Talk:Esther Delisle

Untitled

I've tried to remove some of the POV from this article, which is highly one-sided. Serious criticisms were made of Delisle's work. Interestingly, I've never been able to find any evidence that anyone followed them up. I'm not disagreeing with the contention that some people reacted hysterically to Delisle's work (What? Canada was antisemitic in the 30s? What a shock!), or that they reacted in racist ways. I'm just trying to make the article a little less one-sided (removing descriptions of her work as impeccable, which she disagrees with in the last few paragraphs of The Traitor and the Jew, or the mention of Claude Charron's irrelevant conviction for theft). From Dr. Delisle's interview in the documentary I'd say she'd be the last person to endorse this depiction of the controversy. I have been known to be wrong, though. John FitzGerald 19:51, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The controversy arose not over the attribution of antisemitism or fascist sympathies to Quebecois – even Delisle's critics readily admit that people like Adrien Arcand were fascist – but that she said Groulx and other nationalists wwere fascists who wanted to deport Jews. John FitzGerald 13:55, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

L'Actualité

I finally found an online copy of the article from l'Actualité [1]. I don't see any attack on Delisle, or any acknowledgment that Groulx was any more of a fascist sympathizer than any other Catholic official or than most prominent Canadians at the time, so I modified the article to remove these assertions about the article. If I've missed something in the article let me know. I will be checking a hard copy of the article the next time I'm near the TO reference library.

I also modified "decades long denial" by "supposed." I'm not sure what denial was meant, but if it's that Groulx was antisemitic that hasn't been denied, and if it was that Groulx was an active member of a group of fascist subversives, that possibility wasn't raised before Dr. Delisle raised it. John FitzGerald 00:49, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contemporary nationalism

I got my hands on a copy of The Traitor and the Jew again, and as I recalled there was nothing in it about contemporary Quebec nationalism being xenophobic or racist, so I took that assertion out. The book also relies heavily on the identification of Groulx with Lambert Closse, an identification which seems highly questionable (she says herself she has no evidence for it, and other evidence suggests he was not Closse), so I noted that in the article, too.

What interests me now is how her critics weren't content just to point out the obvious scholarly problems with her work but had to import paranoid ideas about her antinationalist motivations into the dispute. Even Gary Caldwell, who seems to have done the best job of critiquing her work, had to throw in a few ideas like that. John FitzGerald 14:04, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

REVERSAL

I have actually read her book, twice. I removed the following text by User:John FitzGerald because in an Encyclopedia we do not repudiate an author's writings by referring to "Many scholars" - an encyclopedia states the scholarly sources and within context. Certainly these comments should be reinstated once the "scholar" is identified with their credentials specified. Further, the last paragraph concerning the "Je me souviens" documentary is patently wrong. A. Lafontaine 18:35, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Reved text: "Delisle's work was repudiated by many Quebec scholars who acknowledged Groulx's anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of some nationalist figures of the 1930s, both of which had been well established by historians, but believed that Delisle had not made her case that Groulx was an active Fascist.

Some also made unverifiable nationalist political arguments, such as that her thesis and book were attempts to depict Québécois as incapable of governing themselves should Quebec achieve sovereignty.

The substantive methodological criticisms which have been made of Delisle's work (without necessarily having been validated) include assertions that:

• her attributions of pseudonymous articles are often invalid (in particular, her argument depends heavily on the assumption that Groulx wrote under the name Lambert Closse, although she frankly states she has no evidence that he did; some historians have adduced evidence from Groulx's archives which suggests that Lambert Closse was the pseudonym of another priest whose correspondence Groulx did not reply to)
• she ignores articles which present more moderate opinions
• many of the articles cannot be found as referenced by her (she has corrected some of these citations)
• the extracts from the articles she selected often misrepresent the ideas in them
• she fails to distinguish Catholic anti-Semitism from fascist sumpathies
• she fails to deal adequately with the contradictions in Groulx's attitudes towards Jews (he publicly denounced anti-Semitism as unchristian, for example)
• she ignores the possibility of interethnic rivalry between two minority groups (French Canadians and Jews)
• she does not compare the texts drawn from Le Devoir or l'Action nationale to texts from French Canadian publications generally considered to have been fascist.
• she presented an admittedly exploratory study as a test of several linked hypotheses (for example, by drawing inferences from isolated texts rather than by estimating the frequency of anti-Semitic themes in Le Devoir and l'Action nationale and comparing it to a control frequency, such as the frequency of anti-Semitic references in English Canadian or foreign publications of the same period).

Links are provided to the sources. I'm restoring this section with a clearer reference to the links and the sources of the criticisms. John FitzGerald 4 July 2005 14:04 (UTC)

I've restored them with a reference to the links as well as a note that most of the criticisms have not been seriously debated. The main thing that interests me about l'affaire DeLisle is how little most people care about the truth of what she says. She has in fact been treated like a leper, as use of the link to the Bouchard article will show. I believe that's the article where he says he didn't cite Delisle in a work of his own because, since she'd made some mistakes, he couldn't trust any of her work! John FitzGerald 4 July 2005 14:22 (UTC)

These issues have been neglected in the anglophone Canadian media, which has shown little interest in the issue generally.

