a quasi-taboo and acquires a self-co...
