## **JESSICA HOMBERG-SCHRAMM**

## "Colonised by Wankers"

## **Postcolonialism and Contemporary Scottish Fiction**

Jessica Homberg-Schramm · "Colonised by Wankers"

#### Published by Modern Academic Publishing (MAP) 2018

Modern Academic Publishing (MAP) is an initiative from the University of Cologne that contributes to the digital humanities, in the field of electronic publishing. MAP is led by Prof Dr Gudrun Gersmann, Chair of Early Modern History.

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Jessica Homberg-Schramm

# **"Colonised by Wankers"**

**Postcolonialism and Contemporary Scottish Fiction**

Published by Modern Academic Publishing University of Cologne Albertus-Magnus-Platz 50923 Cologne

Funded by the University of Cologne

Text © Jessica Homberg-Schramm 2018

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First published 2018

Accepted as a dissertation at the University of Cologne 2016 Cover image: Cover painting "Unchained Unicorn," contribution to *Bella Caledonia'*s Indyref poster competition by Martin Scott Laird, 2014 © Martin Scott Laird. Used with permission. http://martinlaird.scot

#### **Bibliographic information of the German National Library**

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ISBN (Hardcover): 978-3-946198-28-4 ISBN (EPUB): 978-3-946198-29-1 ISBN (Mobi): 978-3-946198-30-7 ISBN (PDF): 978-3-946198-31-4 DOI: https://doi.org/10.16994/baj

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*Once upon a time there were* twa queens *on the wan green island, and the wan green island was split inty twa kingdoms. But no equal kingdoms, naebody in their richt mind would insist on that. For the northern kingdom was cauld and sma'. And the people were low-statured and ignorant and feart o' their lords and poor! They were starvin'. And their queen was beautiful and tall and fair and … Frenchified. The other kingdom in the island was large, and prosperous, with wheat and barley and fat kye in the fields o' her yeoman fermers, and wool in her looms, and beer in her barrels and, at the mouth of her greatest river, a great port, a glistening city that sucked all wealth to its centre which was a place and a court of a queen. She was a cousin, a clever cousin a wee bit aulder, and mibbe no sae braw as the other queen, but a queen nevertheless. Queen o' a country wi' an army, an' a navy and dominions over many lands.*

*—* Liz Lochhead, *Mary Queen of Scots Got her Head Chopped Off* (1989)

## **Contents**



### **Acknowledgements**

I would sincerely like to thank Prof. Dr. Heinz Antor for supervising my dissertation, and for his helpful comments, support and encouragement throughout the whole process of my research. Thank you also to Prof. Dr. Beate Neumeier for agreeing to be my second examiner. Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues who participated in research colloquia over the past semesters and who gave me important hints and feedback and commented on earlier drafts of these chapters, especially Dr. Julia Hoydis, Dr. Chris Boge, Felicitas Schweiker, Anna Rasokat, Daniela Simut, Pia Heidemeier and Myriam Rouigui.

Thank you to Prof. Dr. Gudrun Gersmann, the University of Cologne and LMU Munich for the exciting opportunity to publish my dissertation with Modern Academic Publishing (MAP) in this innovative format, and thank you to Dr. Claudie Paye and Christine Schmitt for their support during the publication process.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities for providing funds for copy-editing a dissertation not written in the native language and would like to extend a thank you to Sally Ridge for performing this copy-editing.

I would like to express my gratitude to the numerous colleagues I had the privilege of meeting at conferences during the course of my dissertation and who supported me with helpful comments, ideas, and their example of dedicated research.

And the biggest thanks go out to my husband Heiko (truly my better half), to my family and to my friends. They were the ones who supported me during this unique phase in my life by motivating, helping or sometimes simply "enduring" me.

Cologne, March 2017 Jessica Homberg-Schramm

#### **Summary**

This study explores the postcolonial in Scottish fiction in order to investigate the underlying discursive power relations that shape the Scottish literary imagination. Even after devolution and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament the contemporary Scottish novel negotiates national identity between the poles of a Scottish and a British identity. This negotiation focuses on the conflict with England, which is considered to be a hegemon, dictating cultural norms.

In the 21st century, the term 'postcolonial' has been extended to describe unequal power relations stemming from imperial or neo-colonial dominance. Thus, postcolonial theory is used in this study as a reading strategy within the framework of discourse analysis. Frantz Fanon's theories of abjection and inferiority are drawn upon in particular. In the case of Scotland, any self-image becomes inferiorised by mystification and exoticisation that become visible in a number of limiting stereotypes.

Employing postcolonial theory can be proven to be fruitful, because the analysis can reveal power relations which marginalise Scotland, either through England's neo-colonial influence or through a new globalised imperialism. Adapting the concept of the subaltern, parallel to other postcolonial literatures, in Scottish literature the postcolonial serves as resistance and strategy of 'writing back'.

Characterising Scotland as an English colony sparks much debate, since Scotland is often considered to be complicit in the British imperial endeavours. The historical perspective of England and Scotland's relationship underlines the contested nature of Scotland's status as caught between the desire to stabilise a joint British identity on the one hand and to strive for independence on the other. The analysis of the changing evaluation of the Act of Union in 1707—ranging from being seen as a contract between equals to a feeling that the Scots were blackmailed into accepting the Union—highlights the political potential in constructing a national identity based on one particular interpretation of history. The feeling that the Scots were not appropriately represented within the British state was reinforced after the failed devolution referendum in 1979 and the rise of the Thatcher government. The perception of a 'democratic deficit' resulting from the fact that voters in Scotland could not effectively influence the results of general elections led to an upsurge of Scottish nationalism, and consequently a weakening of unionism. The fact that Scottish nationalism has remained an important force in Scottish society was highlighted by the independence referendum that took place in 2014 despite the successful devolution and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999. Furthermore, the split vote of the 2014 referendum reveals that Scotland is still caught between a British and a Scottish identity, a fact that is also reflected in its fiction.

The analysis presented here takes Irvine Welsh's novel *Trainspotting* (1993) as a starting point. The analysis will start by considering this novel as one example of texts which explicitly term Scotland an English colony in chapter three. The quote from the novel that Scotland is "colonised by wankers" underlines the feelings of inferiority and abjection which are sparked as a reaction. This is contrasted with Kevin MacNeil's novel *The Stornoway Way* (2005), which focuses on the Isle of Lewis as a marginalised region within Scotland: written after devolution, this novel fails to imagine Scotland as part of a global network, and in addition to English domination criticises a globalised imperial influence.

The following chapter deals with postcolonial language use and demonstrates how language in the Scottish novel can function as appropriation and abrogation. Scottish dialect is constructed to be inferior to an English standard. The analysis takes Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* and James Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late*  as case studies.

Class as a category is often linked to the usage of dialect. In Scotland, social class is closely linked with national identity: the communal identity is perceived to be predominantly working-class. After scrutinising narratives of Scottish working-class childhoods in James Kelman's *Kieron Smith, Boy* (2008) and Des Dillon's *Itchycooblue* (1999), the analysis turns to novels that deal with a newly emerging underclass of the unemployed working class, for instance Irvine Welsh's novel *Marabou Stork Nightmares* (1995).

In Scottish fiction, gender is a productive category to consider in a postcolonial analysis: women find themselves in a doubly marginalised position as women and as Scots. Men in turn are confronted with the stereotype of the Scottish 'hard man' and are limited by this stereotypical characterisation. By analysing Andrew O'Hagan's novel *Our Fathers* (1999), the study identifies three paradigmatic models of Scottish masculinity, represented by three generations in the novel, and demonstrates how these are influenced by the perception of Scotland as postcolonial. Jackie Kay's novel *Trumpet* (1998), in contrast, represents an innovative perspective on gender identity. Drawing from Bhabha's concept of a third space, the novel questions the validity of binary concepts of identity, which in turn also questions the construction of the Scottish as colonised and the English as coloniser.

Space and place are analysed in the following chapter. The Scottish Highlands are used as a paradigmatic landscape for Scotland. This image is even perpetuated by Scots themselves and thus supports a homogenised image that facilitates colonial domination since it offers itself to an oversimplified binary of civilised England and 'wild' Highlands. The first part of the chapter focuses on Alan Warner's *The Man Who Walks* (2002), which uses deviant characters to write back to these limiting stereotypes of the Highlander as a 'noble savage'. The second part of the chapter focuses on the Scottish city and Scottish crime writing, which prefers an urban setting. The study demonstrates that the genre of crime fiction in Scotland can as a whole be characterised as postcolonial because it is modelled on the American hard-boiled tradition rather than on the English 'Golden Age' tradition. Denise Mina's *Garnethill* (1998), set in Glasgow, and Ian Rankin's *Set in Darkness* (2000), set in Edinburgh, are used to illustrate the postcolonial aspects of urban writing that is closely interwoven with the image of Scotland as collectively working-class and as perpetually ambivalent. The third part of the chapter focuses on travelling and border crossing as a means to reflect on Scottish identity. From a postcolonial angle, this analysis can demonstrate that travelling is taken as an opportunity to question outside characterisations as well as self-images.

The final chapter of analysis focuses on race as a determining category of identity construction and questions in which ways writers with diverse ethnic backgrounds can be integrated into a Scottish canon that often defines national identity in contrast to its others. Both novels examined in this chapter demonstrate a transcendence of national identity constructions and thus can imagine a hybrid Scottish identity. Suhayl Saadi describes music and the technique of sampling as the foundation for the hybrid identity of his protagonist in *Psychoraag* (2004) and Leila Aboulela's *The Translator* (1999), in turn, focuses on religion as primary source of identification, advocating a globalised community of Muslims.

## **1. Introduction: England and Scotland—Crossing Contested Borders**

On 18th September 2014 4.2 million Scots were asked to cast their ballot on Scottish independence. In response to the question, 'Should Scotland be an independent country?' almost 85% of the population went to the polling stations and answered the question with either 'Yes' (44.7%) or 'No' (55.3%). The fact that the vote was almost evenly split between 'yes' and 'no' and did not result in a substantial majority for independence seems curious in a nation in which 84% of the population describe their ethnicity as 'White-Scottish' and where 62% of the population identify themselves as being Scottish only as opposed to solely British (8%) or to a shared Scottish and British identity (18%) (National Records of Scotland 2015).1 The results of the Scottish independence referendum illustrate Scotland's contested status, which is famously captured in David McCrone's (1992) description of Scotland as a 'stateless nation'. While Scotland claims to have a distinct national identity, politically it is an integral part of the United Kingdom and, thus, is not an independent state. This is a source of tension because, from an outside perspective, the United Kingdom is often falsely equated with England, privileging the latter and thus supporting the perception that England is hegemonic. The Scottish nation is torn between its distinct national, Scottish identity and its joint, British identity. The compatibility of these two concepts is increasingly being called into question, as critics such as Tom Nairn and Linda Colley point out; both authors describe the rise of nationalist tendencies in Scotland (as well as in England) as the result of the loss of a shared British identity.

The substitution of British with English is visible not least in university courses on *English* literature, as well as in anthologies or literary histories that audaciously include writers such as Walter Scott in their analyses of *English* literature (see, for example, Eagleton 2005). Though increasing attention has been paid to the need to differentiate between *English* literature and literature in the *English* language, Scottish literature continues to occupy a marginalised position.2

The relationship between England and Scotland is rooted in the countries' joint history, which has been characterised by a constant conflict about political, symbolic and discursive borders. The Wars of Independence established a Scottish state that was challenged by the Union of Crowns in 1603 and, ultimately, by the Union of Parliaments in 1707, after which England and Scotland joined to form one kingdom, known as Great Britain. It was only nearly 300 years later that a referendum about the devolutionary process in Great Britain in 1999 ensured an independent parliament in Edinburgh. The Scottish National Party (SNP) became

<sup>1</sup> All census data is taken from the latest (at the time of writing) Scottish census, conducted in 2011.

<sup>2</sup> A further point that underlines this is the fact that there are very few departments of Scottish literature at universities outside Scotland.

an influential part of Scottish politics in the late 20th and the 21st centuries. It was on the initiative of Alex Salmond, the leader of the SNP and First Minister of the Scottish Parliament, that a roadmap culminating in the referendum on Scottish independence in September 2014 was established. The narrow outcome of the referendum demonstrates that the population is nearly evenly split between British and Scottish allegiance. This form of dual identity, which has been described as characteristic for Scotland with the term 'Caledonian Antisyzygy' and can prominently be found in Scottish literature in the character of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, can be linked to identity construction in other colonial/imperial settings.

All of these factors have considerably influenced Scottish self-perception as well as Scottish culture, not least since Scottish culture has often been used to create a unifying national identity in the face of alleged opposition or threats from the outside. English cultural hegemony and the inferiorisation of Scottish culture have had effects that are comparable to those evident in other postcolonial cultures. From the 1990s onwards, literary critics have applied postcolonial theory to describe Scottish literature and culture. Similarly, this study will show on a broader scale that postcolonial studies offer a new perspective on Scottish literature. The objective of this study is to explore the postcolonial in Scottish literature and to investigate the underlying (discursive) power relations which have shaped the literary imagination of Scotland as a postcolonial nation, employing the methodological repertoire which has emerged out of the analysis of the literature engaging with the colonial past of formal colonies such as India, the Caribbean and various African cultures. This approach furthers the understanding of Scottish literature, as it highlights the extent to which the postcolonial influences the construction of Scottish identity. While previous studies have discussed Scottish culture on a general level or confined themselves to individual works of literature, with the help of an extended corpus of texts this study shows that the postcolonial is not a limited tendency found in disparate works of fiction but, in contrast, penetrates the width and depth of the contemporary Scottish novel. Investigating the latter in the context of 21st-century global entanglements, this study will show how the Scottish have formed a strong cultural identity in the constant conflict with the normativising claims of English culture, allowing for a cultural embeddedness which opens up the possibility of a cosmopolitan positioning within today's globalised world.

In order to achieve an in-depth analysis of Scottish fiction, the corpus of this study comprises thirteen contemporary Scottish novels. Furthermore, forty novels will be used to supplement the analysis. Before choosing the texts comprising this corpus, the question arose as to who can be considered a *Scottish* writer. Sociologist David McCrone qualifies three different strands of identification: "The main markers of Scottish identity are being born in Scotland, having Scottish parents, and living there—roughly in that order" (McCrone 2012, 682). For the purpose of the following analysis, McCrone's definition of Scottishness will be adapted: Scottish writers will generally be defined as those who were born or grew up in Scotland, who live there *and* whose current work has a strong connection to Scotland. Accordingly, writers such as Bernard MacLaverty are not included in this analysis: although MacLaverty has lived in Scotland for forty years, most of his novels deal with the reverberations of the conflict in Northern Ireland.3 Another example for exclusion is the critically acclaimed, award-winning fiction of William Boyd. Though Boyd was born in Ghana, he grew up and was educated in Scotland; however, his fiction draws, among other things, on his intimate knowledge of Africa, and many of his novels are set there or all over Europe. Nevertheless, an exception to this definition of Scottish writers is made in this book, as this study will also consider fiction by Leila Aboulela. Aboulela is one of a small number of writers who were not born in Scotland but who reside there and whose work engages with questions of Scottish identity. Due to the fact that Aboulela's novel *The Translator*  makes a meaningful contribution to the question of identity in the 21st century, she cannot be ignored here. Next to Aboulela, Michel Faber, who was born in France, is also an example of these writers, and his work will be touched upon here shortly.

A further criterion for the selection of the works analysed in this study, particularly for the thirteen novels analysed in detail, is critical acclaim and public popularity. This has been ensured to a certain degree by privileging books that have either received or been shortlisted for prestigious awards. These awards include the Saltire Society Literary Awards and the Man Booker Prize. As James F. English has shown, the effects on opinion formation of awards such as the Booker Prize should not be neglected (English 2005).4 This is an important criterion, as a novel should have achieved a certain level of visibility and dissemination in order to have a certain impact on culture and to shape its discourses.

