Reading the Quebec Imaginary: Marcel Rioux and Dialogical Form

Reading the Quebec Imaginary: Marcel Rioux and Dialogical FormAuthor(s): Greg Marc NielsenSource: The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 12, No. 1/2(Spring, 1987), pp. 134-149Published by: Canadian Journal of SociologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3340775 .

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Reading the Quebec imaginary: Marcel Rioux and dialogical form*

Greg Marc Nielsen

Abstract. Taking the work of Marcel Rioux as a textual centerpiece, we develop the method of dialogical critique, a quasi-semiotics in the tradition of M. Bakhtin, and apply it to a reading of the contemporary Quebec imaginary. We present an immanent critique of the social imaginary of otherness based in a definition of the cultural difference between English Canada as an absent nation and Quebec as an absent region. This is grounded in an examination of the dialogical forms of the life worlds in each society across three interrelated contexts of social discourse: world view, utterance and word.

Rdsumd. Prenant des travaux de Marcel Rioux comme pierre angulaire, nous d6veloppons une methode de critique dialogique, une quasi semiotique dans la tradition de M. Bakhtine et nous l'appliquons a l'etude de l'imaginaire quebecois contemporain. Nous proposons une critique immanente de l'imaginaire social de l'alt6rite fonde sur une definition de la difference entre le Canada anglais comme nation absente et le Quebec comme r6gion absente. Ce postulat s'appuie sur une analyse des formes dialogiques des mondes vecus dans chaque societe. Trois niveaux du discours social sont retenus: la vision du monde, l'enonce et le mot.

"... de la faillite du Livre lui etait revenue la sante, mais dans un moi aboli et desormais sans ambition" Victor-Levy Beaulieu Steven le Herault (1985)

* I would like to thank the Social Science Research Council for their postdoctoral fellowship (456-84-0823). Translations of French-language texts in the article are by the author. Please address all correspondence and reprint requests to Professor Greg Marc Nielsen, Department of Sociology, Glendon College, York University, Downsview, Ontario, M3J 1 P3.

Canadian Journal of Sociology 12(1-2)1987 134



It is almost a cliche to suggest that over the last twenty-five years most Eng- lish Canadians have had difficulty comprehending the many twists and turns of the Quebec nationalist movement. While many have been receptive to the apparent will to self-determination, most fail to look beyond the sociological explanation of the nationalist imagination as simply a representation of state, class, or ethnic interest. As a result of the empiricist bias, critical explanation of the will itself, defined as a social imaginary (Sartre, 1970; Castoriadis, 1975; Rioux, 1984a) incorporating its own autonomy, is generally misunder- stood if not altogether overlooked. In the critical sense, the social imaginary differs from the social imagination of independence in that it is itself a primary, non-determined, creative force in the process of social-historical change. In contrast, the social imagination, taken as the object of empirical sociological research, is defined as an already determined and therefore measurable representation of some aspect of social-historical reality. A critical explanation must encompass the difference between the limits of the representation (the structure of the imagination) and the potential of its praxis or creativity (the dynamic of the imaginary) without reducing the one to the other. Hence, even though political and even artistic representations of the nationalist movement have been dramatically displaced in contemporary Quebec, we maintain that consideration of the social imaginary of independence continues to be of central importance in defining Quebec society. On the discursive plane, that is, the material expression of the will, the independence imaginary has its own definition of alterity, and therefore its own

unique dialogical form (Sabo and Nielsen, 1984). In what follows, we will present a critique of this form through a reading of the work of Marcel Rioux, one of Quebec's most eminent sociologists.

