Ensemble, on est capable: Memory, Cultural Politics, and the Rise of l'Amerique francaise

"Ensemble, on est capable" examines the cultural politics of memory and language in French North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rallying around their respective memories of conquest--- le grand derangement (1755) for peoples of Acadian descent; and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (1759) for those with a cultural allegiance to Quebec Francophones in present-day Quebec, Acadian New Brunswick, Franco-American New England, and Cajun Louisiana forged political and cultural alliances around the shared legacy of cultural traumata the hands of a common foe, perceived cultural confluences, and a common language to combat political and economic disenfranchisement. This sweeping transnational history frames this story of cross-continental solidarity around two parallel cultural impulses: the dream of a Francophone nation and the perception of perpetual exile. From Alexis de Tocqueville and Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, to the Gallic musings of Jack Kerouac, this study concludes that Francophones have struggled since the fall of New France to stave off the cultural fatigue associated with sustaining French language and culture in North America.;Chapter 1, "War of Seccession; or, the Dream of Nation," considers the roles French-speaking peoples played during violent secession attempts during Canada's 1837--38 Rebellions and later in Louisiana on the eve of the American Civil War. For the political leadership of Quebec and Louisiana, secession represented the most viable means of conserving Francophone culture in North America. This chapter emphasizes the violent contexts, local concerns, and transnational meaning engendering nation-building schemes in French North America during the age of secession and nation-building (1837--1867).;Chapter 2, "An Acadian Renaissance," considers the cultural production surrounding identify formation among peoples of Acadian descent in New Brunswick, Canada and Cajun Louisiana. As French writer Francois-Edme Rameau de Saint-Pere suggested in the mid-nineteenth century, Acadians needed a unifying symbol to form group cohesiveness. That symbol became the heroine from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie . Acadians in Canada and Cajuns in Louisiana collectively rallied around Evangeline as a symbol of cultural uplift. Cultural nationalists like Louisiana's Dudley LeBlanc symbolically retraced the path of Evangeline's exile through cross-continental pilgrimages to the site of cultural trauma at the moment of conquest---Grand Pre, Nova Scotia.;Chapter 3, "Frenchy's War," argues that World War II signifies a watershed moment in the history of French North America---particularly in the formation of French Canadian nationalism in Quebec. North American Francophones became crucial agents in the Allied efforts to liberate both occupied France and the world from fascism. The chapter opens with an examination of Quebec's wartime Premier Adelard Godbout's efforts to transform la belle province into a global political force. I then focus on Cajun operatives, who, under the auspices of the U.S. government's Office of Strategic Services, parachuted into occupied France, posed as French nationals, and trained resistance fighters. The chapter concludes with a close reading of future Quebec separatist leader Rene Levesque's transformative experiences as a war correspondent.;The first portion of Chapter 4, "Maitre chez nous: French Cold Warriors," considers the Cold War contexts shaping the bicentennial celebrations of the grand derangement in Louisiana and Canada. The second portion of "Maitre chez nous" examines Charles de Gaulle's efforts to build la francophonie: a cultural and Francophone commonwealth that included Quebec, Acadian New Brunswick and French Louisiana.;Chapter 5, "Negritude in Black and White," examines the ways in which radical nationalists harnessed the language of negritude (blackness) to explain Francophone political, economic, and cultural disenfranchisement in North America. This chapter considers the Front de liberation du Quebec's relationship with the Black Panther Party, Pierre Valliere's incendiary manifesto White Niggers of America, and Canada's October Crisis of 1970.;Chapter 6, "The Reconquest of French North America," recounts the moment when Francophones on the continent found a collective voice through a new imagined cultural geography: l'Amerique francaise. This chapter considers the international dimensions of the Council on the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), the political ramifications of the documentary L'Acadie, l'Acadie?!?, and the watershed year in which Francophone groups around the continent began to claim authority as maitre chez nous (masters of their own house)---1972.