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'identity' precisely as a matter of 'modernity' (174, 365), but what are
the constituents of these two concepts? Certainly liberation is fore-
most, but also construction on behalf of the collectivity, both overtly
key notions of the Quiet Revolution. Indeed, in an article published in
1969, Jean Sarrazin describes the then-present state of Quebec: 'Ainsi,
à vingt ans de distance, au cri libérateur de contestation globale de la
société québécoise lancé par Borduas, répond aujourd'hui un mouve-
ment positif, non plus de contestation permanente mais de construc-
tion permanente d'un art pensé et conçu spécialement dans ses
rapports avec la société du Québec en évolution dynamique' (275-6;
Thus, at twenty years distance, to Borduas's liberating call for a total
contestation of Quebec society, there responds today a positive move-
ment, not of permanent contestation but of permanent construction of
an art considered and conceived specially in its relationship to a
Quebec society in dynamic evolution). His words of collective con-
struction are echoed by those of Gilles Marcotte, who links them to the
very notion of 'modernity': 'Qu'est-ce que la modernité, sinon la con-
science du mouvement et celle que, sous les apparences se cache une
réalité qui est toujours à découvrir … que tout est à faire, tout à dire,
tout à inventer … la fondation d'une parole qui prenne en charge les
besoins et les désirs de la collectivité.' (12; What is modernity if not the
consciousness of movement … that, beyond appearances lies a reality
ready to be discovered … that everything can be done, stated, invented
... the foundation of a message that takes account of the needs and de-
sires of the collectivity.)
In fact, each of the works in this chapter involves a path from self-
discovery to self-construction via self-representation on behalf of the
has exacted several different, sometimes contradictory, readings sug-
gests the notions of openness and plurality that will come to charac-
terize the concept of identity for future generations, along with the
persistent notion of contradiction. In essence, for identitary progress
exclusionary terms of a static antithesis but as the dynamic compon-
ents of a dialectical process, whereby a transcendent third term de-
fines a new dimension of culture, creating a new synthetic space as in
Baudelaire's celebrated forest, 'vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté'
(vast like night and daylight) or a broader place as with Markham's
wider circle that takes in the heretic whose smaller circle would shut
out others.
40
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