Fin de cycle - Mathieu Bock-Côté

Mathieu Bock-Coté is another author whom I had the pleasure of being able to listen to, and speak to, before reading his book. Here again, the habits in writing are very similar to his manners of speech. In a conference I had in my CEGEP days with him, one thing that struck me is the extreme attention to diction that he has, in stark contrast to the typically quebecois spoken french which usually exhibits characteristic slurring  and peculiar pronunciation of vowels. Anywhere outside of Montreal (and probably inside it too), there is a word for this way of talking: we refere to it as  un parlé radio-canadien, in reference to the almost un-naturally pure french spoken on state TV. The expression has negative connotations, implying that one who talks Radio-Canada french is a highbrow, a pompous intellectual, and maybe even a traitor, an alien to the rest of the quebecois who all use joual.

In that sense, I felt Bock-Coté's book to be very radio-canadien, which made for a very interesting contrast with the theme it discussed, namely sovereignty.  It's more or less as if a tibetan wrote an essay on freeing his country in Manadarin, but intended it for his own people.  Not that joual and standard french are mutually unintelligible, or even so radically different, politically or otherwise; besides, writing in joual has be relegated in the past century to writing poetry and text messages. It's the choice of words that made this book feel so weird, namely the quantity of -isms that can be found per page, many of them newly minted by the author. We social sciences folks love our cool-sounding words, but comes a time in this book where you start wondering if he's deliberately attempting to fill the page with neologisms just for the sake of doing so.

All this pedanticism doesn't harm the point he's trying to make. I get it, and as a self-describe conservative, he touches upon many aspects of the national question which I also don't feel comfortable with, things that in retrospect I have been criticizing for years concerning the nationalist movement. The almost leninistic method of propagating a fully-fabricated and inflexible conception of national sentiment through the institutions after the quiet revolution, the narrow association of nationalism and social-democracy, the demonizing of the rest of Canada on ideological grounds, all that definitely speaks to me.  The pedantics are but a bit of madness in a relatively well constructed method, but considering it's target audience, it might be enough to alienate a potential readers.

I'm operating on the basis of pure presumption, but if this book is an attempt to reconcile conservatism and nationalism, and to start a new Quebecois social cycle in which the pluri-ideological objective of obtaining nationality is brought back to center stage, it's doing so in a rather weird manner. As the author himself describes it, the nationalist political elite, if not the whole of our political and bureaucratic elite, are now resolutely social-progressivists which envision independent Quebec as a means of indulging in this progressivism. He blames the stalling of nationalism on this very definition that the movement has come to give itself. Through it's semantics, this book is clearly not for the masses; even if it remains accessible, it's vocabulary and length is in my opinion enough to alienate the masses. If this is so, why is Bock-Coté attempting to convince the very elite he denounces? It's no secret that what's left of conservative Quebec is mostly rural, and definitely not very present in the metropolitan intelligentsia; in that sense I fail to see how a book with such an academic tone is a useful endeavour.

I can understand how the method was more or less forced upon the author: a more populist approach to advocating things like the end of multi-culturalism, and the consideration of ethnic nationalism would have had him shot down by the other academics who pray at the altar of progressive-nationalism every morning. For such a young man, why risk that? In it's current form, the book and it's author are already controversial enough. But what is the point of controversy in an arena where the status-quo is already equipped to win anyways?

In that sense I think that this book uncovers a stale debate: the definition of official nationalism in Quebec has been written half a century ago, and there's little hope to changing any of that, especially in the context of the western world more or less reaching a consensus on the concept of cosmopolitism. The usefulness of this book is reminding us that national pride isn't necessarily what is taught to you in school, and that there are other ways of considering the question of nationality. As a practical effort, I feel that this books fails at inspiring it's the proper audience, specifically because  it's doesn't target them directly. A good read none the less, if only for it's originality... just don't expect it to be derived into a manifesto by anyone any time soon.

L'existentialisme est un humanisme - Jean-Paul Sartre

I used to be very weary of the philosophical writings of the second half of 20th century, particularly that of France. Introductions to the subject given in CEGEP seemed to highlight the fact that everything concerning philosophy coming out of France was somehow or another an off-shoot of marxism. Obviously, the post-war context made marxism a very important, but was post-war France such a apologist of the soviet model? As it turns out, no. My CEGEP teacher left out a very important nuance when describing the post-war philosophical experience on the old continent, namely that the left branched out in multiple currents which in some cases where a quite radical departure from marxism in it’s bastardized form as deployed east the Federal Republic of Germany.

