Abstract

This paper looks at the role that musical discourse played in shaping a dialectical construction of social identity for the Acadians during French Canada's nationalist movement at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining how the Acadians were represented in the press, this analysis serves to identify how discursive practices manifested competing notions of victimization and empowerment in Acadian society. Considering musical discourse as a reflection of cultural power relations occurring between the Acadians and Canada's largest francophone population in Quebec, this paper assesses identity-formation in relation to how the aesthetic and the political intersected as musical discourse was used to promote the socio-political interests of nationalists in Quebec.