As for the time range, Irvine Welsh's novel *Trainspotting* is taken as a starting point in this study. The novel, published in 1993, was not the first Scottish text to air feelings of marginality and oppression, but it certainly contains one of the most singular and intense statements made in relation to postcolonial Scotland when Welsh's main character Renton proclaims: "We are colonised by wankers" (*TS* 78). The vernacular, rough language of the novel is striking and set the groundwork for a new wave of Scottish writing. Equally, the choice of topic, focusing on a group of drug-addicted, criminal and unemployed young friends of the so-called 'Chemical generation', as well as its location in Leith, a deprived area of Edinburgh, underlines the intention to represent marginalised voices. Set in the 1990s, the novel shows the underbelly of Edinburgh and illustrates the social conditions of post-Thatcher Britain. Edinburgh became infamous as Europe's AIDS capital during the 1990s, marking it as marginal not only within Britain but also within Europe as a whole. The publication of *Trainspotting* marks the beginning of the time frame

4 Of course, there are also counter-examples: in 1994, James Kelman's novel *How Late it Was, How Late* did not enjoy the high figure sales that the award of the Booker Prize usually promises.

<sup>3</sup> Other critical work on Scottish fiction includes Bernard MacLaverty's fiction—such as Claudia Eilers's *Dismissing the Polar Twins* (2007), as Eilers defines Scottish writers as those who reside in Scotland.

examined in this study. Though the Labour Party's and Tony Blair's election to power in 1997 is often described as a watershed in British society, societal opinion does not change overnight, and, thus, it is useful to include the preceding four years in order to trace the changing public and cultural opinions which then culminated in Labour's landslide victory after eighteen years of Conservative government. This election had special importance in Britain, as, after their victory, Labour started the devolution process, which led to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

The following chapter will provide the theoretical framework for this study. First, the validity of postcolonial theory in the 21st century will be scrutinised. Postcolonialism has evolved and no longer describes simple binary relationships between oppressor and oppressed, becoming instead, amongst other things, a reading strategy to trace influence and dominance in relations of power that are perceived as unbalanced. The tendency to describe England and Scotland as centre and periphery, respectively, grew in the 1990s, when postcolonial theory was increasingly employed as a tool to analyse Scottish literature and culture. However, some critics have shown a reluctance to describe Scotland as postcolonial. An often cited reason for this is the nation's own complicity in the colonial endeavours of the British Empire. These challenges to the notion of Scotland as a postcolonial nation will be addressed accordingly. The dissolution of a stable British identity, particularly in post-war Britain, has led to a strengthened Scottish nationalism. With the help of discourse analysis, adapting postcolonial theories of the subaltern and Frantz Fanon's concept of inferiority, this study will argue that a postcolonial reading helps to negotiate this Scottish national identity. The analysis will show that contemporary Scottish fiction negotiates the cultural influence of England, which, from a Scottish perspective, is perceived as hegemonic. At the same time, postcolonial theory will also be applied to scrutinise Scotland's own reliance on its construction of itself as England's Other. The final section of the chapter will give a concise overview of the historical events that have characterised Scotland and England's relationship as enemies, partners and neighbours. Apart from presenting a selection of the 'highlights' of Scottish history, the focus in this section will be on the ways in which the interpretation of Scottish history has changed over the years and how this ties in with the construction of Scotland as postcolonial.

Chapter three will open with an overview of the continuities and changes in the contemporary Scottish novel during the 20th century. This section will demonstrate the close connection between political developments and fiction that exists in Scotland. Thereafter, the chapter will analyse two novels that explicitly term Scotland a colony of England. Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* (1993) focuses on the depiction of the abjection of Scotland, caused by its inferior status as a colony, but at the same time points out the internal contradictions that complicate this representation. Kevin MacNeil's novel *The Stornoway Way* (2005) presents a retrogressive perspective of an isolated Scotland that has no possibility of a meaningful future due to the combined marginalising forces of English oppression and globalisation.

The following chapters will focus on analysing how the postcolonial condition is implicitly negotiated in a number of discourses that influence the construction of identity, and of national identity in particular. Stuart Hall argues that national identity consists of different aspects, such as affiliation with a social class and ethnic group, and gender identity (Hall 1996, 617). The analysis of these discourses of class, race, gender—are supplemented in this study by the analysis of language use, which functions as an important site of negotiation in any (post)colonial context and which in Scotland is also very closely linked to class. Furthermore, the analysis of space and place will contribute to the broader analysis, as "[places] play a potentially important part in the symbolic and psychical dimension of our identifications" (Carter, Donald & Squires 1993, xii). The analysis of national identity via its negotiation in contemporary fiction proves particularly productive since, as Stuart Hall points out, "national identities are not things we are born with, but are formed and transformed within and in relation to *representation*" (original emphasis; Hall 1996, 612).

The first analysis will be concerned with postcolonial language use in the contemporary Scottish novel. Based on the postcolonial principles of language appropriation and abrogation, and employing the examples of *Trainspotting* and James Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late* (1994), chapter four will demonstrate how Scottish writers employ the vernacular to negotiate power relationships and to question the difference from an allegedly superior English standard.

The analysis of class in the fifth chapter is twofold. After demonstrating the importance of the tendency of Scots to identify themselves as working-class for the construction of Scottish national identity, the first focus will be on novels that use the perspective of children to explore the importance of class in Scotland's past and at the same time function as a postcolonial re-writing of stereotypical depictions of a depraved working-class life. The texts analysed in this section will be James Kelman's *Kieron Smith, Boy* (2008) and Des Dillon's *Itchycooblue* (1999). The second focus will be on fiction concerned with a newly evolving underclass. A reading of Irvine Welsh's early novels, *Marabou Stork Nightmares* (1995) in particular, will demonstrate how Welsh's fiction establishes a connection between the Thatcher government and the increasing disenfranchisement of a marginalised Scottish 'unemployed working class', thus constructing England as oppressor.

Chapter six will analyse discourses of gender in connection to Scotland's postcolonial status. After briefly outlining the vulnerable position of women writers, who are perceived as doubly marginalised, this chapter will focus on the construction of masculinity. With the help of an analysis of Andrew O'Hagan's *Our Fathers* (1999) it will be demonstrated that three broad types of Scottish men can be identified in Scottish discourse: the traditional hard man who represents a nostalgic view of the 'old' Scotland; the compensatory man who overemphasises Scottish virility in order to counter the inferiority complex caused by Scotland's alleged domination by the English; and the modern man in transition who engages critically with both models and tries to negotiate a middle ground, questioning the binary opposition that can result from a postcolonial construction of Scotland. The remainder of the chapter will present a reading of Jackie Kay's *Trumpet* (1998), which uses gender to demonstrate how identity in general can transcend oversimplified binaries; drawing on Homi K. Bhabha's concept of the third space (Rutherford [1990] 1998), the analysis will demonstrate how the novel advocates the construction of identity that is not dependent on predetermined categories.

In the next chapter, the analysis will turn to the influence of space and place in contemporary Scottish fiction. The perception of Scotland is shaped significantly by the focus placed on its countryside by the tourism industry. The first aspect examined will be the engagement of contemporary writers with a re-writing of the exoticised and mythical landscape of the Highlands, using Alan Warner's novel *The Man Who Walks* (2002) as an example. Despite the perceptions of Scotland as rural, the majority of Scotland's population lives in urban areas. Thus, the second focus will be on the depiction of Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland's largest cities. These cities both feature prominently in Scottish crime fiction, which has become known under the label 'Tartan Noir', and for this reason this genre has been chosen for the analysis of the Scottish city. After questioning whether the genre of the Scottish crime novel in the tradition of the hard-boiled style can be regarded as postcolonial, the analysis will focus on Denise Mina's depiction of Glasgow in *Garnethill* (1998), followed by a closer look at Edinburgh as portrayed in Ian Rankin's *Set in Darkness* (2000). In a third step, this chapter will analyse the effect that the changing of place, or border-crossing, has on Scottish fiction. Travelling is a reoccurring motif that facilitates the negotiation of a Scottish identity by enabling characters to make comparisons with other places.

Chapter eight will focus on the analysis of race as a category of identity and will first question whether there is such a thing as Black Scottish writing. The ways in which immigrants consolidate and strengthen their Scottish identity will be scrutinised. In both of the examples chosen, the writers negotiate their marginalised and hybrid heritage while at the same time transcending national frameworks of identification. Suhayl Saadi's novel *Psychoraag* (2004) presents music and sampling as a model for identity formation while Leila Aboulela advocates religion and a community of faith as the only viable alternative to a post-national framework in her novel *The Translator* (1999)*.*

To conclude the study, the final chapter will summarise the results of the preceding analyses and consequently demonstrate how a combination of the different facets of identity supports the construction of a Scottish national identity as postcolonial. Furthermore, this study will close by considering the future developments of contemporary Scottish fiction.

## **2. Postcolonial Scotland**

In this introductory section the theoretical assumptions and framework used in this study will be outlined. This framework will largely be drawn from the terminology used in postcolonial studies. The designation of Scotland as postcolonial is controversial, and critics from postcolonial studies as well as from Scottish studies have engaged in lively discussions about this in numerous publications. In the following the most prominent voices in this discussion will be traced and, subsequently, historians' perspectives on the status of Scotland will be explored. Following on from this, the productivity of the adaptation of postcolonial theory and concepts to the contemporary Scottish novel will be asserted, while also taking into account the main arguments that are brought forward in defiance of this.

#### **2.1 Postcolonial Theory in the 21st Century**

Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin's volume *The Empire Writes Back* ([1989] 2008) is the first point of reference for most students and scholars interested in postcolonial5 literature. In their first chapter, the authors state that,

[w]hile it is possible to argue that these societies [Ireland, Wales and Scotland] were the first victims of English expansion, their subsequent complicity in the British imperial enterprise makes it difficult for colonised peoples outside Britain to accept their identity as post-colonial. (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 31f.)

The authors do not deny postcolonial status to Ireland, Wales and Scotland entirely, arguing instead for their integration into theoretical models, such as Dorsinville's dominated–dominating model (in Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008,

5 The difference between the hyphenated 'post-colonial' and 'postcolonial' is more than merely one of spelling; in her volume *Colonialism/Postcolonialism* Ania Loomba discusses the difference between the two terms, also questioning whether the prefix 'post' in 'postcolonial' is valid. Rather than understanding the 'post' of 'postcolonial' as a mere temporal dimension or as signifying the overcoming of colonialism, she argues that it is "more helpful to think of postcolonialism […] more flexibly as the contestation of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism" (Loomba 1998, 12). Nevertheless, Loomba warns of an undifferentiated expansion of the term 'postcolonial', which could become "a vague condition of people anywhere and everywhere" (Loomba 1998, 17). However, not only does the changing terminology connote an expansion of its application that may indeed prove to be problematic, but, as Gardiner argues during the 1990s, the meaning of 'postcolonial' has shifted: "[…] *post-colonial* describes a situation where a power has retreated after a colonial period; *postcolonial*, in current usage, describes tendencies in cultural and institutional structures which foreground questions of race, sovereignty, and nationhood, with the colonial temporality of progress readable in terms of present identifications" (original emphasis; Gardiner 1996, 24). This study will, therefore, use the unhyphenated form 'postcolonial', as the focus here will be on the analysis of the cultural angle and the examination of Scotland's own construction as postcolonial.

31f.), which asserts that societies can be influenced by a dominator while simultaneously dominating others. The advantage of Dorsinville's model is that it is both nuanced and dynamic, allowing for a shading of different levels of dominance and for the representation of changes over time. Its adaptation to a country such as Scotland, which plays an ambiguous role in the United Kingdom, proves highly valuable, as it "forcefully stresses linguistic and cultural imposition, and enables an interpretation of British literary history as a process of hierarchical interchange in internal and external group relations" (Dorsinville, quoted in Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 32). It is these "linguistic and cultural impositions" in particular that become apparent in the case of Scotland. Here, colonialism is not an overtly political strategy of taking over a foreign state but rather a subtle strategy of setting up 'English' as normative so that other regions are marginalised as deviant Others. Dorsinville's model also acknowledges multiple hierarchical levels of domination, thus accounting for complex shifts between the roles of dominator and dominated—most aptly in the case of Scotland, where the question of complicity with the English in the British Empire has often impeded Scotland's recognition as postcolonial. Whether Scotland is acknowledged as postcolonial depends on the question as to whether Scotland is perceived as a nation in its own right or as part of Great Britain and, thus, as a partner who partook in the colonial enterprises of the British Empire.

In the second edition of *The Empire Writes Back*, Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin include a supplementary chapter that outlines new developments in postcolonial studies, asking how postcolonial studies can be theorised in the 21st century. Here, they also pursue the question of "Who is Post-Colonial?" (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 200–202), critically engaging with the broadening application of the term to numerous contexts. Less critical than in their original analysis of the inclusion of countries such as Scotland or Wales in a postcolonial framework, they contend that "[c]onsidering their historical relationship with Elizabethan, Stuart and Cromwellian colonialism, political and cultural analysis in these countries has found a new dimension in post-colonial theory" (Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin [1989] 2008, 201). The authors conclude that the focus should no longer be on the question as to whether inclusion in a postcolonial framework is possible or legitimate, suggesting instead that

[…] a more useful question might be: In what ways may post-colonial theory be most fruitfully deployed? One way in which it has come to be deployed has to do with issues of cultural diversity, ethnic, racial and cultural difference and the power relations within them—a consequence of an expanded and more subtle understanding of the dimensions of neo-colonial dominance. (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 201)

This definition is a strong argument in favour of the productivity of the adaptation of postcolonial theory and concepts to Scottish literature, as the theory can trace the power relations that are created out of a perceived cultural difference between

Scotland and England. In 2012 Ashcroft argued that the field of postcolonial studies has broadened:

Whether we like it or not, post-colonial studies now extends far beyond the original moment of colonization. The field has come to represent a dizzyingly broad network of cohabiting intellectual pursuits, circulating around the general idea of an ongoing engagement with imperial power in its various historical forms. (Ashcroft 2012, xvii)

Drawing on Gilroy's terminology, he introduces the term of a 'convivial critical democracy' to describe the field of postcolonial studies. This term stresses the potential for different and maybe even divergent strands of theory to co-exist within this field (Ashcroft 2012, xvii). This broadening of the theoretical field accounts for the fruitful adaptation of postcolonial theory to other contexts, such as that of Scotland.

The methodology chosen in this study in order to employ postcolonial theory as a reading strategy for the Scottish contemporary novel will be discourse analysis. Referring to Foucault's notion of discourse and its connection to power, as well as Said's seminal study *Orientalism* (1978), colonial discourse analysis is discussed by Ania Loomba (1998, 45–57), who defines it as

indicat[ing] a new way of thinking in which cultural, intellectual, economic or political processes are seen to work together in the formation, perpetuation and dismantling of colonialism. It seeks to widen the scope of studies of colonialism by examining the intersection of ideas and institutions, knowledge and power. (Loomba 1998, 54)

Loomba (1998, 49) points out that Said has been criticised for privileging cultural and ideological aspects over the material realities of postcolonialism6. Although such criticism should not be denied its validity, as colonialism cannot be 'reduced' merely to an ideology, Said's discourse analysis proves helpful in the case of Scotland. This theoretical framework is most suited for the analysis made in this study, as discourse analysis focuses on questions of construction and perception, while also acknowledging the overlapping processes (cultural, political, economic etc.) that are important for the construction of such perceptions. Scotland has never been an official colony of England, never having been forcedly conquered or settled, in comparison to the majority of British colonies, and instead having surrendered its independence to England by the way of the Union of Parliaments. Discourse analysis is able to identify the subtle processes employed through ideology to construct a hegemonic relationship privileging the English normative centre over its regions in the periphery. In Scotland's case this hegemonic relationship

<sup>6</sup> According to Loomba (1998, 96), the fact that the focus of postcolonial studies lies on the cultural and, in particular, the literary production of a society is also due to the fact that postcolonial studies are mostly situated in departments of English literary studies.

can be found, for example, in the construction of Scotland as wild and 'natural' in contrast to a 'civilised' south, in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of Scotland or in biased agenda-setting that privileges the cultural production of the metropolis. A further important aspect of Said's theory is his analysis of the way in which the iteration of the discourse through analysis perpetuates the reality that the discourse sets out to represent (Lazarus 2004, 10). This is also important in the case of Scotland, as Scottish writers not only describe the dominating influence that England exercises over the Scottish nation but also engage critically with Scotland's own construction as England's Other.

