Will Nationalism in Quebec Ever Succeed?

I just found this curious post attempting to explain why Quebec nationalism will never be successful:

Quebec nationalism, though providing important moments of revolutionary struggle (i.e. the Front de Libération du Québec), was by-and-large a false revolutionary nationalism.  While it is true that the francophone sovereigntist struggle emerged in response to anglo-chauvinism, it was still the product of a nation of losing colonizers.  The French arrived to settle, enslave, and genocide this hemisphere's indigenous population––just like the English––they just happened to lose a colonial war and become a nation of subjugated colonizers.  Even when they were under the economic domination of the Anglophones, they remained a parasitic settler-colonial nation: they would send their police to smash indigenous resistance, their sovereigntism was most often a denial of anti-colonial struggle because the only national struggle it recognized was a struggle of settlers.  And this nationalism is, to paraphrase Fanon and Cesaire, ultimately nothing more than "a war amongst brothers." . . . Hopefully the Bloc's humiliating defeat in these recent federal elections will finally exorcise the ghost of that predatory nationalism that has lingered over the mass graves of indigenous peoples since its emergence.

We are used to nationalism being glorified by Conservatives of every ilk. Jingoism is one of the favorite Conservative pastimes, as we all know. You want to get people to die enthusiastically and for free? Nothing achieves that goal better than waving around a piece of painted fabric.

Here, however, we see a leftist blogger provide an extremely romanticized vision of nationalism. The right to nationalism, according to this blogger, has to be deserved. There are "pure" nationalisms based on the "legitimate" possession of the lands the nation claims as its own. Such nations have to be able to lay claim to struggles, persecutions and exploitations because without them they will never be pure enough to merit their own nationalism. These nationalisms that have cleansed themselves in the purifying ritual of true persecution can be applauded and supported in their nationalists struggles. This pure ideal, however, can be sullied easily by illegitimate nationalisms who take the sacred name of the nation in vain. Their claim to the lands and to the history attached to these lands is illegitimate. Their record of suffering is not nearly strong enough to put them on the same level with the kinds of nationalism that have proven their worth.

Of course, this is all bunk. There is no dichotomy of "legitimate" versus "illegitimate" nationalisms. A nation is always an "invented community," a myth. No amount of research will be able to prove definitively who was where first and whose possession of which lands is "rightful." A nationalism will either win or lose not on the basis of whether its claims are "righteous", but, rather, based on whether it will be able to make its myth attractive enough to a significant number of people. How much truth goes into the myth of a nation is completely immaterial.

It is curious how people of seemingly different political persuasions use the same rhetoric to decry the evils of "false" nationalisms and exalt the redeeming features of the "true" ones. In the above-mentioned quote, the author attempts to disqualify Quebecois nationalism by mentioning the mass graves left by the French colonizers on the territories that the Francophones of today see as their homeland. It is self-evident, of course, that nowhere in the world will you be able to find a nationalism without its own share of mass graves and genocides. As Zygmunt Bauman pointed out in Liquid Modernity, a community cannot be constituted without an act of violence that would lie in its origins.

It might seem very progressive and even revolutionary to range nationalisms by the order of their presumed legitimacy. However, all such efforts achieve is a reaffirmation of nationalism as a pure and romantic ideal. A critique of nationalism as an ideological construct would be a truly subversive act. However, it would knock one of the most useful tools of manipulation out of the hands of both Conservatives and Liberals.

"My Blonde"

In Quebecois French, the word "blonde" can mean "a girlfriend", irrespective of the woman's hair color. Once, when my sister had first started dating her boyfriend and her colloquial French of Quebec was still not good, she heard him talking on the phone. He was telling his friend about this blonde that he was dating and how amazing she was. My sister, whose hair is black, is no shrinking violet. As she listened to the conversation, she started getting enraged and began to imagine all kinds of horrors she was going to visit on the guy. It's a good thing he managed to explain this curious linguistic reality to her fast enough.

Quebec Against the Niqab: Finally

Finally, the authorities of Quebec show that they have some respect for the women of the province:

Quebec's human rights commission ruled that niqab-and burka-wearing women must uncover their faces to apply for a medicare card and cannot insist on being served by a woman.

For years, we have had to observe the degrading scenes of burqa-clad women being led down the streets of Montreal on a leash, listen to the endless discussion in the Supreme Court of whether shariah laws should be accepted in Canada, deal with students whose faces were completely covered in our classrooms, accept all the attempts by the fanatically religious to control how we live our lives. It is so great to see the authorities in Quebec finally realize that the most extreme sectors of the Muslim community are not the only people who deserve to have their rights respected.

Kudos to Quebec for finally listening to reason and for losing the pseudo-liberal fear of anybody who uses their claim to being religious in order to control everybody else.

Quebec Is Shrinking: Who Is to Blame?

The "Chronicles of a Pure Laine" blog just published a post titled "Quebec Is Shrinking." It addresses one of the central problems that plague my province: "a shrinking population. "Demographics are playing against Québec. Birth rates and net immigration aren't high enough for the province to keep its relative weight in the Canadian bosom." So why is this happening? Why are birth rates so low in a province where life is good and people are, for the most part, happy?

Well, its seems that in spite of all the issues that Quebec's shrinking causes to the province on the political scene, the politicians of Quebec still put their patriarchal ideology above their own political and economic interests. Middle-class women, who are responsible and career-oriented, find it next to impossible to make a decision to have a child (let alone several children) because everything is done in Quebec to keep mothers away from the workplace.

If you are middle-class and have a good, stable income, there are only two daycare options for you: governnment-sponsored daycare with a waiting list of over 2 years (which makes this daycare option pretty useless since staying out of work for 2 years makes it almost impossible to find a good job afterwards) and a private daycare that costs $60 + 15% tax A DAY. Which makes the monthly daycare bill around $1400. Hardly something that a regular middle-class couple can afford.

As a result, a woman is forced with an impossible choice. Unless the salary she makes is absolutely spectacular, she can hardly hope to afford daycare. Staying at home with the child means depriving herself of professional and social realization, descending into depression and limiting her chances to have a flourishing career forever. It also means depriving the child of normal, healthy socialization during his or her formative years. Of course, single parenthood becomes impossible unless you are willing to raise your child in dire poverty.

Of course, Quebec can implement these barbaric policies aimed at keeping women barefoot and in the kitchen and then complain about the province's shrinking all it wants. Everything has a price and Quebecois government is paying a high price for its chauvinism.