Perhaps best known as a founding member of the Quiet Revolution and of the then emerging independence imaginary, Rioux has been one of Quebec's most important cultural theorists as well as a key actor in the development of political discourse (Duchastel, 1981; Dorland and Kroker, 1985; Dumont et al., 1985; Morrow, 1986; Nielsen, 1985). The author of eight books, a dozen works in collaboration and more than one hundred articles, Rioux has embarked on a career that now spans four complete decades (Hamel, 1985; Nielsen, 1986). Having shifted his perspective from functionalist anthropology to Marxism and finally to what he calls critical sociology, the resiliancy of his thought is found in its unrelenting yet divided application to the study of the potentiality of Quebec culture on the one hand, and to the explanation of the imminent dangers which threaten its existence on the other. The close relationship between the unfolding of political practices in Quebec society and the development of Rioux's sociology is almost legendary. In the early fifties, representing the left wing of the well-known Cit6 Libre group, he developed one of the first social-democratic critiques of conservative nationalism in Quebec (1953; 1955; 1960). With the first signs of the Quiet Revolution, he quickly detached himself from the

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Trudeau/Pelletier group and became a central figure in an emerging socialist-nationalist coalition (1961). Rioux's break from Cite Libre in 1961 took place when the Quebec left was undergoing possibly the most rapid period of transition in its history. Pierre Vadeboncoeur, Jacques Dofny, and Rioux were among the first to argue that Quebec's transition could only be achieved through the founding of a new socialist party. To this end Rioux presided over a meeting in 1960 which was conceived to unite over one hundred intellectuals and union leaders in a formal alliance which would constitute the inner core of Quebec's first New Democratic Party. Rioux's last article-length essay in Cite Libre presents a summary of his reflections dur- ing this epoch: It seems to me that this is how the French-Canadian community is evolving: retreat from provin- cialism [attitude of inwardness, cohesiveness, homogeneity of the group] and from a pan-Canadian nationalism but an increase of French-Canadian nationalism [attitude of emanci- pation from domination] and internationalism. Several participants at the New Party conference have conveyed this opinion to me by declaring that French Canadians must feel at home in this party and be able to elaborate a program in it which would be in harmony with their culture, men- tality and aspirations. Being on the left does not mean they cease to be nationalists. (1961:6)

Initial cautions concerning the need for special consideration of Quebec's national interests would prove to be deeply divisive. The plea for provincial autonomy, including control over economic matters, did not stem from a regionally based social imaginary as did the populist discourse of the Saskatch- ewan party. Rather, Rioux and his colleagues argued from a distinctly nationalist perspective. Nationalists within the provisionary council soon grew in numbers and as they did, conflicts with well-known federalists like the McGill academics Michael Oliver and Charles Taylor, along with several past spokesmen of the national CCF including Romeo Mathieu, Gerard Picard, and Roger Provost, became increasingly insurmountable. At stake for the nationalists was the formation of an authentic socialist party which would lead to the establishment of an independent Quebec state. Federalists, on the other hand, argued instead for one Canadian state which would give special status to Quebec within an atmosphere of "co-operative federalism." In the 1963 orientation convention, at the time thought to be simply a prel- ude to a long-delayed convention for the founding of the Quebec NDP, last-minute negotiations completely broke down and the two factions split into two autonomous parties. On one side, the federalists represented a completely gutted Quebec NDP, and on the other, the nationalists founded the Parti socialist quebecois (Sherwood, 1965). Many argue to this day that the failure of the federal NDP to respond positively to the social imaginary of the emerging nationalist left in this crucial period accounts for both the absence of the Party from Quebec's contemporary political spectrum and the definite weakening of any legitimacy it might have once claimed with regard to its proclaimed alliance with the Quebec left in general. Incredibly, in a period of less than four years, the face of Quebec's political left was funda-

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mentally transformed. Trudeau, once a militant critic of both the federal and provincial regimes, became the heroic ideologue of Canada's most dominant political ideology: federalism. Rioux, once an exiled critic of French-Cana- dian nationalism, became an intellectual leader of Quebec's new nationalist movement.

