Territory and Identity in Relation to Resource Development in Québec Settler Society

In the past few years Québec has been investing much more attention in more conventional types of energy. Indeed, more than one government has considered the possibilities to exploit shale gas, increase northern development through several extractive activities and, most recently, establish the province as an oil producer. The latest government had its eyes on the petroleum potential of Anticosti, an island located in the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Based on Caroline Desbiens' in depth cultural, geographical and political analysis of the 1970s' James Bay mega hydroelectrical complex, this paper intends to question if Québec uses the same strategy in development nowadays as it did before, specifically in regards to Anticosti. By combining the inspection of a particular moment in the environmental history of the province with a discursive investigation of the political and economical elites' perspective on the question, this paper is then interested to bring to light the intersections between Québecois identity, society's claim to the territory now known as the province of Québec and the energy sector through time.

It argues that Québec society has had to maintain a constant tension between the cultural role that the land and territory played and keep playing in shaping the Québécois identity on one hand, and their industrial role in modernizing the nation on the other hand. Therefore, the integration of identity-making and modernity-facilitating as purposes of the land offer a powerful ideology for subjectivity in contemporary Québec. The paper contends that this is particularly true in the context that this tenuous balance is maintained by the deliberate erasure and/or negation of the colonial history (thus present) of "Québécois' land" through the sustainment of a victimizing founding national narrative.

Elements of critical theory are used to deepen the comprehension of Québec as a settler state and to make a strong case that this intrinsic characteristic of the Québécois people needs to be taken into account in mainstream discussion on development. This paper argues that, while caught between neoliberal perspectives of development and the construction of an identity tied to the land, Québec nonetheless has the tools to re-write the "grammar of its territory" (Desbiens and Irit, 2012: 43) and contribute to a re-definition of its relation with nature, outside of economic development and domination.