Sean Mills - The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal

THE EMPIRE WITHIN

STUDIES ON THE HISTORY OF QUEBEC / TUDES DHISTOIRE DU QUBEC

Magda Fahrni and Jarrett Rudy

Series Editors/Directeurs de la collection

1 Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal

Louise Dechne

2 Crofters and Habitants

Settler Society, Economy, and Culture in a Quebec Township, 18481881

J.I. Little

3 The Christie Seigneuries

Estate Management and Settlement in the Upper Richelieu Valley, 17601859

Francoise Nol

4 La Prairie en Nouvelle-France, 16471760

Louis Lavalle

5 The Politics of Codification

The Lower Canadian Civil Code of 1866

Brian Young

6 Arvida au Saguenay

Naissance dune ville industrielle

Jos E. Igartua

7 State and Society in Transition

The Politics of Institutional Reform in the Eastern Townships, 18381852

J.I. Little

8 Vingt ans aprs Habitants et marchands, Lectures de lhistoire des XVIIe et XVIIIe sicles canadiens

Habitants et marchands, Twenty Years Later

Reading the History of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Canada

Edited by Sylvie Dpatie, Catherine Desbarats, Danielle Gauvreau, Mario Lalancette, Thomas Wien

9 Les rcoltes des forts publiques au Qubec et en Ontario, 18401900

Guy Gaudreau

10 Carabins ou activistes? Lidalisme et la radicalisation de la pense tudiante lUniversit de Montral au temps du duplessisme

Nicole Neatby

11 Families in Transition

Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe

Peter Gossage

12 The Metamorphoses of Landscape and Community in Early Quebec

Colin M. Coates

13 Amassing Power

J.B. Duke and the Saguenay River, 18971927

David Perera Massell

14 Making Public Pasts

The Contested Terrain of Montreals Public Memories, 18911930

Alan Gordon

15 A Meeting of the People

School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 18011998

Roderick MacLeod and Mary Anne Poutanen

16 A History for the Future

Rewriting Memory and Identity in Quebec

Jocelyn Ltourneau

17 Ctait du spectacle !

Lhistoire des artistes transsexuelles

Montral, 19551985

Viviane Namaste

18 The Freedom to Smoke

Tobacco Consumption and Identity

Jarrett Rudy

19 Vie et mort du couple en Nouvelle-France

Qubec et Louisbourg au XVIIIe sicle

Josette Brun

20 Fous, prodigues, et ivrognes

Familles et dviance Montral au

XIXe Sicle

Thierry Nootens

21 Done with Slavery

The Black Fact in Montreal, 17601840

Frank Mackey

22 Le concept de libert au Canada lpoque des Rvolutions atlantiques, 17761838

Michel Ducharme

23 The Empire Within

Postcolonial Thought and Political

Activism in Sixties Montreal

Sean Mills

POSTCOLONIAL THOUGHT AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN SIXTIES MONTREAL

SEAN MILLS

McGill-Queens University Press 2010

ISBN 978-0-7735-3683-8 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-7735-3695-1 (paper)

Legal deposit first quarter 2010

Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

McGill-Queens University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Mills, Sean, 1978

The empire within : postcolonial thought and political activism in sixties Montreal / Sean Mills.

(Studies on the history of Quebec ; 23)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7735-3683-8 (bnd)

ISBN 978-0-7735-3695-1 (pbk)

1. Montral (Qubec) Intellectual life 20th century. 2. Radicalism Qubec (Province) Montral History 20th century. 3. Social movements Qubec (Province) Montral History 20th century. 4. Political activists Qubec (Province) Montral History 20th century. 5. Nineteen sixties. 6. Decolonization. i. Title. ii. Series: Studies on the history of Quebec 23

FC2947.394.M54 2010 971.4'2804 C2009-906544-4

For Anna

PART ONE
19631968

PART TWO
19681972

While I alone am responsible for whatever errors remain in this book, I cannot take sole credit for its accomplishments. This study owes its existence to the vitality of intellectual life in Montreal, a world that I first encountered when I moved to the city over a decade ago. During the years I was writing it, many friends and colleagues pushed me to ask bigger questions than I had originally thought possible. Marc-Andr Lavigne, Benoit Dubreuil, and Dominique Perrault-Joncas first introduced me to political debate about Quebec, and Matt Rankin, Damien-Claude Blanger, and Louis-Raphal Pelletier have discussed many of the ideas in this study. At an early stage, Stphanie Poirier shared her expertise as well as her files on the Montreal Central Council of the CSN, as did Marc Comby with the FRAP. Philippe Fournier has been an indefatigable friend and colleague and has helped in more ways than I can innumerate.

I was first initiated into the Montreal History Group as an undergraduate, and I found in it a community of scholars committed to engagement and collaboration across the linguistically divided Canadian academy. The Groups members Denyse Baillargeon, Amlie Bourbeau, Bettina Bradbury, Jean-Franois Constant, Magda Fahrni, Donald Fyson, Karine Hbert, Daniel Horner, Darcy Ingram, Nicolas Kenny, Maude-Emmanuelle Lambert, Liz Kirkland, Andre Lvesque, Tamara Myers, Mary Anne Poutanen, Sonya Roy, Jarrett Rudy, Sylvie Tachereau, and Brian Younghave provided material, moral and intellectual support. Brian Young, whom I first met while I was an exchange student at McGill, has remained a mentor and friend. His confidence in my work did much to convince me to go on to graduate school, and his encouragement, advice, and careful reading of an earlier draft helped make this a better book.

These have been good years to study the 1960s, as a resurgence of interest in the period has created new debates and revitalized old questions. Marcel Martel and Cynthia Wright shared both sources and insights, as did Stuart Henderson, Stephanie Jowett, Jodi Burkett, Alexis Lachane, Ivan Carel, and Catherine LeGrand. Mathieu Lavigne, Susan Lord, Bryan Palmer, and Paul Jackson read earlier versions of the project and offered useful comments that helped me to rethink it. Jean-Philippe Warren, whose own work has done much to stimulate inquiry into the period, carefully read and commented on an earlier version, and the final product is better for it.

Many years ago Suzanne Morton encouraged me to put myself in unfamiliar situations and try to understand life from the perspective of others. In many ways, this book is a result of that advice, and I thank her for it, and for her help and encouragement along the way. At the Universit de Montral, Denyse Baillargeon taught me a great deal, and has continually supported my work, and Andre Lvesque has been a model of dynamic commitment to intellectual life. My Belgian colleagues, especially Serge Jaumain, Anne Morelli, and Jos Gotovitch, who twice hosted me in Brussels, offered important feedback on parts of this project, and Van Gosses comments and encouragement greatly helped as I set out to complete the book.