Benedict Anderson's ([1983] 2006) influential study *Imagined Communities* established the link between nationalism and print culture. Anderson argues that communities are not the result of cartographic borders but are instead constructed via narration. Thus, an analysis of the narratives of a culture can offer an insight into the construction of its national identity. New Historicism emphasises that literature and culture are interlocked and thus that an analysis of a literary work should not remain internal, but rather provide an external analysis that reflects on culture as a whole (Greenblatt 2005). The novel is particularly suitable for such an analysis, as "[t]he emergence of the idea of national character has itself been linked to the rise of the novel, since fiction and biography are the literary genres most typically associated with character portrayal and character analysis" (Parrinder 2006, 21). The potential of an analysis of the novel is evident in the description of the novel as a "national allegory" (Jameson 1979) or a "symbolic form of the nation state" (Moretti 1998, 20). Patrick Parrinder gives two advantages that the novel can offer in the discussion of national identity: firstly, many writers explicitly engage with this topic on the content level, and, secondly, "novels are the source of some of our most influential ideas and expressions of national identity. Works of art which are enjoyed and appreciated by subsequent generations play a key part in the transmission and dissemination of national images, memories, and myths" (Parrinder 2006, 6). Parrinder (2006, 9) also emphasises the element of resistance in the novel, since the novel can influence the perception of society without any kind of official endorsement. The reading of novels is not a public act, and it is this private experience in particular that gives the novel the capacity to comment on society, as "[t]he novel […] inserts itself into the interludes of domestic life and finds its reader there. Its status as private reading-matter gives it its unstable and potentially subversive function in relation to the family and the community at large" (Parrinder 2006, 13). Resistance as the function of the novel is particularly important in a postcolonial context, as it allows the transmission of subversive points of view and also exercises implicit resistance when writers use the novel to imagine an alternative nation: "In writing out of the condition of 'Otherness' post-colonial texts assert the complex of intersecting 'peripheries' as the actual substance of experience" (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 77).

In order to ascertain the importance of fiction for the construction of national identity, it is necessary for a study of 20th- and 21st-century novels to question whether nationalism remains a relevant concept in a globalised world. Cosmopolitanism has established itself as a concept that transcends nationalism, focusing instead on a shared humanism (see, for example, Appiah 1996; Appiah 2006; Nussbaum 1994). According to Ulrich Beck, it is no longer possible to distinguish the national from the international level. Due to the progress of computer technology, boundaries dissolve and risk is increasingly conceptualised on a global scale, which leads to an "enforced cosmopolitanization" (Beck 2007). This also becomes apparent in the concept of post-national citizenship advocated by Sassen, who argues that the nation is no longer an exclusive point of reference (Sassen 2002, 278). This tendency is also true for Britain today, as people are more likely to define themselves in terms of gender or social role; however, as David McCrone points out, in the case of Scotland, nationality still seems to be of extraordinary importance:

While it is true that most Scots, like the English, describe themselves as parents, partners, or in terms of gender, the major difference relates to national identity. Scots are twice as likely to say they are 'Scottish' than the English are to say they are 'English'; and far less likely to describe themselves as 'British'. […] This state of affairs north of the border has not changed much in a decade, suggesting that devolution has not made Scots more Scottish; they felt 'Scottish' at the outset, so helping to fuel the demand for Home Rule in the 1990s. (McCrone 2012, 681)

Written in 2012, this quotation also underlines McCrone's opinion that the Scottish preoccupation with national identity has not changed considerably since the establishment of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999. The continued importance of national identification in the 21st century is further corroborated by the fact that globalisation and transculturality are not fixed states but ongoing processes, and that people still tend to position themselves in a "monocultural" narrative (Antor 2006, 36). There has been an ongoing discussion concerning Scottish literature as to whether fiction, which has played a vital part in debating and constructing national identity, would be able to concentrate on other endeavours after devolution. In 1998 Christopher Whyte asked whether Scottish literature would be able to be a literature in its own right rather than a political organ following devolution (Whyte 1998, 284). In the light of internationalisation and globalisation Berthold Schoene asked in 2007 whether "Scottish literature [ought to] continue to be burdened with an alleged national specificity, or should it be allowed to go cosmopolitan rather than native?" (Schoene 2007c, 8). However, firstly, fiction that is involved in the construction of national identity does not exclude fiction that simultaneously engages with a global perspective, and, secondly, this study will show that discourses of national identity do not necessarily propagate an essentialist Scottish identity, instead advocating a multiplicity of possible identities. Since the turn of the century, the interest in the global perspective has increased: Schoene has included Scottish examples in his study of the cosmopolitan novel (Schoene-Harwood 2009), Scottish literature has been contextualised as world literature (G. Macdonald 2006; Shirey 2007), and Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller have discussed Scotland from a post-national perspective (Bell & Miller 2004). It seems that the tendency of Scottish fiction to transcend national borders was merely slowed down by the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, but a conclusive analysis will only be possible at a later date. In a recent publication, Pittin-Hedon (2015, xiii) concludes that "[the] concept of a post-national identity, and therefore of a—possibly problematic—post-national literature, raises the issue of the interconnections of art, ideology and politics, which are precisely the crossroads the Scottish novel is standing at".

#### **2.2 Scotland and Postcolonial Theory—An Intersection**

One of the first major texts that argued for the classification of Scotland as England's 'internal colony' was published in 1975. In his book *Internal Colonialism*, Michael Hechter endeavoured to draft a model for colonial situations in industrial societies such as Scotland (Hechter 1975).7 He distinguishes between core regions and peripheral regions that vary in cultural practices, such as language, legal system, inheritance system and religion, among others. The Internal Colonialism model assumes that modernisation occurs in waves, in varying intensity in different territories, which leads to a "crystallization of the unequal distribution of resources and power between the two groups" (Hechter 1975, 9). The more advanced group, or the core, then strives to stabilise its superiority through institutionalisation. Accordingly, Hechter identifies the core as England and the Celtic regions of Britain as the periphery. He claims that Scotland is one of the periphery regions that can be considered an internal colony. The language shift that appeared in the periphery from Gaelic to English is partially blamed on industrialisation and the fact that formal education is carried out in English (Hechter 1975, 206f.). This serves as evidence of England's endeavours as the core region to stabilise its power by dominating the education system. Apart from this, the attempt to control the periphery has also been justified by ideology, as, "[f]rom the seventeenth century on, English military and political control in the peripheral regions was buttressed by a racist ideology which held that Norman Anglo-Saxon culture was inherently superior to Celtic culture" (Hechter 1975, 342). Hechter concludes that the periphery compensates for its lack of political and economic influence by placing a particular significance on 'national' culture and identity (Hechter 1975, 344). While Hechter's book has certainly facilitated the adaptation of postcolonial theory to Scotland and has provided useful terminology for describing the relationship

<sup>7</sup> Hechter's contribution can be seen in close connection to Immanuel Wallerstein's concept of the world-systems analysis, described first in Wallerstein's 1974 volume *The Modern World-System*. Based on the notion of a capitalist order, Wallerstein also describes the development of regions defined as core, semi-periphery or periphery (Wallerstein 2004).

between the nations that make up Great Britain, certain issues persist with his model. The subsumption of the entirety of Scotland, particularly the Lowlands, under the *Celtic* fringe remains a problematic homogenisation. Additionally, as, for example, John Scott criticises in a review, Hechter also ignores the significance of English regionalism (Scott 1976, 191), thus assuming that the entirety of England belongs to the privileged core. Furthermore, as Michael Keating has pointed out, in the light of the substantial criticism of his work Hechter later revised and considerably adjusted his theories (Keating 2009, 5). In the second edition of *Internal Colonialism* Hechter addresses the problem of merging the Highlands and the Lowlands (Hechter 1999, xvii–xix) and traces the development of Scottish nationalism throughout the 20th century and the cultural division of labour and its effects on identity in a new appendix (Hechter 1999, 353–382).

Nevertheless, the notion of characterising power relations within a country as a colonial situation has proven helpful for describing power imbalances within the United Kingdom. The idea of uneven development between different regions of a country has also been taken up by Marxist scholar Tom Nairn. As a Scotsman himself, he focused in particular on Scotland's point of view in an unstable Great Britain in his two major publications *The Break-up of Britain* (1981) and *After Britain* (2000). In *The Break-up of Britain*, his study on nationalism, he argues, similarly to Hechter, that Scotland and England have experienced an uneven development. However, in contrast to Hechter, Nairn sees Scotland as the economically and technologically more advanced nation that is detained by England. Nairn summarises the central argument of *The Break-up of Britain* thus:

"Uneven development" was the nub of that argument. The intensifying "backwardness" of a post-imperial and post-industrial Britain was counterposed to the forward-looking impulses emerging out of its periphery. While nationalism naturally stressed ethnic or cultural motifs, the impulse of emancipation was also linked to a general idea of being "held back". […] It was only one more step to extend this justification to people and territories being unfairly tied down by "backward" metropolitan centres […]. (Nairn 2004, 24)

Nairn (2004, 22) asserts that the disintegration of the Union was not stopped by devolution but merely slowed down and is strongly in favour of further devolution. First published in 2000, *After Britain* describes the changes brought by the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, which, for Nairn, signals the beginning of a new era in politics. He does not comment directly on the question of whether Scotland should ultimately become independent, advocating instead a written constitution for Scotland: "The *conclusion* of what is already a tradition […] can only be a new national constitution" (original emphasis; Nairn 2000, 269).

The academic discussion on Scottish postcoloniality gathered momentum in the early 1990s with an increase of journal publications on this topic. This is true not only for literary studies but also for historiography, where, as Keating (2009, 1) remarks, "[…] a whole genre of literature has emerged about the questions of Britain and the crisis of the Union". Another indicator of heightened interest is the fact that the then newly established journal *Scotlands*8 published a special issue on "Scotland and the Postcolonial Experience" in its second year of publication, in 1995. Parallels have been drawn to other postcolonial contexts, such as the Caribbean (Riach 1993; Riach 2008; Covi et al. 2007; Morris 2015) and Ireland (Jackson & Maley 2002; Ryan 2002). The special status of Scottish women as a doubly marginalised group when considered in terms of gender as well as national identity has been examined by (amongst others) Hendry (1987), Carter (1995) and Germanà (2008). The analysis of Scottish literary writing from a postcolonial angle focuses predominantly on Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* (see, for example, Oliver 1996; Jackson & Maley 2000; Farred 2004).9

In his paper "A Passage to Scotland", Berthold Schoene argues that the adaptation of postcolonial theory to Scottish literature would

[…] be highly conducive to our general understanding of the postcolonial dynamics that inform, or the different successive postcolonial phases that constitute, the development of national literatures which grow in the absence of political approval and subsidisation while trying to establish themselves in the daunting shadow of a superior canon. (Schoene 1995, 110)

As examples in support of this he refers to the literature of the Scottish Renaissance, Gaelic poetry and Scotland's languages in general (Schoene 1995). On the other hand, he warns of the danger of furthering stereotypes in Scottish literature as well as of increased anglicisation if Scotland predominantly defines itself as Other in comparison to England, thus again centralising England as the frame of reference (Schoene 1995, 120). Schoene concludes that Scottish literature is cosmopolitan, and that the wish to apply the label 'postcolonial' to its literature does not reveal a Scottish identity crisis but an English crisis of identity and England's need to regard itself as superior (Schoene 1995, 120f.). Almost prophetically, Schoene's theses have retrospectively been proven correct twenty years after his paper was published: today, Scottish literature tends to have a globalised outlook. However, it is questionable whether this would have been a valid analysis in 1995 prior to devolution.

Michael Gardiner argues that postcolonial theory can be applied as a useful reading technique to further the understanding of Scottish literature (Gardiner

<sup>8</sup> *Scotlands* is the precursor of the *Scottish Studies Review* published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS): *Scotlands* and the *Scottish Literary Journal* merged in 2000 to be published as the *Scottish Studies Review*. The journal was then renamed in 2008 and has henceforth been published as the *Scottish Literary Review*.

<sup>9</sup> Furthermore, to complete the overview of research, the following scholars contributed to the analysis of Scottish literature as postcolonial and are not discussed in detail here, but should nonetheless be mentioned briefly: Craig (1996), Craig (2004), Schoene-Harwood (1998), Gardiner (2001), Ascherson (2002), Calder (2002), Harvie (2004) and Sassi (2005). Sassi and van Heijnsbergen (2013, 7f.) supplement this list with Gittings (1995), Fazzini (2000) and Riggs (2005). Stroh (2011, 38) focuses on sources that explore Gaelic postcolonialism.

1996, 39), and in a later publication has described devolution as "a postcolonial process: the United Kingdom […] still pursues neocolonial economic policy" (Gardiner 2004a, ix). Similarly, Roderick Watson underlines the focus on a cultural postcolonial reading, while at the same time emphasising that this is not unique to the Scottish context but is the fate of many smaller nations (Watson 1998, 23). In agreement with Gardiner (1996), he points out that the more important re-writing is not along national lines but in terms of class, race and gender, among others (Watson 1998, 33). Liam Connell mentions another crucial point that has been raised by many commentators in this debate—that the adaptation of postcolonial theory to Scotland often ignores the internal divisions of the country (most importantly the tension between the Highlands and the Lowlands), constructing a homogeneous image of Scotland (Connell 2004, 260). Graeme Macdonald criticises the neglect of Scottish writers' ethical criticism of the entanglement with global capitalism and its repercussions evident in the economic inequalities in Scottish society:

A postcolonial politics that remains committed to a theory of nation-level agency and class-consciousness, focused on the issue and instances of uneven development, critical of the deleterious effects of imperialism, colonialism *and* late capitalism on large sections of Scottish society, seems imperative. (original emphasis; G. Macdonald 2006, 120)

A substantial body of work on the evaluation of contemporary Scottish literature is focused on the analysis of nationalism. This is apparent in many publications that analyse Scottish fiction and its relationship to the nation (see, for example, Bell 2004; Christianson 2002; Craig 1999). The increase in the number of publications that deal with Scottish nationalism correlates with the milestones of Scottish devolution. After the establishment of an independent Scottish Parliament in 1999, authors such as Bell (2004), Christianson (2002) and Craig (1999) negotiated Scotland's new sense of national identity. The same trend can be identified in the innumerable publications that appeared in the build-up to the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. The following are only a few representative examples: Linda Colley published *Acts of Union and Disunion* (2014), while Robert Crawford took the 700-year anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn as a starting point to discuss the relationship between literature and Scottish independence in his 2014 volume *Scottish Independence and the Literary Imagination*. Murray Pittock re-published his 2008 volume *The Road to Independence?* in a second, revised edition in 2014, including a foreword by then First Minister Alex Salmond. These are only a few of the publications that discussed Scottish independence or took the referendum as a starting point to negotiate Scottish national identity.10 As early as 1996, Gardiner pointed out that it is exactly this

<sup>10</sup> Other publications include, for example, that of Henderson Scott (2012), Marr (2013), and Hassan (2014).

preoccupation with questions of national identity that justifies a postcolonial reading of Scottish literature:

Because *postcolonial theory* points to reading strategies which foreground questions of race and nation, questions of race and nation are already foregrounded in situations where they have been uncleanly and indecisively split between notional centres, Scotland is *already* implicated in postcolonial theory; postcolonial debates are already going on in academic debates over Scottish nationalism. (original emphasis; Gardiner 1996, 39)

In recent years three publications that have looked at Scottish postcoloniality from different angles have contributed to a qualified discussion of these issues in literature. Silke Stroh (2011) has comprehensively analysed Scottish (post)colonialism by focusing on Gaelic poetry; Graeme Macdonald, Michael Gardiner and Niall O'Gallagher (2011) have edited a volume on the link between Scottish and postcolonial literature; while Stefanie Lehner's *Subaltern Ethics in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Literature* (2011) uses ethical criticism to outline subaltern marginalisation in contemporary fiction. Accordingly, some have argued that, with these three full-length studies, "the kind of critical mass of scholarly endeavour needed to make an impact within and across disciplinary borders" has been reached (Sassi & van Heijnsbergen 2013, 1).

