Postcolonial imaginaries in the West: secular state-building and cultural defence in Québec since the Quiet Revolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article addresses an understudied aspect of public secularity in the Canadian province of Québec, namely how its self-perception as a postcolonial nation vis-à-vis English Canada has shaped its secular state-building since the 1960s. In so doing, it shows that postcolonial legacies and imaginaries, a key theme for studying secularity in non-Western cases, may also prove productive for the North Atlantic world. The historical account proceeds in two parts. In the first period (1960-1980), the Quiet Revolution’s disestablishment of Catholicism was intimately linked to its anticolonial spirit, where the Church was identified as impeding development and self-determination. In the subsequent period (post-1980), the consolidation of Canadian multiculturalism and the rising accommodation demands of minority religions led to a contradictory form of ‘cultural defence’: an increased emphasis on Catholic heritage as well as on laïcité (state secularism), both deployed to underscore Québec’s unique society in distinction from English Canada. Exhibiting the consistent yet evolving effect of (post)colonial identity and memory in a North Atlantic example, and nuancing the concept of cultural defence by identifying its religious and secular forms, the article contributes to building a common vocabulary for the comparative analysis of secularities in Western and non-Western contexts.