Ethnic Identity and Minority Language Survival in Brittany

Abstract

Comment peut-on etre breton? [How can one be Breton?] Such was the trenchant title of an influential book by Breton journalist Morvan Lebesque (1970) in which the author explores how, or whether, Bretons, and other ethnic minorities in France, can maintain a sense of cultural identity within that highly centralized state. Lebesque’s perspective is that Bretons, and other minorities in France, are colonized peoples, reflecting the socio-political theorizing of the day regarding ‘internal colonization’ (see Hechter 1975; Reece 1977); he argues against any essentialist component of Breton identity, concluding that a sense of ‘Bretonness’ is, in the end, ‘une conscience et une volonte d’etre’ [‘a consciousness and a will to be’] (1970, p. 219). This chapter looks again at Lebesque’s question, for it continues to be of interest 30 years later. The world has changed in many ways since 1970, and the definition, or in today’s terms, construction, of cultural identities has taken on new dimensions. Understanding Breton identity in France and Europe at the turn of the twenty-first century is, in other words, a project that merits revisiting, for identities are always changing as humans adjust to new conditions and realities in their social and physical environments. However, as will be shown, Lebesque’s assessment about the general nature of Breton identity finds resonance in some of the perspectives offered by Bretons today that are set forth later in this chapter.