Date: Thu, 02 Nov 1995 22:27:49 -0600 (CST)
Subject: RE: native intelligence


>To: Quetzil  [from K]
>About posting my comments [to postcolonial]: suddenly I ask, Are they 
informed enough? Anyway you're welcome to post them  as "a friend's," even 
"a Canadian friend's." 

>I read Jack Forbes' "native intelligence" column with interest. The comparison
>with Switzerland is weak I think, because the cantons there and their ethnic
>groups have relative parity as European ethnicities with comparable
>histories. At the same time, decentralization IS likely in Canada.   It is
>one "solution" to Quebec's demands that won't piss off the other provinces:
> just make everybody quasi-independent.(And Canada already is a federation,
>by the way.)The major problem remains tho: that Quebec nationalists (the
> ethnic ones anyway)adhere toa Two Solitudes theory of Canada: that there are
>TWO founding nations. (A weak theory because it leaves out native peoples, and
>the very large number of non European immigrants of the last 30 years--some of
>whom      annoyed Parizeau by voting Non). It is a problem because it is so
>neat: within that binary, Quebec is obviously the dominated; and the theory
>encourages it to keep thinking of itself as dominated.
>      In any case, accommodating Quebec will not mollify the nationalists even
>if it would soften many Yes voters. The nationalists do not want to be part
>of Canada; they want to be sovereign, self-determining. The practical matters
> with which Canada might accommodate Quebec, constitutionally or otherwise,
> are really beside the point.
>
>     You may have heard about the 100,000 person rally in Montreal on Friday.
>People from all over came in on seat sales and chartered busses. The typical
>statement from these people interviewed on TV was "We love you Quebec, we
>want you to stay." This is a fair mimicry of "romantic colonialism": it loves t
>he other according to its own benign projections & then is starttled to find th
>at its "benign" presence isnt welcome. It offers "love" but does not offer
> recognition of the other's difference and subjecthood.
>
> How's things?
>              K
>



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