Les manuels de géographie québécois et la représentation du fait canadien-français (1955–1978) : pistes de réflexion sous le signe de la référence, de l’historicité et de la géographicité

Pelletier, R. (2021). Les manuels de géographie québécois et la représentation du fait canadien-français (1955–1978) : pistes de réflexion sous le signe de la référence, de l’historicité et de la géographicité. Journal of Canadian Studies, 55(1), 203-230. 

Considering the geography textbook as a crossroad where different territorial ideologies are formulated, this paper aims to study the representations of the French-Canadian (then Quebecois) fact conveyed in the pedagogical material produced in Quebec between 1955 and 1978. Using a sample of textbooks, we attempt to shed light on the elements that characterize its ruptures. Through a discussion that interweaves the theoretical apparatus associated with the concepts of reference, historicity, and geographicity, we draw together contributions from a variety of disciplines. We observe that representations, combining the centrality of religious practices, of a specific genre de vie, and of linguistic realities, take place in the textbooks published by the Marist brothers, illustrating a relationship to the past, the present, and the future through the medium of geography. As a counterpoint, the Dagenais textbooks initiate a semantic distancing, putting forward a vocabulary allowing for a different description of the human environment. At the turn of the 1960s–1970s, the Hamelin-Grenier textbooks draw from a new discursive register reflecting on Quebec from a totalizing perspective. In other words, we observe that the pedagogical material designed to teach geography has recorded referential mutations highlighting a change of horizon in terms of collective projects.

This content has been updated on 2 June 2022 at 14 h 13 min.