A co-founder of the PSQ and regular contributor (1964; 1965b; 1966; 1968) to its review Socialisme (1964-69), Rioux offered an important en- dorsement at the birth of the Parti Quebecois in 1968. His support of the PQ from the October Crisis through to the 1976 election has, however, turned into mounting criticism of the party and a plea for a politics of self- manage- ment and self-determination (1969; 1971; 1976; 1979; 1980; 1983). Recog- nizing the political breakdown of the independentist project has been a difficult experience for Rioux's generation of intellectuals. Guy Rocher, a key architect of the Parent Commission (1961), the document which outlined the transfer of the Church's control over education to the state; Fernand Dumont, author of the PQ White Paper on cultural policy (1977) and current director of the Institut qudbgcois de recherche sur la culture; and Rioux, head of the influential Royal Commission on the Teaching of Art in Quebec (1969), remain the three most well-known sociologists to have directly contributed to the transformation of Quebec society. Yet the failure to realize the independence imaginary places their very legacy in question. Moreover, it is not at all clear that the succeeding generation will recover that legacy. Indeed, seen internally, Quebec's contemporary intellectual formation is far from homogenous. This is inevitably overlooked by English-Canadian scholars given the narrowness of the networks which link the two communities. The sharp ideological differences, intense institutional jealousies and political contrasts which have led to deep divisions both within and across generations are generally unknown to the outside world. Nonetheless, what tends to hold the Quebec intellectual formation together as an institution, and this is particularly true of Quebec sociology, is the application of a diversity of approaches aimed at the (de)construction or por- trayal of Quebec society as the overwhelming common object of study (Fournier and Houle, 1980; Nielsen and Jackson, 1983).

It is clearly beyond the scope of the present article to adequately document the many divisions within Quebec sociology or even to seriously begin to contextualize the stages of Rioux's own work, much less to provide an evaluation of it. The latter is the subject of a separate work. For the present discussion, our aim is much more modest. Rather than a presentation and as- sessment of his contribution, an attempt is made to develop a fresh approach to the study of Quebec social discourse as the content of the social imaginary itself. It is held from the onset that consideration of the discursive or dialogical dimension, generally overlooked by both political economy and Rioux's own critical sociology, is fundamentally important to the empirical study of society. Rioux's work is thus taken as a textual centerpiece from

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which to develop the method of dialogical critique. We argue moreover that dialogical critique, a quasi-semiotics adapted from the Soviet literary and cultural critic, Mikhai'l Bakhtin (1968; 1973; 1981; 1984; 1985), is in fact a compatible extension of Rioux's critical sociology. Our analysis begins with an elaboration of the dialogical nature of Rioux's thought, including a more precise clarification of the central, proposed concept of dialogue. Following this, an attempt is made to define the differences between the dialogical form of the social imaginary in both Quebec and English Canada.

Critical sociology and dialogical form Caught within the tension of the immanent critique of domination, of the cultural constraints imposed by the other and the affirmation of his own interior discourse, in itself often divided between the voices of utopia and prag- matism, there is a spiraling counterpoint to Rioux's thought. Unravelling this counterpoint is a key to the comprehension of dialogical form. Dialogue in the sense of counterpoint encompasses more than the usual formalist or prag- matist definition of dialogue in language as an exchange of utterances between speakers in a conversation that may be formally deconstructed according to the axis which splits language from speech, the word from its accentuation, ideology from its interest. This is only the superficial manifestation of a much broader phenomena that exceeds direct referentially ordered discourse to permeate everything that has meaning and value in human interaction. Understood in the broader historicist sense as the production and exchange of meaning within social discourse, dialogical phenomena develop within a variety of contexts (institutional, ideological, cultural) and across a series of social categories (groups, classes, regions, nations). Ultimately, of course, dialogue implies the sign itself given that signification, which is always contextual, derives from the interaction between at least two voices. Dialogical forms of the imaginary may thus be seen to exist on an in- definite number of levels; from elements of an utterance to the single word - to the entire text and beyond the text to its cultural context including the networks of socio-discursive relations, or the intertext. Although Rioux does not employ the concepts of dialogue or intertextuality (Kristeva, 1969; Todorov, 1981; Angenot, 1983; 1984b), his basic definition of culture as that which instills meaning in everyday life and as that which retains the potential for praxis, the overcoming of the restraints of domination, can be seen to parallel the global intent of these essentially literary concepts. As much then from this dialogical point of view as through the application of the proce- dures of Rioux's own critical sociology, our reading of his work is at once a critique of the social imaginary of Quebec society and an introduction to a unique North American thinker.