Given the standards A. Lafontaine (nudge nudge wink wink) advocates, he should document the extensive anglophone media coverage before removing this observation. Still, I'll leave it out for a while to see if h can do that. John FitzGerald 4 July 2005 14:04 (UTC)

In this documentary Delisle notes that although she believes Quebec nationalist leaders of the 1930s and 1940s were antisemitic, she also believes that evidence supports the contention that French Canadians as a people were less antisemitc than English Canadians."

This assertion is simply true. She says that, and she says it at length. I don't agree with her myself, but distinguished scolars do. However, it's not necessary, so I'm leaving it out for the moment.

Incidentally, I've read her book at least twice myself, and I find Caldwell's criticism that it is exploratory work being made to do the work of hypothesis-testing research telling. I could be wrong, eh, but one of the disappointing aspects of her work is that she did not do the quantitative research which could have demonstrated her thesis forcefully). I do believe that there is a good chance she could have demonstrated it. John FitzGerald 4 July 2005 14:04 (UTC)

Correction

I wish to point out that the link for the name of the film-maker, Eric Scott (Je me souviens) leads to a discussion of someone who has nothing to do with this film. The Eric Scott who made this film (and many others) is a Montrealer, not an American actor who starred in the Waltons. 24.202.237.214 17:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. You could search for the appropriate Eric Scott in other articles to see if there's another article about him. If there isn't you could create one (with a title like "Eric Scott (film-maker)") or change the link to an article with this title. I'll check this out now, though. John FitzGerald 12:44, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I added a stub about the film-maker which this article is now linked to. If you know anything further about Mr. Scott please flesh out the stud. Thanks. John FitzGerald 13:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

User GraemeLeggett just added that cleanup tag to this article and I most certainly agree this is needed. Since most of the article deals with the Delisle-Richler controversy, I am thinking it might be good to move all that pertains to this subject in a separate article and leave only a paragraph on it here. Any objections? -- Mathieugp 15:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

That controversy (which I would call the Delisle controversy) is chiefly what Esther Delisle is known for, so I'd prefer to see it remain here. If most people want to move it I wouldn't be upset, though. And perhaps I could be persuaded if the advantages of the move were described more fully. It would also help if Graeme Leggett would describe what needs to be cleaned up; I believe one is supposed to do that when one applies the cleanup tag. John FitzGerald 12:57, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

The reasons I think moving the controversy out is a good idea are as follows :

1. I think it makes sense to create a separate article as I think it is a separate subject. The "Esther Delisle" article is meant to be a biography, not a controversy I believe.

2. If it remained in, most of the article would deal with the controversy since very little was written on anything else about her (to my knowledge, there is no bio of her available). It would soon look awkward I think.

3. Eventually, Madame Esther Delisle will read this article. She will certainly wish for the controversy around her book not to overshadow everything else about her, which I think would be legitimate. :-)

Also, there are indeed two controversies, the one revolving around the publishing of Delisle's book and the other revolving around the publishing of Richler's book. (The is also one on the documentary "Je Me Souviens" by Eric Scott, but it kinda got lost in the whole thing.) However, all these events and their coverage by the media occured around the same time and are linked in many ways. It would be difficult to separate them in three distinct pieces I believe. -- Mathieugp 15:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

There is the wikify for a start, thereafter it is not a very clear read. I'll have a quick stab.GraemeLeggett 13:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Didn't mean to sound snippy there; I am eager for enlightenment. Perhaps I'm just a bit leery of the clean-up mania that's sweeping Wikipedia. John FitzGerald 20:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

The changes you and Mathieugp have made are also giving me an idea of what needs to be done. I may even join in. The pieces Mathieugp has requested citations for are survivals of the original propaganda article, but I'll see what I can find. I seem to recall reading similar assertions elsewhere, but they may well have been just as unauthoritative. John FitzGerald 21:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

About Mathieugp's reasons for moving part of the article: I still don't think anyone will be looking up the article to find out about anything but the controversy. However, I see your points and if it comes down to us being the only people expressing an opinion I'd have no objection to the section about the controversy being moved. John FitzGerald 23:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed somerone's translation of an external article and the sentence "but concluded that the only truly Quebec fascist movement during the period was the Parti national social chrétien led by Joseph Ménard and Adrien Arcand." Delisle made no claims connecting Lionel Groulx to the Parti national social chrétien and such a detraction isimmaterial to the facts of her biography. Daniel C. 16:39, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, you left in the article the assertion that she asserts that Quebec nationalists supported fascism, so what you excised certainly seems relevant. John FitzGerald 17:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Criticism section

The Criticism section was removed by JMartin81 as unsourced. However, the letter was clearly sourced, and sources no doubt can be found for the unsourced assertions, so I added some fact tags, changed some words so the implication is not left that Bouchard's claims have been confirmed, and restored the bit about Bouchard.

I left out the bit about Delisle not having found a university job in Quebec. Unless someone is prepared to show that her failure to find a job is the result of her having criticized Groulx I don't see the point (evidence could include such things as unreasonable rejetion of job applications etc.). Her work is academically questionable, although there are people with tenure who've done worse, repeatedly. John FitzGerald 15:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I have reinserted the material unilaterally removed by JMartin81 in the The Traitor and the Jew as well. I have also expanded on the subject and provided solid references. -- Mathieugp 19:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)