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Introduction / Présentation

Claude Couture

Présentation du dossier sur la francophonie

Linda Cardinal and Rémi Léger

Anglophone versus francophone? Logiques identitaires chez la jeunesse scolarisée au Québec

Marie-Odile Magnan
In the early 1990s, many researchers noted the absence of an Anglophone collective identity in Québec. In the 2000s, other theses suggested that advanced bilingualism among younger Anglophone generations was blurring the boundaries between Anglophones and Francophones. Our qualitative study conducted with 33 young adults educated in English-language schools in Québec illuminates these hypotheses from another angle. A typological analysis of identities as experienced by youths whom we interviewed indicates that “Anglophone Canadian” and “Francophone Quebecois” collective identities belong to the imaginary referents which English language actors use to define themselves—at least within the context of the city of Québec where there is a substantial Francophone majority. We analyze our data based on an approach that is centered on the social actor, and on the negotiated aspect of individual identity. We conclude by proposing an intercultural approach to deconstruct this dichotomous vision of Québec’s linguistic identities.

Francophone Minority Communities: The Last Constitutional Standard-Bearers of Trudeau’s Language Regime

Emmanuelle Richez
The francophone and Acadian communities of Canada (hereinafter “FACC”) have until now been the primary constitutional standard-bearers of Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s constitutional language regime by promoting non-territorialized bilingualism through Charter-based judicial review. However, this regime is slowly being eroded by stealth and can no longer serve the interests of the FACC. This article first explains how minority language rights were the cornerstone of Trudeau’s political project and how an ideological interdependence developed between him and the FACC. Second, it describes the importance of the post-1982 institutional context in furthering the FACC’s constitutional objectives. Third, the article evaluates to which extent these objectives were fulfilled by conducting a general survey of the Supreme Court’s Charter jurisprudence in the area of francophone minority rights and its political consequences. It concludes that the FACC have exhausted the potential of Trudeau’s constitutional language regime and must now move beyond it, if they want to ensure their future well-being.

L’identité en débat : repères et perspectives pour l’étude du Canada français

Linda Cardinal
Over the past few years, we have witnessed renewed debate on the identity of “old” French Canada. Many interpretations oppose one another and postulate distinct approaches regarding the future of francophonie in a minority setting. This debate has given rise to two major trends or schools of thought which have distinguished themselves in the Francophone minority setting : the postnationalist school associated with the University of Toronto and the works of Monica Heller and Normand Labrie, and the French-Canadian neonationalist school found in the works of Martin Meunier at the University of Ottawa and Joseph-Yvon Thériault at Université du Québec à Montréal. For the former scholars, the reference to French Canada refers to a bygone era. It recalls a genealogical discourse, potentially conservative and backward-looking. For the latter scholars, the representation of French Canada in a Francophone minority setting attests rather to a national ambition which refuses to disappear. This article looks at the confrontation between these two schools of thought. The article illuminates a part of the identity debate, but the opposition between these two schools might be more artificial than we are generally inclined to believe.

Protéger et pacifier. La politique officielle de bilinguisme canadien face aux risques de transferts linguistiques et de contestation communautaire

Christophe Traisnel
The stability of a democracy should depend on the regime’s adaptability and on democratic societies’ ability to respond to certain linguistic aspirations which are aimed at distinction, without falling into the trap of division. This is one of the challenges that pluralist societies generally face and in particular, societies that are plurilingual. This article demonstrates how the Canadian political context goes beyond the recognition of cultural differences in a multicultural Canadian society, by allowing for the invention of distinction and the development of linguistic protection, thanks to, among other things, a policy of official bilingualism. However, such a protection policy has a counterpart: although it allows for and makes possible, legislation of official languages also frames and constrains the political action of community leaders as well as their ideas about identity. This article begins with an initial statement of fact: fears related to the risk of linguistic assimilation and resulting political conflicts have progressively fueled a policy of official bilingualism as a way of reassuring people that these risks are limited, and also to guarantee that Canada has a satisfactory “linguistic peace”. Based on these premises, we show that the context of official bilingualism has marked the notion of francophonie and the political aspects of francophonie in Canada. Finally, we determine if the main actors of ideas about identity, and their work of recognition, protest and representation, constitute the pathway to a different regime of citizenship for Canada’s Francophone minority.

