Bien se souvenir : représentation de la violence politique et de la mort dans La Constellation du Lynx, de Louis Hamelin, suivi de La vingt-troisième nuit, roman
The October crisis has built itself, in the popular imagination, out of discourses, reappropriations, rewritings and reactions coming from a variety of perspectives on what happened. Louis Hamelin's novel La Constellation du Lynx takes part in the reappropriation process by using historical fiction. It refutes the official version and uses fiction to point out its incoherences. Our essay interrogates the novel's representations of political violence. And, by examining the historical reasoning deployed in the novel, and by pointing out usages of narrative shiftings and world duplications, as well as the elaboration of a non-narrative form of story, we analyse how the novel treats Pierre Laporte's death (Paul Lavoie, in the novel) as an insoluble enigma. The objective is to show how the novel states the impossibility to know the truth. La vingt-troisième nuit tells the story of a student that barely makes it through the police trap that resulted in 512 arrests in Montréal, 2012, May 23th. The action of Twenty-third night asks itself what would've happened if someone died during a demonstration. Readers follow Laurent, who has reasons to believe that his friend Maxime, who accompagnied him during the demonstration, died while running from the police. He searches for his friend all night. Retrospective episodes intersperses the novel, episodes when Laurent questions how he pertains with the student movement, how he shares his friends' point of view on the events, and what to believe on the social medias. Strongly aware that he stands in a critic position in the historical events, until the end, he measures his role in the crisis, as well as the forces that could influence the movement and the legitimacy of the student revolt, if his friend's death is confirmed.
1970 Louis Hamelin manifestations October crisis political violence death non-narrative story conspiracy theory truth historical fiction novel 2012 student strike demonstrations