Rethinking the Notion of Nation in Post-Colonial Times: Quebecite in the Work of Philippe Falardeau

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the study of the immigrant image in the cinematographic production of Philippe Falardeu and requires an important place for studies on ethnicity in contemporary American narratives. This allows the individual, as someone in search of his own identity representation, to be clothed in symbolic characters, of which the foreigner is one of the larger representations. The study of Falardeau's cinematographic discourse thus works as a route to the debate about the perception society can have of those who resemble the Other. In this sense, the word «Nation» becomes a symbolic representation of the cultural interrelations imbricated in the world economic context of which the translation will be fed to construct its theory of the cinematographic discourse. The work of Falardeau thus points to a space for reviewing the discourse around the migrant issue and calls into question the human capacity to reinvent a story in foreign territory. The immigrant is then chosen as the central character of Philippe Falardeau's production.