L’image du Parti acadien et de son projet autonomiste dans le journal L’Évangéline

Luc Léger
Until its last issue in 1982, L’Évangéline was an information newspaper specifically aimed at the Acadian population scattered throughout the Maritime provinces. It was the only French-language daily newspaper, and it was used by the traditional Acadian elite to convey its message, indeed, its nationalism of “harmony” between Francophones and Anglophones. This particular vision of Acadian nationalism, based on the harmony of the two linguistic groups, which had an uncontested place in the newspaper since it was first published in 1887, became under fire during the 1960s and 1970s because of the rise of the Parti acadien and its vision, and main battleground, made public in 1977, of a division of New Brunswick into two entities and the creation of an Acadian province. Because the previous vision did not immediately disappear in front of this new nationalist movement, this article explores how the two visions of Acadia opposed one another in the pages of the newspaper. We are interested in the orientation of its journalistic content regarding the Parti acadien and its autonomist project, as well as the positions the newspaper defended in its editorials and those defended by readers in its Letters to the Editor.

Philippe Garigue et l’Ontario français

Martin Normand
Philippe Garigue became involved in numerous theoretical and normative debates in Québec, which prompted him to embark on a similar exercise for French Ontario after coming to Toronto in 1980. Garigue has an original viewpoint of this community, one which brings to the foreground Toronto’s particular position in the context of French-speaking Ontario. Garigue’s works on Francophone Ontario have almost no echo among the contemporary works about this society. We mobilize this corpus in order to respond to two questions: What are Philippe Garigue’s contributions to the study of French Ontario? To what degree are these contributions still current? This article has three parts. First, we present a brief biography of the sociologist. Second, we synthesize Garigue’s contributions according to four themes: community life, education, politics, and identity. Third, we explore the parallels between Garigue’s work and the work of scholars who put forth a postnational approach to study French Ontario, though there are certain disagreements between these works as well.

Mémoire et communauté politique acadienne : l’influence de Fernand Dumont sur l’oeuvre de Joseph Yvon Thériault

Stéphanie Chouinard
This article demonstrates the influence which the sociology of culture, developed by Fernand Dumont, had on Acadian sociologist Joseph Yvon Thériault, notably in his conception of memory. More specifically, the article sheds light on the relationship between memory, modernity and politics, problematized in a similar manner by both authors, which Dumont applied to Quebecois society and which Thériault applied to Acadia.

Par la brèche de la culture : le Canada français et le virage culturel de l’état canadien, 1949-1963

Mireille McLaughlin
Many researchers have studied the endogenous factors that would explain the Quiet Revolution and the transformation of French Canada. In this article, I look to the past in order to study federal policies related to culture and their relationship to the debates surrounding the question of nationalism in French Canada and in Québec. In 1949, the federal government took a cultural turn when it established the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences. This report drew intense reactions from French-Canadian intellectual circles. Faced with the protomulticultural vision of Commissioners Vincent Massey and Georges-Henri Lévesque, André Laurendeau would polish his vision of a bicultural Canada. The debate was most notably on the definitions of culture and nation, as well as the place of the State in managing both. It is important to understand these debates, typical of the welfare state, so as to better understand the nationalist context in which the Quiet Revolution was articulated. These debates also allow for grasping the contemporary aspect of federal investment within minority Francophone communities.

L’avenir des minorités francophones du Canada après la reconnaissance

François Charbonneau
This article looks at Canadian francophonie in a minority situation (outside the province of Québec) and the desire for acknowledgement that inhabited this francophonie until recently. The article suggests that Francophones living in a minority situation have, after a long battle, entered an era that can be called post-acknowledgement. If the theory provides a reason to rejoice this new order, the author suggests rather that this post-acknowledgement gives rise to a few challenges for communities that are too often “invisible”.

Le régime linguistique canadien à l’épreuve du désir de faire société

Rémi Léger
Joseph Yvon Thériault recently asserts that Francophone minorities outside Québec are still driven by the old French-Canadian ambition of creating a different type of society on the Anglo-American continent. This thesis demands an evaluation of Canada’s language regime because it insinuates that language laws and policies that structure the use and promotion of French outside Québec curb this constitutive ambition. This article examines the principal measures aimed at Francophone minorities and postulates that the implementation of language laws and policies by way of horizontal management is preventing the full realization of their old ambition of creating a different type of society.