Any dialogical critique of Quebec society must then begin through an immanent understanding of that society, that is, from the position of practice. Epistemologically, this point of departure directly complements Rioux's

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critical sociology. Following Habermas (1971), Rioux argues that any study of social-historical reality is thoroughly interest-bound (Rioux, 1978a). Whereas Habermas, as Rioux argues, gives in to the practical interest of hermeneutics as is evidenced by his turn toward universal pragmatics (Habermas, 1979) and communicative action (Habermas, 1984), Rioux seeks to develop the emancipatory interest of the critical tradition (1978; 1984a; 1985). He defines this interest in terms of praxis. Denouncing the tendency toward abstraction but not the self-critical component of critical theory, Rioux claims that a critical sociology must address "the concrete actions of historical actors in movement" (1984c:1-2). This closely ties him to the historicist aspirations of the early Frankfurt tradition, particularly to their method of concrete negation (McCarthy, 1978:149), but his position may also be understood as being rooted in the Sartrian premise that truth is "fundamentally subjective, relative, multiple and historical." However, in contrast to Sartre, for Rioux, "critical sociology goes further than the individual point of view and is interested in the collective values which societies practice as well as those values which they hold to be ideal" (1984:42). Distinguishing real and potential consciousness is at the core of Rioux's de- fense of the emancipatory interest. It is this interest which he claims to be at the center of the critical tradition from Kant through Hegel, Marx, and the Frankfurt School. Potential or utopian consciousness, desire or the "will to will," are the instituting, non-determined forms of pure praxis, the aesthetic dimension of self-creation or self-determination. In contrast, mimetic or re- petitive practices constitute the instituted or determined and hence static forms of real consciousness (1978a:39-40). From his earliest essays, Rioux reveals the importance he ascribes to the aspect of potentiality in culture. "Human culture," he argues, "is an acquired nature which permits humans to develop potentialities and to live life fully as human beings" (1950:314). His work in cultural studies is largely informed by an early distinction drawn between primary and secondary culture - a distinction which has also been drawn by his close colleague Fernand Dumont (1969; 1979). Primary culture includes the "mass of values, ideas, and emotional reactions" which define the "life-style" of a group and give it a distinct "ethos." Secondary culture signifies "the actions of individuals in a given society as well as the material objects that the group uses" (1955:7). The outstanding feature of his cultural theory remains its emphasis on process, becoming or potentiality: When one speaks of culture, in the ethnographic sense of the term, one has in mind all the non-biological heredity of a given society, the stock of ideas, of feelings, of conducts which are characteristic of a group. Each culture is individualised; from which it can be said that a culture is an ensemble of habits which are recognized as valid in a society .... It is therefore evident that a culture is an historical precipitate, an essentially dynamic entity which changes, which becomes enriched, which becomes impoverished .... Every culture represents a choice among an infinity of possibilities: each cultural ensemble... is unique. (1955:4)

Breaking with both functionalist anthropology and Marxist political

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economy, Rioux's critical sociology is consistently geared toward consideration of the unique, the original, the new or emergent aspects within the social-historical spectrum. Although his critical sociology is often accused, as Ray Morrow (1986) has suggested, of exaggerating the importance of cultural specificity over and above economic and/or political structures, this utopian cornerstone in his work is perhaps its most dynamic axiom. Indeed, it would appear to allow for a large margin of manoeuverability in his own political praxis. Rioux's career is itself a remarkable illustration of what an intellectual commitment to the marriage of theory and practice actually represents. His capacity to react to new social movements has directly informed the development of his controversial and often-criticized dependency theory (Bernard, 1984; Boismenu et al., 1983; Laurin-Frenette, 1978; 1984). Founded in his own political practice as well as in his lifetime preoccupation with the analysis of the specificity of Quebec culture, he sets out to develop a history of the ideological evolution of this society in the context of its double dependency, i.e., its relative position within Canada including the internal (ethnic) class division as well as the more haunting cultural dependency with the United States (Dofny and Rioux, 1962; Rioux, 1965a; Rioux and Crean, 1980). His distinction between primary and secondary culture along with the distinction between the positive and negative relations of ideology to culture and social structure inform the theoretical direction of his best-known works on the history of ideologies in Quebec (1968; 1969; 1974).

