Quebec and Its Historians: The Twentieth Century

Conclusion

Conclusion A Look Ahead With few exceptions, the new generation of historians was born during the 1940s. Typical of this generation is its predilection for contemporary history, as exemplified by such scholars as Paul-Andre Linteau, Rene Durocher, and JeanClaude Robert, the trio who wrote Quebec: A History, 18671929 , tr. Robert Chodos, (Lorimer, 1983). Although there is still a great deal of research being done on New France and the first hundred years after the Conquest, the period most favored lies between 1850 and the present. Accustomed aswe are to an all-pervading utilitarianism, we ask: What is the use of history, if not to understand the genesis of the present, and perhaps to shape the future? Several new areas of study are evident, among them labor history and, more recently, the history of women. Urban history and the wider field of regional history also occupy a growing place. Such studies deal mainly with power structures, as well as socio-material and economic conditions. Economism, the dominant philosophy of our time, permeates all the major areas of study. It should therefore come as no surprise that so little cultural history is being written. Actually, even histories of ideologies often serve to reveal "class interests." Are the human sciences, and history in particular , sacrificingman himself as a subject? Are we so convinced of his immutable relationship to material things that we see no point in studying his feelings, passions, tastes, imaginative qualities, and beliefs? That the history of Catholicism should today be a marginal genre in a land once noted for its piety shows all too clearly the process of "reification of derealization ," or more simply, the creation of concepts that are out of touch with human life—that "anthropology without man"1 which has absorbed us in the last fewdecades. Those who look 164 Conclusion 165 for a vigorous new cultural history should remember that in France, under the leadership of Fernand Braudel, the second Annales generation, as Philippe Aries called it, first devoted itself to socio-material history. But historical anthropology, ethnology, and psychology, disciplines that were marginal before 1960, have come into their own during the last quarter of the twentieth century.2 There isperhaps even a third generation of Annales historians, in Aries view. Why, then, have Quebec intellectuals not followed the same path, since they are so powerfully influenced by French thought? Until the mid-twentieth century, the young were taught by the priests, brothers, and nuns of Quebec schools that ideas ruled the world. Frugality, renunciation, self-denial: such were the moral watchwords broadcast by these men and women of the church to a world increasingly "hedonized" by consumer forces. Although this spiritual perspective still dominated Quebec historiography, it gradually gave way to a materialist approach to "national" development, in harmony with the growing consumer morality. According to the new historians, material considerations were what "stimulated" the dynamics of history. The settlers of New France had come to exploit the natural resources of the St. Lawrence Valley, not to bring the Word of God. Asmethods became more refined, the materialist interpretation, whether Marxist or non-Marxist,was reinforced by the spread of a sometimes excessiveormistaken reliance on quantitative techniques. Fernand Ouellet's work was a notable example. In history asin other socialand human sciences, past and present human behavior was variously explained in terms of economic determinism, economism, or a quantophrenic scientism. Even such cultural sciences as anthropology and ethnology maintained that societies evolve in response to conditioning bytheir physical environment and social relationships. The materialist interpretation gained ground as the economy of (over)production and (over)consumption grew. Current economic changes, however, have led to the appearance of new life-styles. Some unorthodox economists predict a possible return to frugal living, inspired by a concern for the environment and the quality of life, thus challenging the expansion of the wasteful consumer 166 Quebec and its Historians economy of the postwar years. Will the present generation of historians rewrite history in the light of the newly emerging values? Yes—if such values are here to stay. But scientific history should also incite us to look beyond the present bounds of knowledge. Progress in method, and in particular a better division of scholarly labor, make it possible to hope for a better understanding of the past. Each generation of historians has a duty to push back the frontiers of knowledge. They need not repudiate...