Geneviève Zubrzycki - Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec

Genevive Zubrzycki

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2016 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2016.

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-39154-0 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-39168-7 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-39171-7 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226391717.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Zubrzycki, Genevive, author.

Title: Beheading the saint : nationalism, religion, and secularism in Quebec / Genevive Zubrzycki.

Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016015887 | ISBN 9780226391540 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226391687 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226391717 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: NationalismQubec (Province) | SecularismPolitical aspectsQubec (Province) | Church and stateQubec (Province) | ParadesPolitical aspectsQubec (Province) | John the Baptists DayQubec (Province) | Social changeQubec (Province)

Classification: LCC JC311 .Z83 2016 BL2765.Q3 | DDC 320.5409714dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015887

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI / NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

Pour ma mre

et la mmoire

de ma grand-mre

RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK WAS GENEROUSLY FUNDED BY GRANTS from the University of Michigans Office of Research, the Rackham Graduate School, the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, and the Department of Sociology, as well as from the American Sociological Associations Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline. A leave at the University of Michigans Institute for the Humanities in 201213 gave me the necessary time to complete the manuscripts first full draft.

I am grateful to Maxime Morin, Elizabeth Young, and Sami Jalbert for their research assistance as well as to several archivists who went out of their way to help me make the most of my research stay in the summers of 2007 and 2008: Estelle Brisson (Archives nationales du Qubec Montral), Andr Ruest (Archives nationales du Qubec Qubec), Marie-Paule Robitaille (Muse de lAmrique francophone), and Franois Dumas (Centre de recherche Lionel-Groulx). I am thankful also to the Mouvement national des Qubcoises et des Qubcoiss executive director, Gilles Grondin, for granting me special access to the organizations archives at the Archives nationales du Qubec Montral (Fonds P161), and to Francis Mailly for sharing with me current documents of the organization in the fall of 2014. I also very much appreciated the timely assistance of Sarah Garneau and Juliette Delrieu from the Muses de la civilisation in Qubec City for providing photographs of artifacts from the Museums collection. Acknowledgment is due to Theory and Society for the permission to reproduce portions of Aesthetic Revolt: The Remaking of National Identity in Qubec, 19601969, 42 (5): 42375, which appeared in their pages in 2013.

Thanks as well to my friends, colleagues, and students for their constructive criticism and helpful suggestions: Uriel Abulof, Barbara Anderson, Elizabeth Armstrong, Courtney Bender, Grard Bouchard, Marian Burchardt, Geoff Eley, Kriszti Fehrvry, Anna Grzymaa-Busse, Rob Jansen, Paul Johnson, Vic Johnson, Peter Hall, Michael Kennedy, Matthias Koenig, Mary Ellen Konieczny, Greta Krippner, Michle Lamont, Camilo Leslie, Sandy Levitsky, Peggy Levitt, Paul Lichterman, Marcin Napirkowski, Emmanuel Peddler, Fiona Rose-Greenland, Bill Sewell, Philip Smith, and Kiyo Tsutsui.

I also benefited immensely from lively discussions of sections of the book, over the years, with members of the Yales Center for Cultural Sociology, the Successful Societies Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and Marseille, the Institute of Polish Culture in Warsaw, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Gttingen, the Higher School of Economics in Saint-Petersburg (Russia), Princeton Universitys Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, and Harvards Weatherhead Center.

Aga Pasieka, Howard Kimeldorf, Mge Gek, and Denys Delge deserve special recognition for carefully reading the entire manuscript. Their comments were invaluable. So was the editing of Erika Bky, who improved the prose considerably. The book would not have come to the light of day in this form were it not for Doug Mitchell, whose vision aligned with mine and encouraged me to forge ahead.

Im grateful also for friends and family dispersed on the North American continent and beyond for their support, good humor, and patience. Im especially thankful to my parents and siblings for helping me keep the pulse on recent affairs through their consistent sharing of news, documents, and opinions (as well as confiding in me when family disputes would erupt over political issues). It is not always easy to feel like a foreigner in ones home, but I firmly believe that distance combined with constant returns for research or for family visits has given me a unique vantage point to analyze contemporary debates in Qubec. The reader will benefit from my between and betwixt position.

A final word of gratitude is due to Paul Christopher Johnson, who lived with me through the ups and downs of research and writing; whose constant belief in the project helped sustain mine; and whose love of Qubec, a place he discovered only seventeen years ago, he manages to pass on every day to our daughter, Anas. Merci.

This book is dedicated to my mother, Andre Gendreau, and to the memory of my grandmother, Rosaline Gendreau, ne Jolicoeur, both intrepid pioneers. May Anas follow their example in making her own path, wherever it may lead.

JUNE 24, 1969, A CROWD OF YOUTHFUL PROTESTERS FOLLOWING the traditional St-Jean-Baptiste Day parade in Montral seized and overturned the float dedicated to the patron saint of French Canadians. The large statue of St. John the Baptist fell to the ground, its head breaking off from the body. In the following days, the violent gesture was interpreted and narrated following the biblical story of the saint: it was described in the media and referred to in the public sphere as the Beheading of the Baptist. With this symbolic death of the saint, the parades disappeared, and new modes of national celebrations were institutionalized.