In its broadest, most positive and perhaps most traditional sense, Rioux defines ideology, again anthropologically, as a system of ideas and beliefs which form more or less coherent world-views. In its positive sense, he argues, "an ideology may be very close to the global culture of a group and actually represent its aspirations." On the other hand, ideology can carry a deeply negative connotation which gives it a naturalist quality in the sense that it seeks to establish its belief system as being beyond reproach, the most obvious and natural system possible. The unique feature of Rioux's ideology critique is the insistence that both the negative and positive poles of ideological phenomena consist of an element of evaluation (action) and that therefore they belong, "as much by their cognitive as their affective aspects, to the cultural dimension of reality" (Rioux, 1959:3). The critical procedure Rioux develops from this premise limits the temptation to reduce ideological content to class interest; to view it as reflection. At the same time however, he does not go beyond a cultural anthropology of cognition to a theory of sign or discursive practice as the central reference point in the construction of the social-historical. We would like now to continue our reading of Rioux's critical sociology in a broader discussion of the problematic of dialogical critique. We will attempt to apply the procedure to a reading of the contemporary Quebec imaginary, that is, the underlying vision of alterity or otherness which prevails in Quebec society, but first we will give some definition to the procedure itself.

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Toward a dialogical critique of the Quebec imaginary To begin with, dialogical phenomena are only possible in social discourse wherein the author (individual, group, class, nation) of the utterance antici-

pates implicitly or explicitly a rejoinder. It anticipates its other. As we have argued, this process may occur on a variety of levels, yet perhaps its clearest manifestation occurs when two separate discourses belonging to two distinct life worlds are aimed at the same set of themes. As Habermas argues, a life world "is formed from more or less diffuse, always unproblematic, back-

ground convictions." A life world is defined as a communication community which, through its interpretive accomplishments, demarcates "the one objec- tive world and the intersubjectively shared world from the subjective worlds of individual and (other) collectives" (Habermas, 1984:70). Unlike Habermas' universal pragmatics (1979; 1982) which seeks to analyze the "ideal speech act" as a purely non-distorted communicative action representing a non-colonized life world, dialogical critique seeks an interior or immanent explanation of the clash which occurs when two "living" discourses confront one another and are forced to form a semantic infrastructure (Nielsen, 1985). Competing discourses come into contact and create an internal dialogism, or counterpoint, which is to say that neither discourse can continue to develop without reference to its other. In this way the other is thoroughly internalized and not simply an external empirical referent nor a mirror image. An immanent critique of this imaginary other is therefore nec- essary in order to unwind the counterpoint of the discourse and thereby re- veal the dialogical form of its practice. English Canada and Quebec house two distinct life worlds and articulate two different social discourses. We will argue that neither one can develop without an imaginary construction of the other, and hence that each has engendered an original dialogical form.

Dialogue in the social discourse of English Canada and Quebec societies occurs simultaneously in overlapping zones. In the most general zone, dialogue operates within the entirety of social discourse. This includes not only all that which is argued, said, or narrated, but also everything that is printed or said in the electronic media, as well as the arguable, the speakable, and the narratable in a given society (Angenot, 1984a; Bourdieu, 1982). Dialogical practices in this zone encompass the formulation of complete and partial world views as well as conceptualizations of the anticipated rejoinders of opposite groupings in other life worlds or within competing factions of the same life world. Here, dialogue may be said to be interiorized. Exterior discourse, on the other hand, as may be discerned in a political speech or polemic for example, actually takes on a monological form giving it a uni-directional appearance, in the sense that the speaker appears to seek an absolute identity with the object of the discourse. Yet, given that all discourse is conceived in relation to the anticipated, albeit implicit, response and comprehension of the internalized other, one may discern an interior dialogical form in even the most monological speech genres.