Présentation du dossier sur l’interculturalité et l’immigration

Paul Dubé and Paulin Mulatris

Approches inter, trans, pluri, multiculturelles en didactique des langues et des cultures

Eva Lemaire
In Canada, and more broadly in a globalized world, the contact of cultures is part of our daily reality. In order to equip individuals so they may draw support from situations of plurality, the didactics of language and culture aim to develop, among language learners, sensibilities and practices which allow them to grasp the complexity of linguistic and cultural diversity. We therefore discuss, in the context of language didactics, inter-, trans-, multi-, and pluri-cultural approaches. This article reviews these designations and their references using two recent international works.

Retour sur la Commission Bouchard-Taylor ou les difficultés de fonder l’avenir sur le pluralisme intégrateur

Frédéric Boily
The Bouchard-Taylor Commission report (Fonder l’avenir : Le temps de la conciliation), which was published in May 2008, became a central element of intellectual and political reflection on the subject of intercultural relations in Québec and Canada. This article examines an important dimension of the report more closely, which relates to integrative pluralism. The paper begins by describing the context of identity politicization which prompted the creation of the Commission (Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles), followed by examining the centrality of this notion in the report’s overall architecture, as well as exploring how pluralism and integration are mutually articulated. Integrative pluralism is a positive model that demands the active participation of individuals, which is second in importance to tolerance as it was commonly understood. In conclusion, we recall that the publication of two manifestos (winter 2010) demonstrates that this debate is ongoing.

Contribution au développement socioéconomique de la région d’Edmonton par les femmes africaines noires francophones immigrées entre 2000 et 2006

Ismaëlie Hyppolite
This work concerns French-speaking African women who are settled in Edmonton for at least five years. By settling in a new society, they face established norms and depending on the situation and the environment, systems undergo modifications. These changes have consequences on the lives of immigrants and on members of the host community. Often these modifications lead to differentiation, discrimination, inequality, and exclusion. These phenomena, experienced especially by immigrants, can influence their socioeconomic contribution to the development of the region in which they’ve settled. During exchanges and focus groups conducted with the French-speaking African women who participated in our study, we had the opportunity to highlight not only elements which favour their integration, but also certain elements that are considered barriers and which halt their efforts toward successful socioeconomic integration. We have thus explored their level of education, their professional training, and their work experiences in Edmonton and in their country of origin. In order for socioeconomic integration to concretize, the immigrant person must have the same opportunities as a member of the host community for obtaining employment and equal income if their skills are comparable (Centre d’études ethniques de l’Université de Montréal, 1994, p. 45). This was not the case for some women who participated in our study. They must battle to adapt socially but also, and mainly, economically. Based on the results of our research, we can confirm that socioeconomic integration of French-speaking African immigrant women is not simply an issue of personal choice, but this choice must be framed by conditions that favour the process of integration.

Multiculturalisme et transculturalisme : ce que peut nous apprendre la revue ViceVersa (1983-1996)

Sheena Wilson
In its day, the magazine ViceVersa (1983-1996) attracted considerable attention for the repositioning that it promoted regarding the debate on multiculturalism/biculturalism. The magazine wanted to transcend these paradigms, which it viewed as restrictive, and it campaigned for a transcultural position. The magazine made clear reference to the anti-globalization movement, and let it be understood that another world was possible, this even before such ideas infiltrated the doxa and before the failures of social policies on globalization were discussed and questioned. ViceVersa, in its own time, proposed transculturalism as an alternative to Canadian multiculturalism, to Quebecois nationalism, and to the raging neoliberalism of the 1980s and 1990s. This article discusses the transcultural project of ViceVersa, and evaluates its cultural successes and its political failures. We look at how, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, this reflection on transculturalism can be recaptured and updated in the Canadian context.

Britannicité et multiculturalisme canadien

Donald Ipperciel
The author defends the thesis that Canadian multiculturalism draws its ideology from a normative multiculturalism already present in the Third British Empire, that is, the “British Commonwealth”. In fact, the idea of multiculturalism was a legitimate position and one that we could look to in the discursive space of this era. We believe that, during this era, the very idea of Britishness concealed a normative notion of multiculturalism. Our analysis begins by a brief history of the term “British”, followed by a presentation of the multicultural vision specific to the Third Empire from the standpoint of three intellectuals of this time: Alfred Zimmern, John Buchan (known as Lord Tweedsmuir) and Édouard Montpetit.