However, there are several strands of argumentation that challenge the idea of analysing Scotland as postcolonial. The most important qualification to make here is that the aim of this book is not to make an analysis of an existent Scottish postcolonial status—instead, the object is to show that postcolonial theory facilitates a reading of Scottish fiction that reveals the power relations in Scottish culture.

When discussing Scotland's status within the United Kingdom, one important issue is the terms upon which Scotland entered the Union in 1707, an issue which remains part of the present-day scholarly debate. The fact that the interpretations of the nature of the Union as well as of Scotland's reasons for agreeing to it in 1707 have changed over the years illustrates that these interpretations are heavily influenced by the political climate and the degree of nationalism present in society at a certain point in time. One of the prevalent controversies of this debate is the question as to whether Scotland really had a choice in entering the Union with England or whether the Scots were more or less coerced into it. Of course, this historiographical debate cannot be settled here, and neither does it need to be. Instead, it is to be noted that the portrayal of the Union as a forced decision challenges the very foundation of the Union and influences the perception of the present-day relationship between Scotland and England.

A major argument that has most often been brought forward as undermining Scotland's status as a postcolonial country is that of the complicity of Scotland in the British Empire. This has been highlighted by other colonised countries outside Europe in particular, who perceive Scotland as part of Great Britain and, thus, as the coloniser (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 31f.). It is undeniable that Scotland played an important role in the expansion of the British Empire, as "[t]he Scots thoroughly and systematically colonized all areas of the British Empire from commerce to administration, soldiering to medicine, colonial education to the expansion of emigrant settlements" (Devine 2003, xxvi). These new opportunities for Scots were facilitated by the Union in 1707, as it affected "the ending of formal institutional barriers to empire" (Hamilton 2012, 426). In his study *Scotland's Empire— The Origins of the Global Diaspora* T.M. Devine explores the reasons why Scots emigrated in large numbers to all corners of the British Empire, thus assisting its expansion. Although Scots from all walks of life contributed to life in the colonies, they were best known for their qualities as soldiers. In fact, Scots were in high demand as mercenaries not only in the colonies but all over Europe, as they had gained a reputation as proficient fighters since the 14th century (Devine 2003, 13). This reputation may have been gained because of the peripheral status that Scotland assumed within the United Kingdom and the limited career options that Scots had in Great Britain outside Scotland. After the Union with England, a major language barrier persisted between Scotland and England, and Scots were forced to appear as 'English' as possible if they wanted to advance in England (Crawford 1992, 24); an alternative possibility was to emigrate to the colonies, and Devine sees poverty as one of the major reasons for such a decision when he states that "[m]ilitary service tended to be the specialist function of regions of poverty" (Devine 2003, 14). The integration of Scottish regiments in the British army not only presented Scots as brave soldiers but also furthered the portrayal of Scots as exotic and, thus, Other, which resonates with representations of the Gurkha in the British colonial armies:

Regiments such as the Gordon Highlanders, the Black Watch, and the Seaforth Highlanders were praised for their bravery in combat, though the corollary of such fighting spirit was often a ruthlessness in punitive reprisals. […] Highland uniforms drew the attention of war artists and photographers, while the newly developing practice of war reporting from the front in the newspaper press added to the glamour of the highland warrior. So entrenched was this image to become that at that time of the army reorganization of 1881 lowland regiments were also ordered to wear 'tartan "trews" and highland-style doublets'. (Breitenbach 2012, 540)

Joining the efforts of the Empire as a sustainable career option was soon altered again by changing policy when Scots were disadvantaged because their access to England's top universities was complicated by their religious status and their distinctive education system:

In the twentieth century […] recruitment policies for the Colonial Office […] succeeded again in favouring the products of public schools and of the so-called 'golden triangle' of universities (Oxford, Cambridge, and London). […] Scots, with their separate legal system, often found it difficult to participate in the colonial legal services, unless they were educated in England or, later, in the colonies themselves. (MacKenzie & Devine 2011, 20f.)

This fact illustrates that, though Scots were not explicitly discriminated against due to their national identity as Scots, they were substantially disadvantaged by limited access to state institutions. Pierre Bourdieu (1986) describes access to education as one of the elements that determine cultural capital. In this way, England wielded considerable power over cultural capital, which in turn facilitated the professional success of the English, thus functioning as an expression of colonial power imbalances. Since Bourdieu's "concept of capital covers a wide variety of resources including such things as verbal facility" (Swartz 1997, 75), it is an adequate concept to describe the marginalisation of Scottish society in the 18th century, in which speaking with a Scottish accent was seen as a negative trait. In addition, the concept of cultural capital is suitable in this context in particular because it describes the "[…] subtle and pervasive ways in which language, knowledge, and cultural style shape interactions" (Swartz 1997, 287) rather than a formal discrimination or exclusion from institutions.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Scots were an important part of the British imperial enterprise, not only profiting considerably from it but also causing the suffering of the colonised. While this suffering should in no way be overlooked it should not be used in a cultural relativistic move to balance the injustice suffered by one people against the suffering of others. Though Scotland was never forcibly and violently colonised, this should not be a reason not to analyse the hegemonic influences that England as hegemonic centre has exerted on Scottish culture, the latter of which is perceived to be peripheral. John M. MacKenzie and T.M. Devine state that "[v]ictimhood has always been an inadequate concept when considering the Scottish relationship with the British Empire" (MacKenzie & Devine 2011, 4); however, this statement simultaneously presupposes Scotland to be a homogenous society in which all parties profited equally from the engagement in the British Empire. The case of Scotland emphasises the ambiguity of colonial relationships: "The extended participation of Scots—as a whole and single entity—in the colonial experience has often been remembered only as involving participation on the side of the colonizer; its own subaltern condition under English domination is frequently forgotten" (Rodríguez González 2008a, 364). The complicity in the Empire on the one hand does not exempt Scots from also having been on the receiving end of imperial domination on the other hand. The aforementioned argumentation should in no way absolve Scots of the injustice committed in their colonial endeavours by arguing that they had no alternative—instead, it should challenge the prevalent impression that Scottish empire-building was exclusively driven by internal fervour.11

<sup>11</sup> Of course, the economic and monetary reasons that enticed Britons into imperial service are not limited to Scottish soldiers or civil servants but applied, no doubt, to the English living in struggling regions of England. Furthermore, the ambiguous position of Scotland is comparable to, for example, that of Australia, which is characterised by similar tensions at the intersection of dominator (towards indigenous cultures) and dominated (by the English).

In some ways it is somewhat paradoxical that many Scots now attempt to deny the validity of a joint British identity by their emphasis on Scottish national identity and a construction of Scotland as a postcolonial nation: after the 1707 Union it was the Scots in particular who strove to consolidate a new British identity in order to limit the dominance of the English. In her seminal work *Britons—Forging the Nation 1707–1837* Linda Colley argues that the concept of Britishness was superimposed onto the English, Scots and Welsh in order to unite them against foreign attackers; thus, British identity was primarily a reaction to the threat of war and, furthermore, served the predominance of Protestantism (Colley [1992] 1996). Apart from stressing the vital role that Scots played in forging a British identity, Colley also asserts that the superiority felt by the English conflicted considerably with the relationship between the two countries. Colley illustrates this using the example of John Wilkes, who in the 18th century campaigned against the Scots: "Scots, so the Wilkite argument went, were inherently, unchangeably alien, never ever to be confused or integrated with the English" (Colley [1992] 1996, 120). This attempt to emphasise the difference between England and Scotland was predominantly motivated by the fear of the loss of a distinct English identity, thus accommodating the feelings of English Union-sceptics:

By dwelling on how irreversibly alien the Scots were, [Wilkes] offered a reassurance to his more intolerant and worried countrymen that they would not be absorbed into an all-embracing and non Anglocentric Great Britain. Scottish difference, he implied, was a guarantee that traditional Englishness *and* English primacy within the Union would remain intact. (original emphasis; Colley [1992] 1996, 122)

These fears were not unfounded, as, following the Act of Union in 1707, many Scots rose to influential positions due to their economic success and the prestige of the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, heavily influencing British identity (Colley [1992] 1996, 130f.). However, as this influential position was challenged by war, deindustrialisation and the rise of London as financial centre in the 20th century, the power relations within the Union changed in favour of England. Craig argues that Scottish nationalism and the Scottish Home Rule movement of the 20th century developed "not so much out of resistance to the Union but out of insistence upon it" (Craig 2001, 5). In addition, Linda Colley summarises that it was the loss of an external threat to the United Kingdom as well as a loss of influence in an increasingly institutionalised European Union that caused the most significant damage to the Union:

In these circumstances, the re-emergence of Welsh, Scottish and indeed English nationalism which has been so marked in recent decades can be seen not just as the natural outcome of cultural diversity, but as a response to a broader loss of national, in the sense of British, identity. (Colley [1992] 1996, 7)

Therefore, the rise of Scottish nationalism challenges the salience of British identity. Keating noted in 2009 that there has been a substantial shift on the Linz-Moreno

scale,12 as more people in Scotland identify themselves as Scottish rather than British (Keating 2009, 5). This contrast of positions within Scotland between "inveterate opposition to the English and interpellation into Britishness" has been described as a "schizophrenic tendency" (Farred 2004, 216). This split positionality has been elevated to a determining characteristic of the Scottish: "In Scotland a deep ambivalence marks our relationship with ourselves and the world beyond, one informed by the self-perceptions of both coloniser and colonised, of go-ahead and left behind" (Freeman 1996, 252). The phrase most often used for this condition is 'Caledonian Antisyzygy'.13 This motif has been used in literature as well, most notably in Robert Louis Stevenson's *Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde* (1886), and the notion of duality remains prevalent in Scottish fiction today. The explanation given for this anxiety can be linked to a feeling of inferiority caused by the postcolonial condition: "In older Scottish writing as well as in recent Scottish fiction this doppelgänger motif is intrinsically linked to the emotions of fear, shame and guilt" (Eilers 2007, 17). The feeling of being torn between a Scottish identity and a British identity, into which latter much has been invested, was further enforced by the feeling that the alleged colonised were no longer in charge of their own affairs. This indicates that the fact that the Scots themselves strove to consolidate a British identity does not necessarily mean that they still feel a strong allegiance to British identity today, nor is it opposed to the feeling of having been colonised by the English.

A further point of criticism when discussing Scottish postcoloniality is the lack of homogeneity in Scotland itself and its division into the Highlands and the Lowlands. According to Alan Freeman, it was the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, which defined Scottish independence from England, that glossed over the internal divisions between the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and the English-speaking Lowlands (Freeman 2007, 40). The majority of mercenaries and soldiers in the British army in the 18th and 19th centuries came from the economically deprived areas of the 'Gaeltacht', which Carla Rodríguez González (2008a, 365) describes as "[…] those affected by an 'internal colonization' exerted by the Lowlanders […]". This rapid differentiation is also emphasised by the fact that both parts of Scotland were constructed by historians as being inhabited by separate races:

Under the influence of racial theories, Scotland's historians redrew the narrative lines of the nation's history. In fact, race rather than nationhood came to


shape the new grand narrative of the Scottish past. Historians repackaged the story of Scotland as a conflict between two antithetical and antagonistic races, the Celts and the Teutons. (Kidd 2003, 884)

Connell states that this difference between the Highlands and the Lowlands is often neglected when critics apply postcolonial theory to Scotland: "[it] involved wiping away an evident history of Lowland hostility towards Gaelic culture in order to pose English cultural dominance as a unifying metanarrative for Scottish history. […] This involves transforming a Highland/British opposition into a Scottish/English one" (Connell 2004, 260). However, it is exactly this idea of presenting a unified identity that Nairn argues the Scots constructed as their national identity for the lack of a unifying political state or civil institutions (Nairn 2000, 247). The lack of what Nairn calls 'display identity' was consolidated by claiming Highland identity as representative of all of Scotland:

It was the phenomenon of Gaelicism […,] a style of collective representation deliberately evolved into a mass identity from (approximately) the time of the Napoleonic Wars onwards. Another shorthand for the same thing has been 'tartanry'—the assimilation of all things Scottish to a clannic (and hence plaid-clad) origin, and linked by association of ideas to Northern scenery, Celtic speech and artefacts, the Battle of Culloden […], and a twilit Ossianic past. (Nairn 2000, 250f.)

The question remains as to why the Scots felt the need to appropriate this identity. Nairn asserts that the lack of a Scottish national identity in the 19th and 20th centuries led to this self-fashioning of a national history and culture. He describes this as an act of 'self-colonization', which he claims solved the dilemma of nationhood: "[…] that [dilemma] of *appearing like* a nationality […]. Since actually becoming one was self-prohibited, it was all the more necessary to look like one" (original emphasis; Nairn 2000, 250). Thus, this tendency to ignore the internal divisions within the country can be interpreted as a response to the perceived need to maintain any kind of Scottish nationality to compensate for the fact that Scotland is not a nation-state but part of the United Kingdom. This reaction is closely linked to the phenomenon of the colonised doubting the value of their own culture, which leads to a feeling of inferiority, as described by Fanon ([1961] 2001). This issue was taken up by Beveridge and Turnbull's *The Eclipse of Scottish Culture*  (1989), in which the authors refer to Fanon's theses from *The Wretched of the Earth* (1961) to identify a Scottish inferiority complex caused by the negative effects of the Union—most prominently among them the post-Union historiographical construction of Scottish history prior to the Union as backward and uncivilised (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989).

Returning to the notion of the uneven development of certain areas that subsequently results in the centrality of certain regions in contrast to peripheral regions, it should be noted that this phenomenon not only can be found between the different countries of a state but can also exist within a country. In England, for example, there is still a division between the south and the post-industrial north that is also perceived as a marked division along cultural and class lines. A rising awareness of these internal imbalances of power and influence has sparked new criticism focusing on the north of England and its literary representations.14 Furthermore, postcolonial terminology, particularly the image of an internal colony, has increasingly been used to describe internal divisions in other countries, such as Scandinavia and Italy.15 According to Watson, the difference in Scotland's case is Scotland's historical claim to be a nation rather than a region: "[…] but they [other regions in England] lack the high visibility factor which is given by a claim to 'national' difference and a 'national' literary tradition" (Watson 1998, 23).

In his article "Modes of Marginality: Scottish Literature and the Uses of Postcolonial Theory", Liam Connell (2003) is highly critical of the legitimacy of applying postcolonial theory to Scottish literature. He raises two major arguments to underscore his opinion. Firstly, he suggests that the use of postcolonial theory is not motivated by any interior scholarly motives but instead by strategic ones: "the use of postcolonial theory in relation to Scottish literature forms a strategic effort to raise the profile of Scottish literary studies within the context of its institutional marginalization as an area of study within British and North American universities" (Connell 2003, 41). He argues that the predominant reason for this is the changing economic conditions of academia, where funding, particularly in the humanities, is dependent on extensive publishing with renowned publishers or journals. His argument is supported by the limited number of journals focusing on Scottish literature in comparison to journals dealing with postcolonial literature and the limited number of the instances of either postcolonialism or Scottish literature being mentioned in MLA Convention panel titles (Connell 2003, 46f.). Since postcolonialism has successfully been integrated into the subject of English literature while Scottish literary studies remains a marginalised subject, Connell (2003, 47) claims that "[i]t seems plausible that aligning Scottish literature with postcolonialism has been part of a strategic attempt to borrow postcolonialism's fashionability in order to provide a wider audience for Scottish literary criticism".

