Myriam Suchet
Quebec literature has much to offer to the French reader: not only is it pleasing to read, it also denaturalizes the linguistic bowl they/we live in. We will briefly explore three plays, that will lead from a spectacular performance of identity “en québécois” (Macbeth by Michel Garneau), to the subversive subduction of French beneath an English superstratum (The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi by Larry Tremblay), to conclude with the staging of a constitutive and polyphonic multitude (Yukonstyle by Sarah Berthiaume). Whereas plurilinguism might give the illusion of preserving a linguistic diversity as if tongues where autonomous and discrete entities, heterolingualism more radically questions the borders of what “a tongue” is. Can we substitute a heterolingual paradigm to the monolingual way of thinking? What is at stake does not concern solely the language: identity itself has to be renegotiated. In other terms, it is the goldfish as well as the bowl that has to be examined…
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