Joanna Louise Cumyn  (Université de Montréal)
Global Sovereignty, or the Crisis of the Nation

Many theorists have recently attempted to understand the processes of globalisation and its effect on today's cultural formations. Whereas discourses on globalisation potentially encompass an implied universalism, the local subsumes a position of marginality. Thus, demarcations of global/local territories either as political nations, cultural spaces, or geographical locations result in potentially exclusionary and therefore hegemonic divisions. If the theorising of global/local positionalities is reminiscent of earlier postcolonial centre/periphery debates, it is possibly because we continue to strive towards identifying and resisting new imperialisms and their subsequent effects not only on global relations but on our understanding of 'culture' and national identity. What appears to be an unresolvable tension between the global and the local could potentially be a strategic site of cultural and linguistic resistance.

The objective of this paper is to explore Quebec and its languages as a localised space or community, a 'third space' as well as an 'in-between space of negotiated language'. Quebec, moreover, becomes not only a space of negotiation between cultures and translations between languages, but also a subversive space within Canada/North America since English potentially, and increasingly, encroaches upon a Quebec linguistic and geographic territory. This paper thus seeks to explore the contemporary construction of a Quebec national identity, within the boundaries of globalisation and postcolonial discourses.