Postmodern reflections on the legitimacy of states If we vote YES, the prospect of returning to a confederation or a political union with Canada will always remain on the table. No choice of company is absolutely definitive. All questions are worth asking, as often as necessary, as long as enough people ask for or want to respond. The idea of a country, a border, an eternal union, it is the greatest fiction of the 20th century has laid. Countries often exist by accident of history, often because people decided they existed, that the "we" deserved to be transformed into a "here". The countries are born, recycle, fragment, unite, disunite. What is the legitimacy of states? The success justifies legal institutions does the territory they control? As good as the stateless nations, people without homes, crops without representation? After how many generations does it go off, the grandparents no longer understanding their grandchildren?
During my short life I have seen the birth of new countries like East Timor, Croatia, Slovakia, but also the union of former enemies as the two brothers Yemen Germany, Senegambia (Senegal and Gambia, common short-term). I finally understand that the land shapes the man as much as it shapes the earth. There is a "we" in the valley of Saint-Laurent, a "we" that is no more definable than the "we" of Canada, France, Senegal and Yemen, a group with blurred and culture fluid. And this "we" would make this piece of land its "here", as has happened countless in human history. There is nothing contemptible in there, just some something normal, potentially noble and promising future.
Quebec and Canada, like other countries, existing, past or future questions, not answers. Try to answer them, while remaining humble enough to leave our children the freedom to ask again.
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