L’Église, la femme et l’affect : récits sur la désirabilité du modèle laïc au Québec ou comment fabriquer un projet politique en contexte séculier?

This article is based on life stories collected between 2014 and 2018 among a population of baby boomers of French Canadian descent, whose personal path echoes the social and political history of the province. Following their socialization in a Catholic context, this generation has known a rapid phase of secularization, modernization and diversification that, since the end of the 1960s, have impacted the local social and political landscape of the province. The entanglement between individual and collective experiences shapes a particular rhetoric on the « laïc » (secularist) project in Quebec that hinges on memories of Catholicism, concern for gender equity and pluralist ethics. Drawing on Maclure and Taylor’s model of open and closed secularism, the author discuss the means and ends of the moral principles underlying baby boomers’ narratives.