In the Québécois political vision of the twentieth century, sovereignty became synonymous with mastery. French Canadians sometimes claimed solidarity with racialized and Indigenous peoples, yet they saw their liberation as a matter of taking their rightful place in the seat of the oppressors. The idea of mastery has prevented the Québécois from seeing that their liberation is bound up with that of other groups oppressed by colonial powers.

The Eye of the Master confronts the missed opportunities for a decolonial version of indépendance in Quebec by examining the quest for mastery that has been at the root of every version of independence offered to the people of Quebec since the mid-twentieth century. Exploring political discourse, popular culture, and the family photo album, Dalie Giroux revisits the mythology of being “masters in our own house” and identifies the obstacles blocking a more comprehensive version of liberation based on solidarity. Drawing from the living forces of Indigenous thought and anti-racist, ecological, and feminist movements, Giroux envisions life without conquest, domination, exploitation, and surveillance.

Making the case for a different future, beginning in the here and now, The Eye of the Master offers a major new intervention in contemporary political thought to Canadian readers and all those who imagine a different North America.

Dalie Giroux is professor of political theory at the University of Ottawa.

Dalie Giroux's profile page

Jennifer Henderson is an associate professor in the Departments of English and Sociology/Anthropology and the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University.

Jennifer Henderson's profile page

"For all the scholarship it contains, this book does not feel academic. I am convinced that Dalie Giroux's slow, organic engagement with her source materials and manner of embodying scholarly thought in lived experience is more important today than ever before, as we grapple to understand what constitutes human intelligence, ... . The Eye of the Master is an exhilarating read that gives no east answers, just hard questions. That's a good start." Montreal Review of Books

"At times empathetic, at times furious, L’oeil du maître is further proof of the incendiary power of Dalie Giroux’s prose […]. Giroux writes in a bold first-person voice, plunging into family archives, alternating between an academic style and one that is more free, lyrical, incendiary, even punk." Le Devoir [from a review of the French edition]

"In L’oeil du maître, Dalie Giroux questions the slogan “masters in our own house,” our sovereigntist struggles, and all the missed opportunities for solidarity with First Nations. Over the course of time, what the Québécois have proposed to Indigenous peoples in relation to their emancipation project has amounted to no more than the replacement of anglophone masters with francophone ones, as opposed the abandonment of the colonial project at the origin of Canada. […] [T]he project of independence can only survive, if it can be thought differently, repoliticized, and prevented from channeling oppressions." La Presse [from a review of the French edition]