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Abstract

This chapter is focused on political discourses about religious diversity and secularism in the Canadian province of Quebec. Asking questions about how experiences of modernity bear on constructions of national identity, it demonstrates that secularization has itself turned into a powerful myth centered on the notion of modernity as liberation from religious bondage. The chapter shows how in the post-migration context native populations evoke different cultural memories of modernity against newcomers. It argues that these debates function as a context which shapes indifference, both in scope and meaning.