[Intolerance: a general survey]

Journal of Canadian Studies, Summer 1997 by Noel, Lise, Vickers, Jill

Societies, like families, have things they don't talk about. In Canada, the existence of oppression and intolerance is one such thing. The identities shared by most Canadians have been based on an image of tolerance, although franco-Quebeckers focus their self-image on comparisons to "les anglais," while anglo-Canadians compare themselves to the US that they suppose is less tolerant and more racist. Canada's "nice guy" reputation abroad has been shattered in recent years, however, by images of the police and the army laying seige to aboriginal communities and by our inability to restructure the federation to acknowledge the just aspirations of our peoples. Many of our institutions are racked with conflicts over how to deal with the needs of many diverse groups, conflicts too often fought out in the media or in scare-mongering texts that generate heat but not much light. By contrast, these four books provide badly needed tools to help us think seriously about difference, and several also outline concrete approaches to promoting constructive change.

Montreal historian Lise Noel's landmark text Intolerance: A General Survey, published originally in French by Boreal, won the Governor-General's Award for NonFiction in 1989. Far too rarely are important non-fiction texts translated and re-published between the "two solitudes," so we must be grateful to McGill-Queen's University Press and to translator Arnold Bennett for making Noel's ideas available in such clear and eloquent English. Noel provides an interdisciplinary analysis of oppression in relation to six main parameters: age, race, class, gender, sexual orientation and physical and mental health. Her main focus is on the discourses of intolerance in relation to these variables as manifested in Canada, France, the US and the UK. Writing as a woman and a franco-Quebecker, her analysis provides insights about the general process of "othering" both in history (as for example, in the treatment of left-handed or "sinister" people) and in relationships between "Western" and "Third World" people.(f.1) Her text demonstrates how aspects of popular culture, academic theories, religious teachings and scientific precepts all contribute to "the discourse of intolerance [that] legitimizes relations of domination... [and] gives validity to the most brutal forms of oppression" (5).

I found especially interesting the franco-Quebec and French sources used by Noel and her focus on the discourse of intolerance. It is different from the sociological and philosophical approaches that focus more on what is done than on what people think and say about it. These approaches are more common in anglophone countries. It also differs from empirical analyses of the mechanics of everyday acts of oppression.(f.2) For Noel, "Intolerance is the theory; domination and oppression are the practice"(5). Intolerance, then, is a way of knowing the world and she explores the discourses used to legitimize oppression and domination. Noel's identification of the common elements in different discourses of intolerance provides a useful template against which to explore how people think about difference in that the dominant discourse: first. always proclaims the superiority of the oppressor's identity over that of "the other"; second, defends this principle in the language of objectivity; third, claims universality for the relationships of dominance and subordination; and last, calls on other authorities by drafting expert opinion, the will of god and the antiquity of law, language and custom to support its claim. In the first half of her text, Noel focusses on the way of knowing the world represented by the dominator's intolerance. In the second half, she focusses on how, before they can act to gain some power over their lives, those dominated must struggle to re-invent ways of knowing that neither obliterate their presence nor blame them for their situation; that is, how they must "break the silence" by speaking about their experiences of oppression, alienation and marginalization.

This rich and complex book marks out new territory by examining how dominant groups, faced with emancipatory challenges, respond by manipulating discourse to blame the victim and even transform the oppressor into the victim. While she does not present a new theory, Noel's exploration of these reactive discourses and how they can be contested, provides a clear guide to how discourses of intolerance re-naturalize and mystify domination and oppression. She concludes that advocates for change can achieve a solidarity of action, even in the face of the current backlash, if they can find common ground in their understanding of the nature of intolerance. This optimistic conclusion, which is based on the belief that groups that have a common enemy can work together, ignores the fact that members of subordinate groups share in discourses of intolerance about their neighbours who are also oppressed. That is, while fear and suspicion of difference are part of the discourses of intolerance used to legitimize and mystify structural inequalities, they are also part of relationships among those of equal power or powerlessness. None the less, Noel's text provides an excellent guide to how people know the world through discourses of intolerance. It also has the added bonus of providing insights into the thinking of franco-Quebec society and should help dispel the myth that franco-Quebeckers are less tolerant than anglo-Canadians.