Appréhender la complexité. Enjeux et raisonances dans le domaine culturel

Jean-Jacques Defert
Anchored in the dynamic logic of « instituting society », the present reflection aims to put in perspective the choices which contemporary societies are facing in response to the double movement of differentiation of the individuals composing these societies: an interindividual differentiation resulting from the heterogenization of their cultural origins in the context more diverse and increasing migratory fluxes; an intraindividual differentiation resulting from the multiplication of the socializing milieus and social networks in which these individuals move. The “ecologization of thought” which substitutes the notion of “organizing complexity” to that of “organized complexity” enriches the nature of the bound between the individual and his environment by integrating a dialogical dimension by which the individual becomes both a product and the producer of the social environment he lives in. It is through the lenses of this transformation of the anthropological gaze that we have tried to interpret the contemporary challenges of renewing sociological theories and community policies.

Pour une inclusion complète : l’insertion professionnelle des étudiants stagiaires des minorités visibles dans l’école francophone albertaine

Paulin Mulatris and Rochelle Skogen
This article is the result of a pilot research that aimed to understand the real experience of visible minority students enrolled in an education program in a Francophone university in a minority setting. Using a qualitative method that is current in the fields of sociology and education, the authors explore how Francophone academic institutions in a minority setting—institutions that view immigration as a path of demographic revitalization—respond to the challenges raised in the training and professional integration of future teachers.

La sémiotique postmoderne dans la pédagogie et la recherche interculturelles

Roger Parent and Peeter Torop
Modes of inquiry in qualitative research have evolved toward interpretive approaches with regard to culture, which emphasizes the problem of meaning and significance in fieldwork and in intercultural training. This challenge calls on theoretic models of culture and on operative analytical practices to give account of the specificity of a cultural milieu and to conceptualize and evaluate models of intercultural pedagogy. Our study explores the potential of postmodern semiotics and, more particularly, of textual semiotics to provide efficient and interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological foundations for the development of intercultural competencies in both research and education. The present analysis compares the textual or cultural semiotic of the Tartu School in Estonia to the intercultural pedagogy advanced by Abadallah-Pretceille and Porcher in France. The numerous discrepancies and contradictions raised by this comparison reveal an underlying complementarity when the modalities of these two approaches are contextualized in relation to the main types of intercultural training models in North America. From this perspective, the pedagogy of Abadallah-Porcher privileges an approach of “self-awareness”, whereas cultural semiotic develops the corollary “culture-awareness”. Moreover, there is a meeting between cultural semiotic and intercultural pedagogy in light of the importance given to cultural analysis and to products of culture in the development of interculturality. This common ground also intersects with the finality of the interpretive, pragmatic, and phenomenological approach of modes of inquiry in qualitative research: praxis, democratic performance. In this manner, semiotics can contribute to intercultural education and research thanks to the interdisciplinary scope of its analytical processes for interpreting the cultural setting and for the development of metacognitive competencies whereby subjects “learn how to learn” with regard to culture.

Musique populaire, métissage et identités culturelles : vers les recherches comparées

Srilata Ravi
Popular songs tell the stories of the daily lives of social groups. They help individuals find their place in the world and help them to develop a political identity, thereby creating a collective imaginary. In his article about popular music in Québec, Piroth (2008) points out how French folk songs have helped reinforce a distinct Quebecois identity vis-à-vis the majority Anglo-Canadian culture. According to Piroth, although the American pop style is still the most listened to musical genre in Québec, the presence of French pop music in media and public performances always attests to its importance in the shared cultural heritage of the Quebecois. In this article, we study another example of a musical genre in the French-speaking world in order to examine the complex relationships between popular music and regional identities; more specifically we look at Réunion Island (a French department situated in the Indian Ocean) and the practice of maloya as a symbol of reunion in connection with the French culture of the metropolis. Using a cultural studies’ perspective, we explore how “political demonstrations of the cultural and cultural demonstrations of the political” crystalize within this dynamic form of popular music.

« Comment peut-on être moi quand on est Mère? » Une étude de la maternité dans Un enfant à ma porte (2009) de Ying Chen

Julie Rodgers
This article discusses the impact of motherhood on female subjectivity, as depicted in Ying Chen’s Un enfant à porte, published first by Boréal in 2008 and then by Seuil in 2009. Although this is not the first time that Ying Chen has examined the theme of motherhood in her writing, what is unique about Un enfant à ma porte is that it gives us direct access to the mother’s voice, as opposed to her story being narrated through another character. This article will look at the issue of maternal ambiguity and the difficulties enountered by the mother in her effort to maintain a sense of self while caring for another.