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Quebec society, in part because of its double dependency, its precarious status in North America and in Canada, is intensely dialogical. In the most general zone of social discourse, it is constantly reminded of its own alterity. Historically, the institution of the Church provided the narrative structure in which alterity became internalized. The French Canadian in this medieval narrative is seen as the guardian of the French language, of the true Catholic faith, of rural traditions and of the fertility of the earth and its people. With the advent of the discourse of rattrapage ("catching-up"), defined by Rioux

(1978b:70) as the attempt to bridge the gap between culture (ideas, values, symbols) and society (technology, economy, industrialization) which had iso- lated Quebec from other nations, the thematics of Catholicism, rurality, and

fertility disappeared in the wake of the power shift from the Church to state cultural institutions.

Since the Quiet Revolution, language and the discovery of a nation-state

(Laurin-Frenette, 1983) now serve as institutions for the independence imaginary. In short, their lament for a culture centers the remaining the- matic of the social narrative in which the independence imaginary defines itself. As in previous epochs, the dialogical form in this narrative takes the

Anglo-Canadian and the American presence as the primary imagined other, the force of domination (of the imaginary), and as the principle threat to the loss of collective memory (imagination). But what happens when the other becomes indistinguishable from self? Increasingly, given the social

implosion, as Baudrillard (1985) terms it, of television, radio, music, and other media, Quebec's cultural text is overwhelmed by signifiers belonging to the other. This is why Rioux fears the cultural form of domination the most. For him, "the most insidious form of domination is not war, nor the occupa- tion of territory nor economic reprisals, but rather the domination of images, sounds, books, songs and dance." As he argues, "cultural imperialism represents the final stage of imperialism because beyond the military, economic and political conquest, it represents the defeat of the mind and the soul." Rioux warns that time is running out for the people of Quebec. Taking the assimilation of English Canada within the American cultural orbit as a reference point, he argues that the information technologies of American postin- dustrial society are combining in a potentially fatal assault on Quebec's cultural territory: The only effective barrier between the culture of the Empire and national culture seems to me to

be language. This is why for the Quebecois time does not play in their favour. On the several television and radio networks to which they have access, the Quebecois allow the English language to

penetrate their territory more and more .... Soon, as has been the case for a long time in English Canada, an unveiled familiarity will be established with everything that is America; one will al-

most not be able to distinguish between self and other. (1984b)

In spite of the threats to the integrity of Quebec culture and the present political impasse, few would deny that Quebec has retained a national vision of itself throughout much of its history; a vision founded in the awareness of

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its own cultural specificity. Indeed, its maximum differentiation with English Canada has been built up, diffused, and reassembled so often that dialogical form in its life world is difficult to discern outside of purely political interests. English-Canadians have until only recently consistently viewed Quebec as a region, perhaps ethnically and linguistically distinct, but a region nonetheless. Quebec on the other hand, has not nor does it today conceive of itself as a region in the English-Canadian sense. Passage through the transparent layers distinguishing regional and national practices which occurs in English Canada, in some regions perhaps more easily than others, does not occur in Quebec. Consequently, dialogical forms in each society occasionally come into contact and clash, at times in a spectacular fashion (the 1942 conscrip- tion crisis, the 1980 referendum). From this cultural point of view, Quebec is English Canada's absent region. The scope of signifying practices in day to day Quebec society are essentially, yet not exclusively, set in a nationally based framework.

English Canada, on the other hand, with the single exception of Lord Durham and his colleagues, has never held a view of itself as a nation in a cultural sense. Daniel Latouche goes so far as to suggest that English Can- ada "has never existed, does not exist nor is it ever likely to exist" as a nation (1983:65). Cultural nationalism, of course, flourishes in English Canada, but its dialogical form is not capable of imagining Quebec as an entirely distinct other. Its own sense of nation is in effect absent. English Canada is an absent nation. Its sense of alterity is defined negatively rather than positively and generally is measured against the United States. English Canada, then, is an absent nation, yet it maintains a pan-nationalist discourse and continues to display an ensemble of features which set it apart as a distinct society. On the surface, the observation that English Canada acts as an absent nation seems rather basic. However, understood more critically as a negatively defined dialogical form, nationalist discourse in English Canada becomes im- mediately suspect. Writers and critics consistently overlook this internal contradiction largely because the articulation of the nationalist narratives in English Canada is rarely positively orientated or inward-looking. Rather, it reaffirms itself by a generalized negation of its external (American) other. Internally, day-to-day signifying practices are generally but not exclusively regionally mediated. In this context, the cultural dynamic of English- Cana- dian society is composed of the continual reproduction of the tension between region, nation, and empire. Given the confines of this article we cannot ex- plore the dialogical form rooted in this tension which defines English-Canadian society and which penetrates artistic and broadcasting institutions on the one hand, and permeates locally experienced, day-to-day signifying practices on the other. However, we are in a better position to pro- ceed with a contextualization of the Quebec social imaginary, given the importance of the development of Quebec's dialogical form in relation to English Canada.