The second strand of Connell's argument concerns the lack of a material basis of Scottish claims to be an English colony. He criticises the conflation as well as the confusion of the terms 'colonialism' and 'imperialism', arguing that it was modernisation in the early 20th century that gave rise to economic imbalances within the Union. He is also dismissive of the idea of a cultural colonialism: "The insertion of the word 'cultural' in front of imperialism or colonialization cannot be an excuse for ignoring the political and economic basis of such concepts" (2003, 51). While it is certainly legitimate to be sceptical about any materialist claims of Scotland

<sup>14</sup> See for example Russell (2004), Ehland (2007) and Cockin (2012).

<sup>15</sup> For a comparative analysis of internal colonialism in Scandinavia and Australia, see for example Minnerup & Solberg (2011). For a description of internal colonialism in Iceland, see for example Oslund (2011). In Italy's case, internal colonialism is used to describe the schism between the richer, industrial north and the poorer south; see for example Lombardi-Diop & Romeo (2012).

to be or to have been an English colony as well as to be aware of Scotland's often paradoxical relationship with England, this study argues that the concept of a cultural colonialism does not in fact ignore the material realities, but that, along the same lines, it cannot be ignored when the perception of Scottish inferiority and an assumed domination by England runs through a major part of contemporary Scottish fiction. As will become evident in the following analysis, some novels even emphatically use postcolonial terminology to characterise the relationship between Scotland and England. While it will remain difficult to assert Scotland's postcolonial status in the context of global politics, aligning it with formal British colonies, such as India and Nigeria, the theoretical lens of postcolonialism uncovers the power relations and challenges of Scottish identity formation without concealing the complex entanglement of Scots in the British colonial enterprise both on the side of the dominators and on the side of the dominated.

The relationship between Scotland and England can be described as one of periphery and centre. Particularly prior to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, London as administrative as well as political centre functioned as the metropolis. Alan Freeman identifies two movements in Scottish history that contributed to the construction of Scotland as inferior to England: firstly, as previously mentioned, in the 18th century Scotland began to take up Highland culture as a representation for the whole country, and, secondly, a paradoxical shift in perception occurred as a result of this: "[…] in the wake of Highland demise and the growing drift of Lowland Scots abroad, the ugly stereotype graduated into the positive Other beloved of antiquarian nostalgia—bearer of the naturalness, loyalty and physical courage rendered redundant by encroaching materialism" (Freeman 2007, 42f.). Highland culture became a stereotype for all of Scottish culture and was subsequently constructed as an exotic Other by the English. This image was later further enforced by Queen Victoria's enthusiasm for Scotland: Queen Victoria's country estate Balmoral represented her 'safe haven' away from the busy city of London, and her fondness for the Highland dress and customs is captured in many pictures of this time.16 Many Scottish novels of the early 19th century capitalised on this romantic, exotic image of Scotland,17 which had a degrading effect on Scotland by highlighting its marginal and exotic position:

[…] Post-Ossianic Scotland also carried a tincture of exoticism; its attractiveness lay […] in its perceived wildness, its marginality and even quaintness. […] Yet with such exploitation went the danger that in a British state whose capital lay hundreds of miles to the south, writers might heighten Scotland's status as part curiosity, part province, part otherworld. (Crawford 2007, 392)

<sup>16</sup> See, for example, the iconic painting *Evening at Balmoral* (1854) by Carl Haag, which depicts Prince Albert presenting a stag to Queen Victoria. The Queen herself painted several Scottish motifs, amongst them her children in Highland dress. Furthermore, the castle at Balmoral was furnished with tartan (Hibbert 2001, 175‒182).

<sup>17</sup> Crawford (2007, 392) mentions Mary Julia Young's 1805 *Donalda; Or, The Witches of Glenshiel, A Caledonian Tale* and Susan Fraser's 1810 *A Winter in Edinburgh; Or the Russian Brothers* as examples.

The fact that Scotland was constructed (and partly also constructed itself) as Other in order to be contrasted with an English construction of self indicates that this also entails a division of the value-system into norm and deviation. This process is not always discernible at first glance, entailing a subtle process of agenda-setting and norming. This study will analyse how the feeling of being deviant, as well as a self-inflicted subaltern status, permeates contemporary Scottish fiction.

If the relationship between Scotland and England is thus characterised by an imbalance of power, the question arises as to whether it is necessary to describe this imbalance within a postcolonial framework. In his article "Scottish Nationalism and the Colonial Vision of Scotland" Liam Connell argues forcefully that Scotland cannot be regarded as a colony of England. He identifies the loss of control over social institutions as one common feature of colonialism that does not apply in Scotland's case (Connell 2004, 254). Furthermore, using the examples of several contemporary politicians, he illustrates that it is by no means impossible for Scots to attain elite positions in British society and politics. He identifies this perception of imbalance as an issue of class rather than nationality (Connell 2004, 255). However, despite this detailed argumentation, which questions Scotland's status as a colony, Connell nevertheless argues in favour of the viability to apply postcolonial theory to the case of Scotland:

The use of postcolonial theory may assist in examining the sort of cultural formulations that result from contact between local forms of Scottish culture and state-endorsed cultural standards. However, colonialization is not the only circumstance in which such contact has taken place, and postcolonial theory does not require that Scotland was a colony for its application. (Connell 2004, 262)

The same argument—that the material status of Scotland as a colony is irrelevant to the fruitful adaptation of postcolonial theory as a framework for Scottish literature—has been brought forward by several critics (see for example Gardiner 1996; Watson 1998, 23). The 2011 volume *Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature*, edited by Graeme Macdonald, Michael Gardiner and Niall O'Gallagher, has been a major addition to the field of postcolonial Scottish studies. The volume is structured chronologically and is subdivided into three parts, the first of which focuses on pre-1914 fiction, while the second part is predominantly devoted to modernist fiction up to 1979, and the third section concentrates on contemporary fiction. The contributors compare Scottish writers with more straightforward canonical postcolonial writers such as Chinua Achebe, Jean Rhys or Edward Kamau Brathwaite. Most importantly, Gardiner argues in this volume that the material question of Scottish postcoloniality is of no importance as

Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature are less separate trends or two sets of texts, than intricately related and often conjoined critical positionings in relation to a much longer history, which has as one of its main objects a critique of the jurisdiction of the imperial mode of the British state culture. (Gardiner 2011, 1)

Furthermore, in agreement with the approach taken by the present work, Gardiner (2011, 1) argues in his introduction to the volume that postcolonialism can be seen as a frame of reference as it "does not just designate a country detaching chronologically after decolonisation; it is also more fundamentally a critique working within various forms of empire, whether understood in terms of occupation, formal arrangements or epistemological dependency […]". The parallel reading of Scottish fiction with postcolonial writing is further justified by their shared aim to challenge the hegemony of English literature:

[C]ounter-British and counter-empire themes and forms […] had been connected; albeit slowly, a newer mix of the Scottish and the postcolonial began to allow these connections to be traced […]. Both Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature came to trouble the idealistic tendencies of English Literature. (Gardiner 2011, 3)

In line with the arguments that Gardiner (2011, 1–3) maps out in his introduction to *Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature*, in more recent studies, such as Silke Stroh's *Uneasy Subjects*, postcolonialism is conceived of as a tool: "[…] postcolonialism [can be employed] as a methodology for analysing certain discursive and ideological patterns which occur in the context of inter- or transcultural encounters and power imbalances—patterns which are not necessarily restricted to post-/colonies proper" (Stroh 2011, 14).

A further connection between Scottish culture and postcolonial theory is evident in the results of cultural domination carried out by the metropolis. In Scotland's case, as in many other postcolonial countries, this domination has had the paradoxical result that on one hand the Scots as dominated subjects have begun to doubt their status and succumb to the norms and values of the coloniser, which in turn leads them to doubt their own indigenous culture, and that on the other hand this feeling of inferiority can also lead to a strong reinforcement of traditional values, which are seen to be under threat from the coloniser.18 The imitation of English perceptions of Scotland is evident in the term 'Celtic cringe', a pun on the phrase 'Celtic fringe', describing the Scots' feeling of shame towards their own culture. Fanon describes this development in postcolonial theory:

[T]he appeal to a wrong past, Fanon's second phase, has been particularly noticeable in Scotland […] This is a backward, defeatist nationalism, a culture feeding on itself or seeming to spring from the mountains, the rivers, the land […] We have to hang on to the idea that Scottishness has been historically and topographically constructed […]. (Gardiner 1996, 38)

18 The feeling of inferiority and thus a certain overcompensation go hand in hand: "Thus, one of the most distinctive features of Scottish culture [the kilt] could only be worn by those individuals already assimilated to the British system. Marilyn Reizbaum, in a study of Neil Jordan's film *The Crying Game*, analyses these images both feminine and masculine in the colonial mirror, suggesting that the importance of kilts for the identity of the Scots was a manifestation of the metaphoric feminization undergone by colonized peoples." (Rodríguez González 2008a, 366)

In 1989 Beveridge and Turnbull published their study *The Eclipse of Scottish Culture—Inferiorism and the Intellectuals*. This was one of the first studies that applied postcolonial theory to the Scottish context. To be more precise, the authors used Frantz Fanon's theory of inferiorisation to explain processes of mystification that prompt the colonised to doubt their own culture (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 5–7). The study goes on to describe several instances that demonstrate the inferiorisation of Scotland. One example given is the depiction of Scotland in historiography, where the majority of texts use a rhetoric of depicting the Union as a major turning point in Scottish history that fundamentally changed the country for the better. The authors summarise, albeit with slight irony, that

[t]he emergence, escape, dawn, take-off etc, are conceived as of startling precocity, near-incredible even to the historians themselves, and involve a total transformation centering on, or initiated by the incorporating Union of 1707 with England. This leads directly to economic *development*, socio-political *order* and cultural *enlightenment*. There occurs an alchemic transmutation of a base-metal culture into glittering gold. (original emphasis; Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 29)

In order to inferiorise the colonised culture, the culture of the coloniser is shown to be, to quote Fanon ([1961] 2001, 193), "infinitely superior". This is achieved, as mentioned above, by a process of mystification: "Central to this process is a sustained belittling of the colonised culture, which is depicted, by the coloniser, as impoverished, backward, inferior, primitive" (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 5). This mystification results in the depiction of Scotland as an exotic, mythical Other. Scotland is constructed as the opposite of civilised, reasonable and sophisticated England: it is depicted as an idyllic place with a pastoral landscape where noble warriors wear kilts and play the bagpipes. Neglecting Scotland's urban centres, the country is constructed as the rural opposite to the metropolis of London.

The case of Scotland also presents further parallels to Fanon's theory. As Rodríguez González (2008a, 367) points out, "[…] Fanon's theories about the national intelligentsia beginning to justify a past of their own, a constructed collective identity, apply". Also, institutionalised practices, such as the editing of anthologies, can be compared to Fanon's writing and his concept of negritude,

[…] as in the popular survey *French Poetry 1820–1950*, where negritude is one selfcontained chapter absorbed into the history, in the same way as Scottish or Irish literatures are often absorbed into British anthologies, reclaimed on an ethnic level as a type of subsidiary otherness. (Gardiner 1996, 27)

The adaptation of postcolonial theory to the Scottish context is thus useful because the relationship between England and Scotland cannot be described sufficiently as simply one of centre and periphery. Rather, the discrimination experienced in Scotland is *strategic*, developed in order to suppress and to Other, and, in turn, to devalue it as a nation. Furthermore, the basis of the discrimination is *ideological*, which means it is based on the notion of an alleged inherent superiority of the English. This is also evident in the stereotypes of Scots, summarised in Nairn's term, 'vulgar tartanry'. Nicola Pitchford (2000, 712) characterises this devaluation of Scotland as "[t]he immediate availability of these popular stereotypes, depicting Scots as 'sozzled' and 'quaint'". Furthermore, Rodríguez González contends,

[i]f we think about the peripheral space represented by Scottish culture within the mainstream British canon, we would perhaps agree on certain points, such as the fact that it is still considered a type of parochial art by large circles outside the nation, and that this inferior status corresponds to long-lasting discriminatory strategies perpetuating the cultural imbalance between Scotland and England. (Rodríguez González 2008a, 369)

Apart from Macdonald, Gardiner and O'Gallagher's volume *Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature* a second notable addition to the field of Scottish postcolonial studies has been Silke Stroh's aforementioned *Uneasy Subjects* (2011). In a diachronic survey, Stroh traces colonial as well as postcolonial influences in Scottish Gaelic poetry. She identifies discourse patterns in the writings of the Celtic fringe that coincide with other postcolonial literatures, such as writing back, Othering or hybridisation (Stroh 2011, 21–24). Stroh states that this rings true not only for the Celtic regions scrutinised in her study but for all marginalised areas of the British Isles: "Ideological aspects which have been identified as being comparable to overseas colonial ones include various patterns of Othering and the construction of the Scottish, Irish or Welsh subject as a binary opposite to the English 'coloniser'" (Stroh 2011, 22). Thus, it can be argued that even if Scotland cannot claim to be an actual colony of England, the *functions* that the postcolonial discourse serves within Scottish contemporary fiction can be linked to other postcolonial literatures. Though the main function of this discourse is certainly to narrate the nation and, thus, to negotiate a Scottish national identity, this is also true for most national literatures, even those without a postcolonial background. However, Scottish literature also engages in the narration of resistance, of 'writing back', striving to challenge the perpetuated stereotypes created by a colonial process of exoticising and mystification.

Going further than understanding postcolonial theory as a tool that can help shed light on contemporary Scottish fiction, Stefanie Lehner argues that postcolonialism can function as ethical criticism in particular. In her book *Subaltern Ethics in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Literature* Lehner uses the concept of the subaltern to analyse marginalised groups, employing an archipelagic approach that includes Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland:

Concerned with the histories, agency and politics of social groups that have been excluded, elided, dominated and oppressed by both colonial *and* postcolonial state formations, Subaltern studies contests the notion that a resurgent national culture ever works as a panacea capable of resolving issues of poverty, sexism, patriarchy, racism and so on. (original emphasis; Lehner 2011, 8)

Lehner (2011, 188f.) argues that "[…] today's inequalities and inequities ultimately remain an unreconcilable excess—within both the aesthetic and the social realm" and emphasises that marginalisation is not overridden by reaching a *post*colonial state.

Although the present study will demonstrate that a postcolonial discourse (either in an unmistakably explicit way or more subtly) runs through the majority of contemporary Scottish fiction, where it has informed the negotiation of all aspects of identity, such as language, gender and class, among others, this study does not argue that postcolonialism is the only valid methodology with which to analyse Scottish fiction. While postcolonialism is a highly compelling aspect of contemporary Scottish fiction, it is only one of several that make it up. Stroh (2011, 32) describes the object of her study in a similar manner: "[her study] aims to show that certain postcolonial patterns run through like a red thread through Scottish history and literature, and although these are not the single dominating factor in the country's national tale, they form a palpable and influential presence".