The Representation of First Nations Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Naohiro Nakamura
Canadian art galleries have long been criticized for their poor inclusion of First Nations art, especially historical works. In November 2008, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) opened new Canadian art gallery halls, with 2,000 new acquisitions donated by Ken Thomson. The AGO hired Gerald McMaster, who has tried to make historical First Nations art a key element of the story of Canadian art, as its first Aboriginal curator of the AGO’s Canadian art department. This article reviews several historical events, and the politics and discourse of the representation of First Nations art at the AGO, to examine the success of this new venture, especially in terms of its public appeal.

Glad Adventures, Tragedies, Silences: Remembering and Forgetting Wars for Empire in Canada and the United States

Robert Teigrob
This article surveys a century of U.S. writing on the War of 1898, and Canadian writing on the South African War, in order to contrast national attitudes toward international conflict. While Canadians tend to view their American neighbours as more fond of military exploits, a comparison of the historical representation of these remarkably similar fin de siècle conflicts finds a greater willingness among American popular and scholarly analysts to impugn their nation’s motivations in the War of 1898, and to call attention to aspects of the battle that reflect poorly on their nation’s self-image. Canadians, for their part, have tended to steer clear of controversial aspects of the South African War, or to ignore it altogether – over the course of a century that has otherwise witnessed an ongoing fascination with Canada’s participation in foreign conflicts. I suggest that this diffidence has roots in English Canada’s historical affections for imperialism, faith in government, and ethnic and cultural homogeneity, the latter of which has seen much of the military history of Canada recounted by individuals of similar identities and points of view.

Resisting Regulation: Conservation, Control, and Controversy over Aboriginal Land and Resource Rights in Eastern Canada, 1880–1930

Siomonn Pulla
During the turn of the twentieth century, the land continued to provide the practical, historical, and spiritual basis of distinct cultural practices for Aboriginal peoples in eastern Canada. This was also a time of direct and often intense cultural assaults on Indigenous traditions by state conservation practices and discourses on game preservation. An analysis of historic Aboriginal assertions of sovereignty and effective control in eastern Canada during this period provides an important context that links the current day neo-liberal discourse on “minority rights” and the resulting paradigm of domestication with the Canadian state’s historic policies of aggressive civilization. This analysis ultimately argues that the historic and ongoing project of nation building in Canada is grounded in a complex nation-to-nation framework, with a long history of international diplomacy and good-governance practices that include the involvement of Aboriginal peoples in seeking positive and practical resolutions to their struggles with the state over their land and resource rights.

Virtual Canadian Realities: Charting the Scott Pilgrim Universe

David Murphy
Through a mixture of political-economic and textual analysis, this article examines the Scott Pilgrim franchise, consisting of a series of graphic novels, feature film, and video game, from a transmedia storytelling perspective. By doing so, the author insists that the franchise constructs a globally networked vision of English-Canadian identity through a selective representation of Toronto that situates the city as a cultural filter for globally produced media. While arguing that transmedia storytelling presents a highly fractured fictional universe, with each form of media adding an additional layer of interpretation, the article calls attention to how the Scott Pilgrim franchise utilizes a narrative strategy commonly referred to as “magical realism,” which in the case of transmedia storytelling is perhaps better understood as a form of “virtual realism.” From this perspective, while admitting that the Scott Pilgrim fictional universe exhibits Canadian concerns over the role technologies play in the construction of identity, the author insists that the franchise also draws upon a broader internationally networked nostalgia for classic video games.

“Negation, Annihilation and Nothingness”: Risks and Recovery from Parental Loss and Abandonment in Nancy Huston’s Instruments of Darkness

Danielle Schaub
Nancy Huston’s Instruments of Darkness illustrates how the narration of trauma has at once potentially redeeming and devouring powers. A joint literary-psychoanalytic exploration of the main characters’ childhood experiences and subsequent severed and severing links/bonds highlights how the text bears the mark of past traumas, reflecting the theories of LaCapra, Bion, D. W. Winnicott, Laub, Poland, and André Green. Following the multiple processes through which the protagonist of the framing narrative fights against her past while recording the loops of the protagonist’s life in the framed narrative, the novel engages in a therapeutic process counteracting the traumatic impact of a dead mother, whether physically or psychically.

Canadian Studies Journals Around the World

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