Nationalisme et Démocratie: Réflexions sur les illusions des indépendentistes québécois - Jean-Pierre Derriennic

I’m not gonna lie, I only read this because I’m a fanboy. Mr. Derriennic is a teacher of mine at the political science faculty of the University Laval, and one of the most recent addition to my personal teacher hall of fame. He’s a love or hate kind of a person, and word on him is extremely polarized: Ratemyteacher hates him (does ANY teacher get love from that site?), and yet there is a 100+ member Facebook group page dedicated to him. Me, I guess I like him because of the pace he sets. Once this guy is started, the best you can do to stop him is to side-track him with a good question, because there is just no stopping him. This man could probably make the Davis filibuster look like a 3rd grade show and tell. He’s clear, to the point and doesn’t dumb down anything: YOU have to put in extra work if you skipped a beat. His classes are a challenge, which is exactly why I took his class on the Middle East last semester. After getting a C- in a previous class with him, I took it just to prove myself I was good enough. In the end, I got a much better grade, and it’s probably the closest I’ll ever feel to winning the Olympics.

Militant Modernity - Owen Hatherley

I have to thank my dad for making me read this, though he didn't recommend it. I ordered a photo book for him, a retrospective of Balthazar Korab's architectural photography (extremely nice hardcover photo book for that price by the way), and was a few dollars short of free Amazon express shipping; I clicked the first option in the recommend readings, and that was that. I expected this book to be mainly about architecture, from the cover illustration and context of the Amazon recommendation. Not so: it's a much wider retrospective on Modernism, as an attitude that inspired a current. 

First thing I realized is that this book feels distinctly British. Being fresh off a year of reading stuff from French authors, I noticed a habit of the latter to discuss typically french cultural elements: from general works like manuals on recent political history to Albert Camus' L'homme revolté, they all shared a similar francocentricity. The constant mention of the french revolution and related concepts like jacobinisme is the most striking. I suppose you can't blame them for operating within a certain cultural frame of reference. Anyhow, this book had the same sort of alien feel, firstly because of lengthy discussion of modern architecture in a British context to which I am totally oblivious, secondly because it discusses British politics and authors, which I at best know only by name. Most points that the author makes is with British examples. Case in point: Wiley's Ice Rink is cited at page 119. 

This book's greatest quality to me was exactly the fact the it went beyond my cultural frame of reference. This is what I like to call a Wikipedia book: you have to read this with a browser open nearby, at least I had to, because it's so all over the place that you NEED additional information from elsewhere. When visual arts are discussed, there a some pictures that aid comprehension, but so few that additional research is very much necessary. In the case of more philosophical concepts, most of the authors I had no idea even existed, as most are obscure german or russian theorists of various branches of socialism. It's a gateway book: it put many photo-books on my wishlist, and a lot of new authors on my reading list. 

There is a central point around which the book gravitates, although it does so rather loosely: a plea for the continuity of the modernist attitude, a spirit of rebellion and renewal. The author presents modernity while contextualizing it in 20th century socialism, with at it's roots marxism and the russian revolution, with enough coherence to make it sound objectively true. However this objectivity is sometimes lost in occasional jabs at liberalism, which makes this book sound like a politically-loaded manifesto. This highlights certain contradictions, one in particular: Hatherley exalts state planning of urbanism, destroying the old to make place for the new, yet is very critical of the ongoing destruction of British modern buildings, which he's sees as a reactionary return to bourgeois standards by conservative administrations, to use marxist vocabulary. This a trap you wouldn't expect him to fall in, since he discusses exactly that at the very beginning of the book. This attempt at getting a political messages through in a book that is more of an exposé than anything else doesn't take anything away from the work itself, it just feels a little weird and out of place. 

Bottom line the bottom line is that this isn't a 20$ book. With colour illustrations? Probably worth it. This is EXACTLY the kind of book that I'd pay 10$ to have on iPad, with full sized images and pertinent links within the text. On paper however,  I feel that the impact of the read is much less important. Nonetheless, at the price I got it for (which is basically free since I saved on shipping), I'm glad I have broadened my horizons with it. 

I have recently made the switch to a Mac, and really wanted to share my experience. Turns out it took the form of a review, where I focus on matching the product to the customer, something which I had applied many times as a part of my job but never really had done for myself. The new Haswell-powered Macbook Air turned out to be a perfect match for me, for the reasons which I thoroughly underline in this rather long review. It’s a long read, but if you are a power user considering rethinking your computer setup and a Mac is somewhere in the options you have contemplated, I’m sure this review can keep the reflexion going. Here is a sample.

This not going to be your typical review. I did not benchmark my new Mac, because many others did it before me with a methodological zeal that I could't possibly surpass. If you want specs, numbers and comparisons, there are other outlets for that. This review is going to focus on matching your needs to a computer, and the case study of my unlikely purchase of this product. Grab a drink because it'll take a while.