On Sociocultural Discontinuity: Nationalism and Cultural Objectification in Quebec [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

M. Estellie Smith has recently attacked the concepts "tradition" and "change" as reifications which mislead us in our study of sociocultural process. She favors "sociocultural continuity" as an analytic construct that focuses attention on the interconnected processes of continuous change and persistent collective identity that characterize all human sociocultures. This approach suffers, however, from reification analogous to that it rejects, for it posits the existence of sociocultures as bounded natural entities. It is here argued that cultural process, because it is semiotic, necessarily contains discontinuity as well as continuity. Cultural activity refers to and takes account of itself; this entails continuity (which Smith discusses as the persistence of collective identity) but also discontinuity, for the act of reference must be separate from the object of reference even if that object is a prior action or state of the persons engaged in talking about it. This argument is illustrated with an analysis of nationalist ideology in Quebec. In their search for an authentic national culture, Quebecois nationalists create the traditions that they claim merely to preserve. Seeking continuity, they invent culture anew, and thus the new culture is necessarily discontinuous with the prior culture it is meant to reproduce.