Philippe Garigue, trublion et éclaireur

Résumé

Cet article propose un examen du Garigue qui jette un pavé dans la mare au milieu des années 1950 et remet en question quelques dogmes socio-historiques en vogue à l’époque ; une vignette du Garigue des années 1960, à la bonne place et au bon moment pour influencer la politique familiale au Québec et du Garigue « psychanalyste » de l’éthos du Canada français, sans oublier le Garigue qui s’ouvre à des horizons de plus en plus vastes dans ses analyses de la société contemporaine.

Abstract

There are many Philippe Garigues. This paper does not claim to provide a complete, detailed inventory of his multiple personas. A comprehensive description of this complex figure and his works would require an entire book. I propose only to survey Garigue’s territory from a bird’s eye view – leaving it up to others to analyze his wide range of activities in detail. His public personas include the anthropologist of family dynamics, the specialist in social politics, the diagnostician of political problems within French-Canadian society, the promoter of a revised federalism, the person interested in innovation and scientific policy, the savanturier who promoted a metastrategic understanding of the challenges posed by global society, the Dean in Montreal, and the Principal in Glendon; and then there is also Garigue the poet… and here I stop. In his private life, Garigue was a man of contrasts : epistemologically Popperian, profoundly personalist and Christian, a sometimes autocratic manager, a critical spirit with a sharp tongue, a man of power – opportunistic in the best sense of the word – a tad arrogant, and engaged in a constant effort to propose policies that are not too intrusive (because he is a conservative at heart), but a quixotic individual who, toward the end of his career, dedicated himself to the plight of the people of the Himalayas.