#### **2.3 "Bought and Sold for English Gold"?—The Historical Perspective**

In order to assess the relationship between Scotland and England, it is necessary to scrutinise the long history they share, which has had a substantial influence on Scottish fiction. Though it is not possible here to give a detailed rendition of 2000 years of the history of the British Isles, along with its conflicts and discussions, selected events from Scottish history will be highlighted. The intention is not only to identify the most important events of Scottish history but also to point out how their historiography has changed over time; this is particularly significant when looking at discussions concerning the Union of Parliaments in 1707. Furthermore, as David McCrone, Angela Morris and Richard Kiely have highlighted, heritage in Scotland is of particular importance because it "[…] rests on a national and cultural dimension […]" (McCrone, Morris & Kiely 1995, 182). Therefore, the 'highlights' of history are very much present in contemporary Scottish society and influence the perception of Scotland's political status today, which is illustrated, for example, by the popularity of the film *Braveheart*. Drawing on the philosophy of Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann (2000) emphasises the importance of the shared memories that constitute a collective memory. This collective memory reinforces the identification or affiliation with a certain group, for example a nation (Assmann 2000, 39); additionally, collective memory stabilises the self-perception of a given group, as it facilitates the differentiation of the self from an Other (Assmann 2000, 40). The need to strengthen a national identity is particularly relevant for Scotland, since it is a 'stateless nation' (McCrone 1992), torn between a Scottish and a British identity. Thus, the ways in which the Scots remember their identity becomes an important marker of this identity. Pierre Nora (1989, 12), discussing the conflicting priorities of memory and history, coined the term '*lieux*  *de mémoire*' to refer to "the ultimate embodiments of a memorial consciousness". Thus, events like the Union of Parliaments or the Battle of Culloden have become *lieux de mémoires*; these sites of memory also function as a consolidator of a shared identity, as they negotiate the importance of past events for this identity. The focus on the changing interpretations of historical events is motivated by the notion that *lieux de mémoires* are characterised by their "capacity for metamorphosis" (Nora 1989, 19). As the following will demonstrate, the changing interpretations of past events in Scottish history reflect the political agenda of the time in which they are formed. Thus, Astrid Erll, for example, emphasises the importance of these interpretations of collective memory: "What the past appears to be in a given culture of memory […] arises not so much from the remembered events themselves, but from the specific *mode* of re-presenting these events" (original emphasis; Erll 2006, 179). Thus, scrutinising the historical events that are most present in contemporary memory and their representations aids the understanding of Scottish national identity.

The events touched on here are the Wars of Independence, the Union of Crowns and the Union of Parliaments, the Jacobite Risings, which culminated in the Battle of Culloden in 1746, and the Highland Clearances. Of course, this is in no way an exhaustive depiction of Scottish history, but these events were chosen because they are dominant in the collective memory of Scotland.

The first event in Scottish history that will be examined in detail will be the Wars of Independence. In 1034 Duncan I became the first king of Scotland, uniting the Picts, the Scots, the Britons and the Angles, the four peoples inhabiting the territory known as Scotland today, resulting in the Union of the Four Peoples (Mackie 1991, 23–34). England had made several attempts to conquer its northern neighbour, and eventually the English King Edward I successfully invaded Scotland in 1296. This invasion marked the beginning of the Wars of Independence. This historical event has been imprinted into popular Scottish memory via its 'national hero' William Wallace, who fought in these wars and became the image of Scottish strong will and the fight for freedom. Wallace defeated the English in 1297 in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, a bridge of geopolitical importance because it was the most accessible connection between Highland and Lowland Scotland. However, it was only in 1314 that the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce, won the decisive victory over the English in the Battle of Bannockburn. Today, Bannockburn, a village near Stirling, is a tourist attraction with a heritage centre run by the National Trust for Scotland.19 The fact that this battlefield has become such a powerful symbol of Scottish history ties in with the general tendency to stress Scottish strength and the possibility of triumphing over England: "This coupling with Scotland's militaristic past connects to a strong identification with myths about the fighting qualities of

<sup>19</sup> Bannockburn is described by the tourist information website VisitScotland as "one of the most important historic sites in Scotland", while the battle is characterised as a "crucial event in Scottish history" where the visitor can "take [their] place among fearless medieval warriors" (Visit Scotland 2015).

Scots, from Pictish resistance to the Romans, through to the celebration of Scottish regiments in the British army" (McCrone, Morris & Kiely 1995, 191). Six years after the Scottish victory at Bannockburn, the Declaration of Arbroath set out the terms of the English defeat in a letter to the pope. This document is often seen as a declaration of independence.20 The First War of Independence finally ended in 1328 when Scottish independence was mutually recognised by the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton.

The first steps towards a union between England and Scotland were made in 1603 when the English queen, Elizabeth I, died without an heir: James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, took the English throne and succeeded Elizabeth as James I. His court subsequently moved to London and he gave himself the title 'King of Great Britain and Ireland'. One of the most important changes that James put into effect was that of a common nationality, which he granted to all born after his accession in 1603. During his lifetime, James always worked towards achieving an encompassing union between Scotland and England. James's move to London had negative repercussions for Scotland, as Paul H. Scott points out: "An immediate effect of James's removal to London was that Scotland no longer had a foreign policy or even an international identity. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Scotland had ceased to exist" (Scott 2003, 9).

James attempted to achieve a complete union throughout his life, but it was only a century later, in 1707, that the Union of Parliaments created a united Great Britain. In addition to the shared name of Great Britain, Scotland and England agreed to share a joint currency, flag and seal. The most important change was the abolishment of the Scottish Parliament; from this point onwards, all political affairs were to be directed from Westminster.

There have been multiple scholarly contributions from both the English and the Scottish perspective as to why the Scots agreed to a Union which de facto abolished their own political representation as well as to why England was so keen to unite with Scotland. Furthermore, the exact nature of the Union is still contested, as some see it as a partnership of equals, whereas many others, mostly Scottish critics, perceive it as a dissemination of hegemonic English values. Another important point to note in this discussion is the fact that the Union of 1707 marked a watershed in the perception of Scotland; in hindsight the Union has been constructed as a blessing for such a backward country as Scotland: "The leading historian of the eighteenth century, William Robertson, dismissed the Scottish past

<sup>20</sup> The text of this declaration is in fact highly unambiguous, leading Colin Kidd to point out that it also consolidated Scottish ideals of the law: "The Declaration of Arbroath stressed the priority of the Scottish community over the authority of Scottish kingship. The King's function to defend Scottish independence was elevated to a fundamental contract between king and people: the Declaration decreed that if Bruce should 'agree to make us and our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his right and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our king; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule'" (Kidd 1993, 17, Arbroath text quoted after Donaldson 1970 in Kidd 1993, 55‒58).

before the Revolution of 1688 as a dark story of anarchy, barbarism and religious fanaticism […]" (Devine 2012, 29).

While this debate is capable of filling entire volumes, the various causes that led to the acceptance of the Union in 1707 will only be touched on briefly here, though they are worth mentioning in the context of this study because some consider the Union a forfeit of Scottish independence. T.M. Devine begins his celebrated *The Scottish Nation. A Modern History* with the 1705 passing of the Alien Act, which "recommended to Queen Anne that commissioners be appointed to negotiate for Union between England and Scotland, and, if the Scots did not comply and if discussions were not advanced by Christmas Day 1705, severe penalties [should] be imposed" (Devine 2012, 3). These penalties would have included deeming Scots aliens in England, which can be seen as a rather significant threat as it would have severely inhibited Scotland's ability to trade. Devine (2012, 3) goes on to identify a rising tension between the two countries, categorising England's aspiration for union as a desire for stability. A major factor that is often referenced in discussions concerning Scotland's reasons for agreeing to the Union is the country's financial standing at the time. In 1698 Scotland had first attempted to establish a colony in South America, the so-called Darien scheme; this move proved to be disastrous, as the land the Scots had invested in turned out to be an uninhabitable swampland. As part of the Union agreement, Scotland received a substantial compensation, not only to compensate for its taking-on English national debt, but also to compensate for the loss of investments in the Darien Company (Devine 2012, 13). Furthermore, Scotland gained free access to trade with England as well as to the colonies, which promised to secure economic advantages for the country.

Though the Union promised financial benefits for Scotland, Devine also points out the strong opposition against it in the Scottish population. However, as the opposition was strongly fragmented and lacked coherent leadership, it was unable to make an impact (Devine 2012, 14f.). Of course, this opposition was also partly expressed through the medium of literary discourse. One prominent example of a writer with anti-Unionist political views is Robert Burns. In 1791 Burns wrote the poem "Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation", which was later adapted as a folk song. The song was included in a collection of songs, poems, and texts from Jacobite supporters, *The Jacobite Relics of Scotland*, compiled by James Hogg in 1819; the last lines read: "We're bought and sold for English gold- / Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!" (Hogg 1819, 57). In this poem, Burns criticises the conditions of the Union, as he suspects the Scottish representatives of bribery.

The Union of Parliaments of 1707 had a considerable effect on Scotland's literary culture. On one hand, a re-vitalisation of traditions could be witnessed (Crawford 2007, 266). This was also emphasised by the changed status of literary discourse, as, from that moment on, "[i]n Scotland […] poetry and literary culture would play a considerable part in articulating national values after the signing away of independent statehood" (Crawford 2007, 232). The second effect of the Union on Scotland was the economic exploitation of opportunities that the new markets offered (Crawford 2007, 266), for example by writing in English.

Of course, one could argue that the fact that "[i]n a historic decision on 16 January 1707, [the Scottish] parliament voted itself out of existence by ratifying the Act of Union" (Devine 2012, 12) cannot be compared to the majority of British colonial endeavours, which have involved violent assault, reckless imposition of free-market policies and patronising attempts to educate. Nevertheless, the merger of the two countries did not follow a purely democratic process. Financial coercion and the threat of new legislation that would damage Scottish trade were two ways that England attempted to force Scotland to acquiesce to its desire for union. Furthermore, Scotland was concerned that England would enforce its aims with military power, as English troops had been deployed to the North of England as well as to Northern Ireland (Devine 2012, 16). The title of Scott's paper, "An English Invasion Would Have Been Worse" (2003), hints at Scott's key claim as to why the Scots accepted the Union. Scott goes on to argue that the different reasons and motivations for agreeing to the Union have been mystified over time:

[…] for most people in Scotland for most of the 19th century the monarchy, the Empire and the Union, by virtue of which Scotland was a partner in Empire, became almost sacred symbols which it was sacrilege to criticise. That is why, I think, a mythical view of the Union became holy writ: that it was a sensible agreement freely and even eagerly negotiated by Scotland for the sake of economic advantage and that all good things flowed from it. (Scott 2003, 15)

It should be noted that this re-writing of history is not unusual. The evaluation of the Scottish decision to enter into the Union changes depending on the current attitude that the majority of Scots take towards the Union at a certain point in time, and it also correlates with the degree of nationalism acceptable in society. As Clare Jackson (2012, 343) points out, "[h]istoriographically, the significance attached to economic factors in enacting Union has fluctuated". These interpretations rely on the perception of the nature, at the time when these interpretations are made, of the Union. Thus, it is no wonder that the Act of Union was interpreted differently in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Scottish nationalism developed.

The 17th and 18th centuries saw significant changes in the living conditions in Scotland. After the Union of Crowns in 1603 and his move to London, James installed a government in Scotland: "An essential part of the government's duty was to bring into order the 'peccant' parts of the realm—the Borders, the Highlands and Islands. This was done ruthlessly and sometimes by means more than doubtful" (Mackie 1991, 189). This alleged 'ordering' of unruly parts of Scotland can be perceived as an element of forced integration, which is also characteristic in other postcolonial contexts.

The Union of Parliaments in 1707 caused further tensions in terms of integrating Scotland with England. Scottish resistance to this manifested in the Jacobite Risings. The Jacobites were the supporters of the Stuarts, whose right of regal ascension was lost following the deposition of James II in 1688, and who also did not support the Union. Devine (2012, 40) points out the complex relationship between Highland clanship and Jacobitism, which was characterised by loyalty and support. There were two substantial Jacobite Risings, the first in 1715 and the second in 1745. The so-called '45 was sparked by the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, when he set foot on Scottish soil in 1744 and successfully conquered Scotland in only a matter of weeks (Devine 2012, 42f.); these events culminated in the Battle of Culloden in 1746:

The battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 was a total victory for the Hanoverian forces under the Duke of Cumberland and was effectively the end of the Jacobite rising and the prelude to a massive military, judicial and political assault on the class society which had spawned Stuart subversion. (Devine 2012, 44)

As the Jacobites were predominantly supported by the Highland clans, they were also the main targets of the ensuing legislation to eradicate the subversive elements in Scotland and to bring order to Britain. According to Devine (2012, 45), Cumberland decided against the mass transportation of Highlanders to the colonies, and instead "he opted […] for a scorched-earth policy of burning, clearance and pillage. […] a reign of terror was initiated in some of the most committed Jacobite areas of the surrounding region". However, the British government did not stop there to ensure that the allegedly rebellious culture of the Highlands was weakened:

By the various acts of parliament which followed the victory of Culloden not only were the Highlanders disarmed and their chiefs deprived of their hereditary jurisdictions, but the wearing of Highland costume […] was forbidden throughout Scotland under pain of imprisonment without bail for six months and, for a second offence, transportation for seven years. This draconian law remained in force for thirty-five years, during which the whole Highland way of life quickly crumbled. (Trevor-Roper [1983] 2009, 24)

This attempt to eradicate a certain way of life because it was recognised as undesirable for British society can be interpreted as a colonial strategy. Gaelic culture was declared to be deviant in comparison to the British, that is civilised, culture, and therefore needed to be marginalised in order to secure the stability of the Union. It is important to note that the perception of and prejudice against the savage and barbarous Highlanders was not only apparent in mainstream English society but also evident in Lowland Scotland (Trevor-Roper [1983] 2009, 18). Of course, this approach did not always facilitate the suppression of any signs of the rebellious culture, and in some instances it triggered quite the contrary, as "[i]n several areas the brutality of the Hanoverian forces produced a stubborn defiance in a people long inured to hard times" (Devine 2012, 46f.).

The feeling that Highland culture was an undesirable and deviant element of British society was further intensified by the Highland Clearances of the early 19th century. However, the way of living in most of the rural areas of Scotland was already changing in the 18th century due to the Industrial and Agricultural revolutions. Devine (2012, 107) identifies the 1760s as a watershed moment for social and economic conditions in Scotland. The extensive changes in industrial working conditions caused a transformation and considerable urbanisation of the predominantly rural Scottish society. The Highlands proved to be an attractive market and thus became commodified (Devine 2012, 110). Devine summarises this development concisely, claiming that "[i]n less than two generations Scottish Gaeldom was transformed from tribalism to capitalism" (Devine 2012, 110). The Highland Clearances can also be seen in the light of this commodification. The Clearances, where farmers were expelled from their farms in order to combine several plots for more lucrative enterprises such as sheep farming, meant a substantial change in the social living conditions in most of the Highland areas. The Highland Clearances are still associated with violence due to the forced evictions and the displacement and alienation of former tenants. The Sutherland Clearances in particular are infamous for the grade of violence and brutality employed.

At first sight this policy of forcibly transforming the socio-economic landscape of parts of Scotland seems akin to colonial strategies in other parts of the world. However, on second glance, the complexity of the Scottish situation has to be acknowledged. Research has shown that the forced removal was not the sole strategy employed to achieve the transformation of farmland and, furthermore, though it seems that the customs and legal traditions of the Highlands made their inhabitants particularly vulnerable to these structural changes (Devine 2012, 180), this development was not limited to the Gaelic Highlands but also took place in the Lowlands (Dodgshon 2012, 130). Nevertheless, the Highland experience in this time of upheaval had a distinct quality due to the difference in the practices and procedures employed in the Highlands in comparison to those implemented in the Lowlands:

Unlike the gradual reduction in tenant numbers that we see in many lowland touns, the Highland clearances generally involved a sudden collapse of tenant numbers and of the community fashioned around them, with touns being cleared and reset in a single act of restructuring. (Dodgshon 2012, 146)

It was not only the speed of transformation that differed considerably. The economic situation in the Highlands rapidly became precarious, as there were no alternatives to the traditional agricultural way of life. In the Lowlands, employment in agriculture could easily be substituted by the booming textile industry, whereas traditional Highland products, such as kelp and fish, were on the decline. This caused general anxiety in the Highland regions, even among tenants who were not directly affected by evictions (Devine 2012, 181). Furthermore, the Clearances changed the social order of the Highlands, where the landlord was traditionally considered a protector of his tenants. This change led to a "cultural trauma of dispossession by 'landlord-protectors'", which "caused enormous collective disorientation throughout the Gaelic world […]" (Devine 2012, 182).

