Reaction as Legacy ? The Representation of France by Quebecois Intellectuals since the 1960s

Quebecers have, always had a fraught relationship with France. While the traditional elites admired the France of the Grand Siecle and Louis XIV; they nonetheless rejected the country's republican ideals. This article seeks to illustrate that, since the 1960s, Quebec's French heritage has been totally discredited by the most well-known Quebecois intellectuals. These new modernist elites simultaneously reject France's inequitable Ancien Regime and its republican model of integration for immigrants, which has come to be seen as intolerant in light of the recent debates on secularity. The appeal of the concept of "Americanness" and the support for liberal multiculturalism expressed by intellectual elites in Quebec help to explain,this rejection of French heritage as a whole.