Introduction:The Landscape of Quebec: Nature and Culture, Space and Place - Literature and Painting in Quebec: From Imagery to Identity - page 5

collectively, 'imagery'), defined by John Berger as 'a sight which has
been recreated or reproduced' (9). A 'sight,' however, is itself con-
structed through the process of visual perception, which brings it to
consciousness, such that Jean-Paul Sartre contends that the word 'im-
age' can indicate only the relation of consciousness to the object - the
manner in which the object appears to consciousness, or rather, the way
in which consciousness presents an object to itself (17), a definition that
is equally germane to our discussion, especially in relation to written
descriptions of the landscape, which often detail the progressive stages
of perception. At the same time, as W.J.T. Mitchell notes, 'images are
now regarded as the sort of sign that presents a deceptive appearance
of naturalness and transparence concealing an opaque, distorting, arbi-
trary mechanism of representation, a process of ideological mystifica-
tion' ( Iconology , 8), and it is as a repository of ideology that the image
leads us towards the elusive notion of identity.
In a recent collection of texts dealing with the question of French-
Canadian identity, Quête identitaire et littérature: De Canadien à Québécois ,
Serge Provencher begins his introduction with a definition of identity
by Renald Legendre that works well here: 'Structure psychosociale
constituée des caractères fondamentaux les plus représentatifs d'une
personne ou d'un groupe' (Legendre, 696; A psychosocial structure
constituted by the fundamental characteristics that are the most repre-
sentative of a person or a group). On a national level ('groupe'), the
qualification 'caractères fondamentaux' reminds us that we are dealing
not only with customs and icons, but especially with their underlying
values, much as in Dumont's concept of second culture. Identity will
evolve and may, even must, involve contradictions. Indeed, in a recent
exploration of the age-old question of French-Canadian identity in the
wake of the Conquest, Jocelyn Létourneau, one of Quebec's premier
contemporary thinkers, emphasizes the notion of ambivalence, of wil-
ful contradiction:
Au chapitre de l'identité, les Canadiens s'élèvent dans une sorte d'entre-
lacs formés de références et de figures identitaires que l'on pourrait consi-
dérer comme étant antinomiques, mais qui sont envisagées par eux sur un
mode complémentaire: l'enracinement et la mobilité, l'agriculture et la
course des bois, la vallée du Saint-Laurent et l'appel des grands espaces, la
paroisse et la sauvagerie, la France et le Canada, la mère patrie et le nou-
veau pays, la francité et l'américanité, le repli et l'initiative, la tradition et
l'envie d'étrangeté, la fidélité à l'héritage et le désir de refondation, la