Another factor that further complicates a straightforward subdivision into English coloniser and Scottish colonised is the fact that a substantial part of the initiative for the Clearances originated from within Scotland:

Fundamentally, however, the revolution was achieved by the indigenous leaders of Gaeldom who had absorbed and accepted the ideas current among their class elsewhere in Britain. These included a view of the existing social order as 'primitive' and urgently in need of reform […]. (Devine 2003, 123)

The fact that in this case those benefiting from the resultant socio-economic transformation are distinguishable by class rather than nationality ties in with Fanon's description in *The Wretched of the Earth* in which he sees the new postcolonial middle class as functioning as an 'intermediary' between former coloniser and former colonised (Fanon [1961] 2001, 122).

While the Highlands were seen as backward, they were also romanticised as a seemingly authentic and wild landscape. The iconic function of the Scottish Highlands is also visible in literary representations. Although the Enlightenment brought new inventions and modernity to 18th-century Scotland, it also produced a marked nostalgia for the past (Crawford 2007, 297). In this atmosphere, in 1760 James Macpherson published his translations of poems allegedly written by the Gaelic poet Ossian. These poems capitalised on the feelings of many Scots in this period, as "[f]or Scots Ossian's supposed antiquity circumvented the recent humiliations of Culloden; yet Ossian's mixture of lament and fallen heroes spoke indirectly of what had happened—and was still happening—in the modern Highlands" (Crawford 2007, 312). Apart from strengthening a reinvigorated feeling of pride in Scottish culture, Ossian can be seen as a major influence in the "shift in sensibility which turned the 'desert' landscapes of northern Britain into Romantic tourist destinations" (Crawford 2007, 312). The Scottish novel experienced a revival due to the immense popularity of Walter Scott's writing. At the beginning of the 19th century nearly 90% of British and Irish novels were first published in London (Crawford 2007, 386); however, the literary scene in Scotland developed rapidly, particularly in Edinburgh, which had a vital literary magazine scene: "The Scottish capital was now established as a 'hot' place for writing and gossip about writers. Edinburgh's magazines were read in London, in America and throughout the English-speaking world […]" (Crawford 2007, 389). Scottish writers did not only negotiate their Scottish identity in their novels, but also engaged in the construction of a British identity—a topic that English writers, in contrast, did not engage with (Crawford 2007, 410). The new interest in the Scottish Highlands as an exotic and romantic wilderness on the margins of society had the destructive effect of portraying Scotland as increasingly provincial in contrast to the metropolis of London (Crawford 2007, 437, 448). After the boom, the publishing industry in Scotland quickly declined again, as London became the literary centre in the 1830s, monopolising the British publishing industry (Crawford 2007, 456). During the mid-19th century the English novel clearly dominated the Victorian market, with London as "the great metropolis of the late Victorian and Edwardian Scottish literary imagination" (Crawford 2007, 492).

In order to complete this overview of the historical events that have most significantly influenced Scottish national identity and Scotland's relationship towards England, the major events of the 20th and 21st centuries will also be highlighted. The focus here will be on the political events themselves, and the impact that these have had on post-war Scottish fiction will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter.

The development of nationalism is closely connected to the economic circumstances within Scotland. During the 19th century, when Scotland was profiting from the Industrial Revolution through its heavy industry both at home and in the Empire, a strong support of Unionism prevailed; however, at the same time Devine points to this period as the beginning of a dual identity that integrated a strong pride in being British with the feeling of being Scottish:

Allegiance to the British Empire and pride in British global hegemony and loyalty to the popular British monarchy of Victoria ran in close parallel with the invention of a new and distinctive Scottish identity founded on the cults of Burns, Knox and a reappraisal of Wallace, historical memories burnished and mythologized by Scott and others and the notion of the Scots as a pre-eminent race of empire builders, heroic soldiers, educators, doctors and engineers. (Devine 2012, 659f.)

Scottish nationalism became the dominant frame of identification during the 1920s, an indication of which was the formation of the National Party of Scotland (now the SNP) and the appearance of Hugh MacDiarmid's programmatic poem "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" (Nairn 1981, 95).21 MacDiarmid's involvement in politics as well as literature highlights the close connection between the two areas at the beginning of the 20th century. The period has become known as the 'National Renaissance' (Crawford 2007, 544), and also became the main outlet of literary modernism in Scotland (Gifford, Dunnigan & MacGillivray 2002, 506). Next to Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir, both of whose dissent concerning the use of Scots dialect will be further explored in chapter four, other notable writers of this renaissance included Neil M. Gunn and Lewis Grassic Gibbon as well as female writers such as Willa Muir and Catherine Carswell.

The inter-war period in Scotland was marked by the repercussions of the global depression, which caused widespread unemployment and crippling poverty. It was the re-armament of the 1930s that revived the declining traditional branches of heavy industry in Scotland. Apart from the positive effects on the Scottish economy,

<sup>21</sup> In *The Break-up of Britain* Tom Nairn analyses why Scotland did not develop a strong nationalism during the 19th century as the rest of Europe did. He argues that, due to its economic success and prominent standing in the Empire, it faced no "material dilemma of underdevelopment" and, thus, there was no need for a sense of community that transcended class boundaries, which could have been consolidated by a nationalist romanticism as a cultural instrument (Nairn 1981, 117).

the Second World War led to a renewed sense of unity in Britain, which saw itself united against the German enemy. The establishment of the all-encompassing welfare state22 after the war proved to be an incentive to maintain this rekindled Scottish loyalty to Britain: "The impact of government intervention became a staple of Scottish political faith […]" (Finlay 2007, 3). Thus, Devine (2012, 565) describes the 1940s and 1950s as "the high point of modern British unionism".

However, this belief in the benefits of the Union and the British state soon changed when the economic situation declined in the 1970s. Influenced by the global crisis in the mid-70s and the de-industrialisation that affected Scotland in particular due to its heavy reliance on the industrial sector, "the Scottish economy was ill-prepared to deal with the symptoms of the 'British disease'" (Finlay 2007, 3). The rising disenfranchisement from British politics was reflected in the voting behaviour of Scots, most prominently when Winifred Ewing won a seat for the SNP in Hamilton in 1967, defeating Labour (Devine 2012, 574). This vote revealed the Scottish dissatisfaction with Westminster politics rather than a renewed interest in independence (Devine 2012, 575) or a failing confidence in the British state (Finlay 2007, 5). However, the continued success of the SNP in the early 1970s had the effect that "[c]onstitutional change for Scotland was firmly back on the political agenda" (Devine 2012, 576). Protests against government policies were directed at several topics during the 1960s and 1970s. The decline of Britain's position in the world caused by the disintegration of the British Empire also facilitated the waning of Scotland's allegiance to Britain. The deployment of British nuclear submarines to Scotland to stress Britain's global importance did not prove to be a successful counter-measure:

Ironically, it was the attempt to maintain Britain's status as a world military power that helped to alienate some in the new generation of Scots. In November 1960 Prime Minister Macmillan announced that the country's main nuclear deterrent, the Polaris submarine, would be based in the Holy Loch in Scotland, a decision confirmed in 1964 by the Labour government of Harold Wilson. (Devine 2012, 578)

A further important factor was the level of public spending in Scotland, which had been approximately one-fifth higher between 1964 and 1973 than the average in Britain, emphasising the ways in which Scotland profited from the Union: "Scotland was gaining from the union as public revenues were channelled north in the form of massive regional assistance and other benefits" (Devine 2012, 580). Due to the economic crisis of the 1970s and Britain's declining prosperity, the level of state support for Scotland could no longer be maintained and

<sup>22</sup> There was a high level of expectation surrounding the instruments of the welfare state, "expectations that the post-war world would bring with it better times and the misery of the 1930s could finally be consigned to history. […] If state intervention could help defeat the might of Hitler's armies, then surely it was also capable of tackling the evils of poverty, unemployment and social deprivation" (Devine 2012, 554).

"no longer could the state guarantee the employment levels and the material standards to which the Scots had become accustomed" (Devine 2012, 581). An additional factor that weakened the commitment to the British state was the discovery of a large amount of oil in the North Sea off Aberdeen in 1970. This gave the SNP more leeway to campaign for a Scotland that could be independent and self-sufficient:

The SNP oil campaign began in 1971 and brilliantly exploited the contrast between, on the one hand, the fabulous wealth found off Scotland's coasts and, on the other, the fact that by then the Scots had the worst unemployment rate in western Europe and were yoked to a British state that stumbled from crisis to crisis. (Devine 2012, 585)23

All of these factors combined to produce a feeling of disenfranchisement that finally culminated in the referendum on a devolved Scottish Parliament in 1979. The original bill was amended in the House of Commons before the vote and the most important change was proposed by George Cunningham (a Scot, who represented London's Islington South West constituency, and later Islington South and Finsbury after a boundary change, as a Labour MP), stating that the vote would only be valid if at least 40% of the entire electorate voted 'yes'. Although 51.6% of those who took part in the referendum voted 'yes', this only represented a third of the electorate as a whole, so the bill was dismissed.24 The outcome of the referendum underlined "that the Scots were divided fairly evenly on the issue of greater autonomy. The result was a three-way split between those who did not vote, those in favour and those against" (Finlay 2007, 6). This defeat and lack of support for the case of national independence reinforced the importance of Scottish culture, as the failure "led many to turn to culture as an avenue for the expression of Scottishness, rather than politics as that was associated with failure" (Finlay 2007, 9).

The challenges multiplied during the 1980s, and Scotland proved to be particularly vulnerable to economic change. Levels of unemployment paralleled those of the 1930s, and Scotland "experienced a rate of de-industrialisation that was similar to eastern European societies following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1992 [*sic*]" (Finlay 2007, 3). In particular it was the new political climate represented by Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government that was held responsible for the dire situation in Scotland rather than the structural weaknesses of Scottish industry in general (Devine 2012, 594). The hostility towards the Conservative

<sup>23</sup> A particularly graphic depiction of this campaign is a poster calling Scots to join the SNP depicting a smiling Margaret Thatcher as a vampire with oil dropping from her fangs with the tagline, "No wonder she's laughing. She's got Scotland's oil."

<sup>24</sup> Devine sees a combination of factors as the reason for the failure of the referendum. The two major ones were, according to him, the prevalence of economic concerns in the difficult economic climate of the 1970s rather than constitutional matters and the division of the 'yes' camp into SNP and Labour supporters (Devine 2012, 589).

party increased when Scotland realised that Scottish votes essentially could not influence the outcome of the election:

Repeated rejection in Scotland did little to change Conservative policy […]. This indifference to the electoral opinion of the Scots hatched a new political phrase, 'the Democratic Deficit'. No matter how Scotland voted, it was argued, it would not change the fact of an overall Conservative British majority. (Finlay 2007, 6)

This feeling of powerlessness was confirmed when the poll tax was introduced in 1989 in Scotland, before the rest of Great Britain. The poll tax has become a symbol of the Scottish disenfranchisement under the Thatcher government: "More than any other single policy, the poll tax drove home the message to many Scots that they were being ruled by an alien government" (Devine 2012, 604).

All of these conflictual issues reinforced the perception that "Britishness took on an increasingly Little Englander guise" (Finlay 2007, 9); thus, the ability to incorporate Scottishness and Britishness into a dual identity was challenged further. Devine points out that it was not simply an unpopular government that the Scots opposed, but diverging world-views, as, "[w]hile the Scots remained loyal to the idea of state and community, the Conservatives made a virtue out of promoting nationalism, competition and privatization" (Devine 2012, 606). Furthermore, it is important to note that Scottish opposition did not focus solely on Thatcherism but criticised the composition of the British state and its constitution as a whole (Devine 2012, 606). The decline of the unifying power of the concept of Britishness has been a continuous process that mainly occurred in the second half of the 20th century. Devine summarises the divergent factors that influenced the decline of Britishness, some of which are symptomatic of a postmodern, globalised world and not specific to Scotland:

The check list might include the waning of Protestantism […]; the end of Empire and Britain's subsequent fall for a time to the status of a second-rate power; the huge and increasing influence of Europe and the parallel decline in the authority of the British state and, not least, the ebbing of respect for the institution of monarchy. Moreover, since the end of World War Two and the collapse of the Soviet threat, there is the loss of a clear 'other', or of a major external enemy which could help to sustain British national solidarity against a common foe. (Devine 2012, 662)

This process of weakening the identification with a British identity led to the re-emergence of the Home Rule debate in the 1990s. Scotland's status within the United Kingdom remained the same up until the 1997 General Election, when the British elected the first Labour Government after eighteen years of Conservative rule. In their manifesto *New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better*, the Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, made a crucial commitment to holding a Scottish referendum, which was subsequently held on 11 September 1997 and resulted in the establishment of a Scottish Parliament one year later. On 12 May 1999, Winifred Ewing opened the Parliament's first session by stating: "[…] the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on March 25, 1707, is hereby reconvened" (BBC 2009), stressing the historical continuity with the Parliament of the 18th century. Five years later, the opening of the new Parliament building at Holyrood was again celebrated. Edwin Morgan wrote the poem "Open the Doors" especially for this occasion, underlining the importance of culture, and more specifically literature, for Scottish identity.

Writing in 2006, Devine states that,

[o]n the eve of the tercentenary of the Act of Union of 1707, the Union is still intact, albeit since 1999 informed by a different type of political and legal relationship to that which had existed for nearly 300 years. Nor is there any sign of a significant rise in tensions between Edinburgh and Westminster or of the unleashing of rampant nationalism on either side of the border. (Devine 2012, 632f.)

Considering this statement, it seems curious that less than a decade later, in 2011, the SNP with their First Minister Alex Salmond started to pave the way towards an independence referendum, which was finally held in 2014. Linda Colley observes that recent years have seen "not so much *a rise* in Scottish nationalism, as the emergence of a different *kind* of Scottish nationalism" (original emphasis; Colley 2014, 93). She has noted the increasing tendency for Scotland to describe itself as an English colony, a term which is employed as "a way of arguing that Britishness is no longer a useful vehicle" (Colley 2014, 93). In hindsight, the referendum has shown that the Scottish people are still deeply divided on the question of national identity, as evident in the close result. In contrast to the failed referendum in 1979 with a voter turnout of 64%, the voter turnout in 2014 was considerable higher at almost 85%, which indicates a heightened interest in this issue.

Considering these major events of Scottish history, it is particularly important to stress how they have been perceived retrospectively. From a nationalistic viewpoint, the Union of Parliaments can easily be interpreted as coercion on behalf of the English, who were seeking control and stability and did not want to jeopardise their military endeavours against France. After the violent crushing of the Jacobite rebellion at Culloden, the eradication of the undesirable Highland (and thus Gaelic) culture was carried out through an array of measures, ranging from violence to legislative means, such as the banning of Highland dress. The Highlands as representative of the entirety of Scotland then suffered from further enforced transformation during the Clearances.

Keating claims that it was the rise of nationalism in Scotland that sparked the disintegration of the Union:

As the reality of nationalism became apparent, some scholars abruptly changed tack to argue that England and Scotland had never really been integrated, that the Union was a mere veneer so that, as soon as external circumstances and internal calculations changed, it was bound to fall apart. (Keating 2009, 2)

The fact that a feeling of nationalism, of being Scottish, has always been of importance to many Scots is also reflected in sociologist David McCrone's famous description of Scotland as a 'stateless nation' (McCrone 1992). This special status is grounded in the fact that Scotland only became a part of the United Kingdom politically: after the Union of Parliaments, Scotland continued to govern certain institutions, most prominently its judicial and education systems as well as the Church of Scotland (McCrone 1992). This accounts for the strong position of culture and cultural heritage in Scotland. As the Scottish influence on politics was limited in a pre-devolution Britain, culture offered a convenient outlet to create a 'national' identity different from any shared British identity. Crawford (1994, 56) underlines this by stating that "[…] cultural institutions are often regarded as the custodians of national distinctiveness". Of course, devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament have expanded Scotland's possibilities to set their own political agenda greatly, which has in turn enhanced Scottish identity rather than replaced this strong identification to a distinct national culture.