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In contextualizing the Quebec social imaginary, we must keep in mind that social discourse also operates in a multiplicity of genres which restrict dialogue to more limited contexts. In the single context of scientific (critical) or political (ideological) discourse, for example, truth claims or claims of validity, while generally precise, explicit technical conventions (as in the case of the former), or simply the articulation of some related social interest (as in the case of the latter), are nonetheless inherently dialogical in that they are constructed as enclosed rejoinders to anticipated alternative explanations. Dialogical form is no less present in artistic, literary, or everyday cultural genres in which poetic conventions may be much more relative or creative rather than technical or precise. This guarantees, regardless of the discursive genre as Bakhtin notes, that two discourses "oriented to the same referential object within the limits of a single context cannot exist side by side without intersecting dialogically, regardless of whether they confirm, mutually sup- plement, or (conversely) contradict one another" (1984:187). The dialogical process takes place within the utterance itself. Hence, social discourse in its most restricted zone operates as utterance, that is, as the signifier or living word.

Bilingualism, to take a simple but effective example of dialogical form in the utterance, is a signifier that often takes on diametrically opposed meanings in English Canada and Quebec. For the citizens of the former society, it generally indicates refinement, good taste, enlightenment, and en- hanced mobility. Its more negative connotation is dismissed as the archaic expression of provincial or regional anachronism. For the Quebecois, it may simply represent domination in the sense that common knowledge dictates that the English language is a prerequisite for economic and, more and more, cultural survival. Given that geographic mobility is virtually impossible without living in the language (imaginary) of the other, thereby agreeing to a cultural capitulation, bilingualism rarely takes on a purely positive connotation in Quebec society. Rather, the utterance itself takes on an ironic and

generally instrumental form. The instrumentality is a political compromise which results as the two definitions of the utterance come together in single institutional contexts and intersect dialogically. Hence, the two utterances (definitions of bilingualism) come together in the genres of social-historical discourse and internalize an imaginary conception of the other. One is perhaps best described as romantic, the other as ironic. Dialogical form within the utterance, in the most particular zone of social discourse, has nothing to do with the linguistic determination of language, but rather with language as the content of the social imaginary. Neither a noun nor a verb is inherently dialogical, but the accentuated living word, pregnant with intonation and signifying power, has the capacity to differentiate and thus engender dialogical form in the utterance itself. Dialogical form is the cultural mechanism that allows for alterity. Parody, polemic, or satire are all devices used in everyday speech genres which create the double-voiced or ironic form. For example,

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parody of the archaic provincial backlash allows English Canadians to affirm their positive romantic definition of bilingualism. Similarly, satire or polemi- cal devices defined against the imperialism of English Canada are common reassurances of the dangers of bilingualism for Quebecois. Here the speaker's voice addresses either directly or indirectly a recognizable other. The ironic or double-voiced utterance allows the speaker to be distanced from the other and at the same time to affirm solidarity with the listener. Meaning becomes doubled or reversed, thus creating a potential for multiple expression. This potentiality is itself multiplied as social discourse reinforces itself intertextually and across various genres within the life world until finally the life world itself reaches its maximum possible differentiation with other social groupings (societies).

