There are things happening in the world literary prizes, this hall of fame media authors! By requiring that it removes from the list of finalists, Gil Courtemanche did more than denounce an abuse of power within Quebecor, the lockout of 250 employees of the Journal de Montréal that has lasted two years, it reveals the nature deeply political independence of any literary award.
While respecting the courage they were not to remain silent - it was the easiest solution - I am still rather puzzled by the reaction has collected Press five participants at this price four authors and a publisher. Jean-Simon Desrochers Caroline Allard, Stéphane Dompierre Szalowski Pierre and Antoine Tanguay.
Desrochers claims first for him a right of non-alignment and neutrality, which certainly right refers to the concept certainly less justice than the law of the strongest, which is as it seems everywhere but especially here always the best. At almost exactly the four others are liable under the same logic, some thanking God that this controversy had not erupted the year they won the prize, including another from this assertion of a terrifying cynicism "We can not ask the poor to stand together in a war between the richest." Dompierre adds more: "Should we boycott bookstores Archambault, too?". To which one might reply that this is certainly not the only reason not to enter. Never find the latest releases in Quebec poetry or essay is the main reason for me, never find me randomly of launches or events in the intellectual and cultural life in Montreal is another, as in branches these chains, it never happens anything.
These five agents of the literary world, however, are not to blame, rather, they represent a more serious symptom of unhappy consciousness that exists within the institutions that represent Quebec literature in the public square, a consciousness in the Hegelian sense that it gives Alexander Kojeve, namely the ability to think his powerlessness coupled with an inability to think beyond it. Such as literary awards are a powerlessness of the literature in that their bases fit into a space that is outside of office, commercial space and a space for media exposure, more than in an interior space where the debate would focus on such critical choices and award the prize to a winner rather than another. That these agents have come to believe in the logic of this award to the point of committing to him politically (because despite his restraint, non-interference is always a position) demonstrates the sad state in which the literary world is now where the problem arises suddenly taking a position as consensus that support for employees locked out of a company that works more often to the marginalization of literature that flourished.
All that to say that despite the often ironic side and apparently little serious Academy we founded the company may finally be less comical that these prices that result from the media so as to compromise. Without further collusion that between the literary world to itself, the prices we can still attribute afford to reclaim their sovereignty, and thus an autonomy that does not invoke a hypothetical pitifully right to neutrality. Moreover, its basic principle, to award the literature prize as books or authors who have little chance to win elsewhere, clearly indicates the type of policy practiced there, for better or for worse.
That said, we still have to be grateful to Gil Courtemanche of having orchestrated the unveiling of the political posturing that force to take this award. In literature as in all institutions, the power that organizes the visibility is, paradoxically, always difficult to show.
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