Overview

The contention that francophone literatures form not merely a subgroup of metropolitan French literature but are distinctive in kind, by virtue of their postcolonial status, requires particular scrutiny in the case of Quebec. The argument is easier to make in the context of those regions of the world (the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and so on) where an oppressed, indigenous population (or a ‘transplanted’ one, in the case of the Caribbean) has struggled to stake out a distinctive space of cultural expression, albeit through the medium of French. Usually such efforts were part and parcel of decolonisation struggles and involved forms of cultural self-affirmation that challenged the centre–periphery model upon which present-day ‘official’ francophonie (like colonialism itself) is constructed. This standard version of the narrative that portrays the centre–periphery model being challenged and overthrown appears to be of questionable relevance to Quebec. Yet on closer examination it transpires that a similar challenge to the centre–periphery power relationship is precisely what does occur in francophone Quebec, even if the struggles involved in bringing about that revolution sometimes take on forms that bear little resemblance to those that occurred in other regions of the world. Fundamentally, however, the issues remain the same. The patterns of power relations and status that often characterise the postcolonial context, and which are inscribed in a variety of ways in postcolonial literatures, are omnipresent in Quebec society and literature, as are the range of issues to do with identity, language, gender and intercultural dynamics.