Thus dialogue operates within and across three distinct zones of social discourse. Returning for a moment to our example, bilingualism may be conceived simultaneously as utterance or ideologeme (value or norm), as political genre or institution, or as that which is desirable or narratable in a given life world. Leaving aside the state apparatus and the class base responsible for its institution, it is remarkable to consider the cultural importance which bilingualism has come to enjoy in the day-to-day discourse of English- Cana- dian society. As ideologemes of enlightenment, refinement, and good taste, bilingualism and multiculturalism stand in sharp contrast to the discourse of sovereignty-association and the dark, backward-looking ideologemes of sepa- ration. Here the dialogical form derived from each life world is in a virtual binary opposition. English Canada cannot conceive of itself without Quebec. It has neither the political will nor the social imaginary to do so. Quebec cannot grasp the immanent diversity of English Canada. It has neither the will nor the cultural memory to do so.

Conclusion: cultural domination and double identity It is then the cultural more than the political or economic sense of nation that centers the dialogical form of Quebec's independence imaginary. Cri- tique of dialogical form in the social imaginary demands reflection on the immanent nature rather than the determined representation of cultural production. Hidden or interior discourse founded in the semantic oppositions between the multiple codes of cultural practice are only discernable through immanent dialogical critique. Hence, as in the case of many independentist scholars, one finds in Rioux's interior discourse an intense response to an imagined other, a response which refers to the conditions as well as the reality of cultural domination. The other at the center of this imaginary is expressed in a series of imagined voices. As the Quebec literary and social critic Andre Belleau has remarked: "For the twenty years that I have thought every day or almost, of the independence of Quebec, I've only done it in anger or pas- sion, irony or resentment, and always with an imaginary but not fictive speaker in front of me" (1984). In the independence imaginary, dialogical

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form confirms the internal relation between the author of the discourse and the solidarity with the audience by a sustained distancing from the other. This ironic mode is thoroughly entrenched in the historicity of the life world of Quebec society. In North American terms, this deep sense of otherness, politically expressed as a will to nationhood, is unparalleled. Still, since the referendum defeat of 1980, the social imagination of independence has been in decline in virtually every sector. Herein lies a striking paradox. In a sense, the dialogical form of the social imaginary is held in a state of suspension as economic, political, and cultural representations develop in opposite or simply in different directions. Most surviving militants maintain that this is simply a low point in the cycle of a social movement. Dumont argues that the paradox is a consequence of a "cultural revolution where an intelligentsia at- tempted to create a social revolution" (1981:30). Edgar Morin, a French so- ciologist, describes the same phenomenon in terms of a double identity to which Quebecois are condemned:

Basically the thing that strikes me is the sort of double identity, the double consciousness ... On the one hand, a ferocious will to safeguard a French Qu6ebcois identity and on the other the fear of adventure and the bond of I would say, a globally North American identity. There is a conjunc- tion of a need to live one's life with the fear of suddenly breaking the bond, which means to live one's life and to dominate one's fears.... Thus it is basically an internal struggle ... a struggle which is carried out within. (Rioux and Morin, 1980:15)

Reading the Quebec imaginary teaches us the difficult and often tragic dilemma of modernity, in effect forgotten by the collective memory of Eng- lish Canada. In the latter society, language and technology are generally as- sumed to be value-neutral tools of practical intent. Technological innovation is seen as synonymous with cultural advancement. Rioux's critical cultural sociology shows us the urgent need to combat this ideologeme and to create the possibility of "opting out of the empire." As Quebec leaves the other-worldly symbolic culture of its second Middle Age for a culture more comfortably suited to the polyphony of signs that is modernity, it not only opens itself to new forms of economic and political domination, but more fundamentally, it risks the colonization of its life world and distortion of its dialogical form. Yet the cultural existence of Quebec society, the struggle in- side its identity, is historically defined through this very tension. "Fear of breaking the bond," for the moment, has won a victory. To look ahead to the possibility of Quebec society one must be aware of the tenacity and resiliancy of its pure imaginaire, the deep sense of otherness or difference in the Quebec life world, before pronouncing the tragic failure of its "Project." Re- tarding this "Project" may indeed appear to recover its social health, but only at the cost of an "abandoned selfhood" swept up in the non-ambition of postmodern life.

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Documents

Reading the Quebec Imaginary: Marcel Rioux and Dialogical Form