## **3. "Our oppressor neighbours"?—Scotland as English Colony in Contemporary Fiction**

This chapter is separated into two parts, the first of which will give an overview of Scottish literary history since the 1970s. The development of narrative fiction during this time will be illustrated, as important developments occurred that continue to affect contemporary fiction. This overview will also serve to emphasise the continuities traceable in Scottish fiction since the 1970s that help to contextualise the fiction from the early 1990s onwards, the latter of which will be the focus of the analysis. Additionally, it will be argued that Scottish genre fiction, such as the crime novel or the historical novel, cannot be clearly distinguished from 'other' literary fiction and, thus, should be included in this postcolonial analysis of contemporary Scottish fiction. Furthermore, this chapter will explore the increasing availability of postcolonial interpretations of Scottish literature, which is paralleled by a general pluralisation of approaches by writers as well as critics. The second part will then take Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* as a starting point to explore fiction that explicitly constructs Scotland as a nation that has been colonised. The second example that will be explored in detail is Kevin MacNeil's *The Stornoway Way*. This is a more recent publication and can thus be employed to illustrate how the depiction of Scotland as postcolonial changed over time.

Before going on to illustrate the changes and continuities in Scottish fiction, it is first necessary to scrutinise briefly the category of 'Scottish fiction'. As a field, Scottish literature seems to be a relatively recent invention, as "[…] [Gregory] Smith's seminal *Scottish Literature: Character and Influence* [1919] effectively gave birth to 'Scottish literature' as a discrete area for academic study and critical attention" (Carruthers, Goldie & Renfrew 2004, 11). However, Robert Crawford (1992; 1998) has argued that it was paradoxically the Scots who invented the category of English literature two centuries earlier. After the Act of Union in 1707, the Scots were eager to integrate themselves into a mainstream British identity. One way to achieve this was through the ideal of speaking a 'civilised' English without a Scottish accent:

The growing wish for a 'pure' English in eighteenth-century Scotland was not an anti-Scottish gesture, but a pro-British one. If Britain were to work as political unit, then Scots should rid themselves of any element likely to impede their progress within it. (Crawford 1992, 18)

This instruction in 'polite' and 'civilised' English took place at Scottish universities in the departments of philosophy and rhetoric, eventually developing into the subject of Belles Lettres. Designed to teach eloquence to students, these lectures quoted English literary texts to illustrate the good use of the English language.25

<sup>25</sup> Importantly for modern readers, Crawford (1992, 19) points out that in the 18th century the term 'literature' encompassed more than the modern idea of educated discourse or fiction.

Increasingly, these lectures used not only classical texts in Latin or Greek, or English writers considered to be classical, such as Shakespeare, but also contemporary writing of the 18th century (Crawford 1992, 35). By privileging certain texts in English, which were incidentally not limited to writers from England but also included Scottish writers such as William Wilkie and John Home (Crawford 1992, 35), this practice at Scottish universities developed a canon "of writers who [were] approved for their proper English style" (Crawford 1992, 34). Thus, the first chair for English Language and Literature in Great Britain was established at Glasgow University in 1862 (Crawford 1992, 41). However, what is labelled here 'English' literature is misleading, since it included literature that was seen as fitting to serve as the groundwork for a joint British identity. In this way Gardiner has pointed out the importance of literature for the British state as well as the British state's dependence on it:

The modern British constitution and the discipline of English Literature have been mutually supporting: both arose from the need to bolster the informal state between the late seventeenth century and the dangers at the end of the eighteenth, and both came into question with the post-colonial unravelling of welfare consensus at the end of the twentieth. (Gardiner 2013, 1)

When the stability of a British identity began to be questioned at the beginning of the 20th century, this questioning was also extended to literature, leading to the feeling, echoed in the title of Crawford's book *Devolving English Literature*  (1992), that the power structures of English literature, parallel to those in the British political state, should also be devolved. Writing in a revised version in 2000, Crawford points out that the devolution of English literary departments has been successful in regard to Scottish literature, which can be assessed by the number of independent courses and departments that teach Scottish literature at university level. However, this development does not extend to England, which underlines the centralised position that English literature, in the sense of 'writing from England', continues to have:

Though Scottish literature courses are now being developed in North American, Australasian and continental European universities, and while Scottish studies centres are being founded […], it remains the case that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no university course in post-medieval Scottish writing in the whole of England; nor are there any centres for Scottish studies. (Crawford 2000, 312)

Many contemporary anthologies and literature histories acknowledge the issue of terminology either by pointing out that 'English literature' is a hybrid term that refers to the language and not exclusively to England as a place or a people (see for example Carter & McRae 1997; Marcus & Nicholls 2004) or by using the more inclusive term of 'British literature' (see for example Lane, Mengham & Tew 2003; Bradford 2007).

This line of argument underscores the continued need for a de-centralisation of the concept of English literature, in which different cultures were labelled provincial. Ironically, it is the very creators of the concept of English literature who have suffered from its exclusive nature, as, "[i]n their own anxiety to adopt nonnative standards, the Scottish […] provincial inventors of English Literature were responsible for developing […] problems which these cultures would have to face over the next century and a half " (Crawford 1992, 43). The problems associated with strengthening a specifically Scottish canon and raising an awareness of its importance and particularity emerged during the 20th century. Therefore, the fiction of this period seems especially prone to postcolonial analyses. This study will demonstrate that the negotiation of the particularity of a Scottish canon is highly visible in fiction from the 1990s onwards.

#### **3.1 Change and Continuities in Contemporary Scottish Fiction**

In 1993 Gavin Wallace pointed out that at the time of his writing the volumes by Francis Russell Hart (1978) and Isobel Murray and Bob Tait (1984) were the only comprehensive studies of 20th-century Scottish literature (Wallace 1993). This lack of critical analysis of 20th-century Scottish literature has since been addressed not only by his own contribution (Wallace & Stevenson 1993) but also by countless other publications (Craig 1999; Motz 2000; March 2002; Sassi 2005; Schoene 2007a; Brown & Riach 2009; amongst others).

Ian Brown and Alan Riach identify the motif of the renaissance or re-birth as the dominant framework for periodical and thematic classification, claiming that "[…] the concept of a Scotland, or rather many Scotlands, rediscovering, redefining and remaking itself, and themselves, is a constant refrain" (Brown & Riach 2009, 1). Following the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, many critics have postulated the existence of several 'new' renaissances to explain new trends in literature. In Scotland, the periodisation of contemporary fiction has been significantly influenced by the landmarks of the devolution process, such as the failed referendum of 1979 as well as the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

The narrative fiction of the 1970s as well as of the 1980s and 1990s has been described as a wave of new writing. Wallace has identified a new Scottish Renaissance in the literature of the 1970s but sees a change after 1979 when writing entered a third phase, becoming more radical and widening its scope to postmodern and metafictional modes (Wallace 1993, 1–3). Susanne Hagemann concurs, as she also sees the 1980s as a turning point that is characterised by a renewed interest in identity (Hagemann 1996, 10). The writing of this New Scottish Renaissance of the 1980s continues to address the concepts of language and nation (Wallace 1993, 2) while at the same time opposing important characteristics of the Renaissance in the 1920s and 30s, such as the interest in myth and archaism as well as an essentialist construction of a 'historical' Scotland (Wallace 1993, 2; Hagemann 1996, 10). Similarly, Douglas Gifford, Sarah Dunnigan and Alan MacGillivray have subdivided the post-war period into three streams of writing:

Since the war there have been three distinct fiction periods: the first, traditional or pessimistic regarding the past-ridden present, running from 1945 to the mid-'60s; the second, preoccupied with transition and change, from the mid-'60s to 1980; and the third, carrying a message of qualified (and often faint) hope, from 1980 to the end of the century. (Gifford, Dunnigan & MacGillivray 2002, 835)

The internal turning points for the last period of this subdivision have been determined more specifically by Berthold Schoene, who coined the term 'devolutionary writing' and located such writing in the time frame between the devolution referenda of 1979 and 1997 (Schoene 2007c, 7). The division of literary periods along the line of political events highlights the importance that political events and literary culture have for each other.26 Thus, in 2015 Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon pointed out that the importance of writers for the successful devolution process has already become a "critical commonplace" (Pittin-Hedon 2015, viii).

The narrative fiction of the late 1980s and of the 1990s has also been described as constituting a, or rather *the*, New Scottish Renaissance. Since the terminology has also been used for the 1970s and for the period starting after 1979 interchangeably without much concern for a clear definition of the term or distinction between the different periods, it is difficult to discern a starting point of the New Scottish Renaissance. However, most critics agree on its motivation and motifs: Scots felt inadequately represented and this led to resentment of Margaret Thatcher and her government, who were seen as responsible for economic decline, privatisation and the limitations on the welfare state (March 2002, 3). However, rather than taking place directly after the failed devolution referendum in 1979, the sea change in Scottish fiction emerged in the late 1980s to early 1990s, caused by the effects of the referendum result in connection with the ascension of the Conservative Party in Britain: "By the '90s the moods and possibilities of the fiction had changed profoundly. An eclectic restlessness was linked to the need to find a fresh starting-point, or to find different aspects of Scottish traditions as inspiration" (Gifford, Dunnigan & MacGillivray 2002, 937). Irvine Welsh's novel *Trainspotting* is thus the culmination of a development that had already started in the late 1980s; however, the publication of the novel in 1993 is representative of these changes, particularly because the novel was so radically different in terms of the use of language and setting. Wolfram Motz (2000, 254) also points out that the early 1990s underscored the limitations of the identity constructions of the 1980s, which had

<sup>26</sup> The independence referendum has inspired further new perspectives on the canon of Scottish literature. Crawford (2014) considers how the concept of independence has influenced Scottish writers in his book *Bannockburns*.

not adapted to the new political and economic realities in Britain. In his seminal study *The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination* Cairns Craig has highlighted that the resentment that was evident in the writing of Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, Janice Galloway, A.L. Kennedy and others also served the function of maintaining the ideal of the Scottish nation:

Through works such as theirs Scotland went on imagining itself as a nation and went on constituting itself as a national imagination in defiance of its attempted or apparent incorporation into a unitary British culture, a defiance which has had profound political consequences in the last decade of the twentieth century. (Craig 1999, 36)

In addition to this, Carla Sassi (2005, 168) has pointed out that, towards the end of the 20th century, Scottish literature has come to be defined by a range of narrow stereotypes, such as realism, urbanism, grittiness, preoccupation with subculture and a demotic writing style. This kind of fiction, which uses demotic and often abusive language, which focuses mainly on the various youth subcultures and explicitly addresses issues of sexuality as well as violence, is exemplified by the writing of Irvine Welsh but is also evident in the work of other 20th- and 21st-century writers, such as Laura Hird, Duncan McLean and Alan Warner. Crawford has warned of the risk that this particular version of Scotland has the potential to become yet another stereotype in the history of Scottish literature: "Like the kailyard27 […] imagination of earlier Scottish culture, or the *No Mean City* image of Glasgow life, there may be a risk that a cleverly marketed Welshscape comes to be seen as *the* rather than *a* vision of contemporary Scotland" (original emphasis; Crawford 2000, 335). However, this fear has not materialised, as contemporary writers have rebelled against this stereotype, since they "[…] feel uneasy with what they perceive as a 'literary ghetto'" (Sassi 2005, 169). While some critics claim that, to a great extent, Scottish literature is still judged by its degree of 'Scottishness' rather than its aesthetic qualities (Bell & Miller 2004, 11), Sassi acknowledges that this has not in turn led to essentialism and the attempt to define 'authentic' Scottishness. Instead, "[a]t the beginning of the 21st century, attempts to consider a unitary, organic Scottish culture seem to have been left behind for good, as plurality has taken over […]" (Sassi 2005, 177).

Several characteristics are mentioned repeatedly in critical assessments of the contemporary Scottish novel, the most prominent of which are matters of language, nation and border-crossing. A representative, comprehensive list has been compiled by Alan Riach, who has identified six key themes of Scottish literature: 1. an interest in voice, 2. a preoccupation with the representation of space, 3. a

<sup>27</sup> "Kailyardism is usually described as a popular literary style celebrating Scottish rural quaintness, at its height from about 1880 until 1914. […] The term 'Kailyard' [cabbage-patch] is usually attributed to the critic George Blake, who described its essential elements as domesticity, rusticity, humour, humility, modesty, decency, piety and poverty" (McCrone 2001, 136).

concern with matters of the nation, 4. an awareness of the constructedness of language, 5. a sense of people, a democratic intellect, and 6. a sense of dark humour (Riach 2005a, 239–241). The majority of items on this list show the preoccupation with questions of identity that permeate Scottish fiction. According to Carla Sassi and Theo van Heijnsbergen, addressing these key issues serves several strategies:

[Modern and contemporary writers] have questioned hegemonic relations between 'centre' and 'periphery' (defined along 'national' or 'class' lines), engaged with issues of cultural representation and with cultural politics, investigated strategies of re-appropriation of native cultural expressions, and re-evaluated hybridity as a tool for re-positioning Scottish culture. (Sassi & van Heijnsbergen 2013, 3)

These strategies employed in Scottish fiction can be subsumed under the category of resistance or 'writing back'. Thus, they are motivated by an experience that can be shared by other (post)colonies as well; this experience is characterised by "[…] the painful experience of deterritorialisation and of culture and language erasure (as in the Celtic Highlands) as well as of cultural subordination (enacted, for example, in the degradation of Lowland Scots to a dialect)" (Sassi 2005, 5f.).

Resistance to political agendas is often found in Scottish fiction. As outlined above, the Thatcher years in particular inspired opposition in Scottish politics. Margaret Thatcher is often criticised with regard to her attitude towards Scotland's oil. This is evident in Ian Rankin's state-of-the-nation novel *Black and Blue*, first published in 1997, in which one character rants about Margaret Thatcher profiting from the oil revenues that supported her political agenda, which was unpopular in Scotland:

'Know what we did? The oil industry, I mean? We kept Maggie Thatcher in power. Oil revenue paid for all those tax cuts. Oil revenue paid for the Falklands War. Oil was pumping through the veins of her whole fucking reign, and she never thanked us once. Not once, the bitch.' (Rankin [1997] 2006, 212)

In the course of this conversation, Scotland is also compared to Norway, whose government used its oil revenue "to kickstart other industries [while] Maggie used it to pay for a war and a bloody election" (Rankin [1997] 2006, 213), underlining the feeling that Scotland did not profit accordingly from the oil found off its shores.

Another reason for Scottish resentment towards the Westminster government was the creation of nuclear bases in Scotland. The undercurrent of threat and danger that these projects inspired is often found in Alan Warner's novels, most of which are set in a fictitious town called 'The Port' that is reminiscent of Oban, a small town on the west coast of Scotland. When in Edinburgh, the members of a girls' choir in Warner's novel *The Sopranos* notice the difference to their home town, The Port, in a police station: "The posters were different from outside the station in High Street of the Port, where they were all about importance of returning rockets if they got washed up astray from the firing range, or about dangers of beached phosphorus bombs […]" (Warner 1999, 157).

A further source of contention is the question of adequate representation in Westminster, which has been an ongoing discussion in Scotland,28 particularly when Margaret Thatcher was re-elected Prime Minister without the support of the majority of the electorate in Scotland. This is voiced, for example, in *Old Men in Love*, Alasdair Gray's novel purporting to be an edition of former schoolmaster John Tunnock's records:

I also thought Scotland and England had equal representation in London […]. Gordon explained that England had ten times more MPs in Westminster than Scotland, a fair arrangement (he pointed out) since England's population had always been ten times greater. I at once saw that a minority of Scot MPs in the midst of England's richest city must be constantly outvoted to benefit the southern kingdom. […] I began to see how the Union with England had warped Scotland's institutions […]. (Gray 2009, 134)

In a diary entry from 2006, Tunnock is later convinced that independence is the only solution to Scotland's problems, as he finds the devolved Scottish Parliament lacking in power:

Next year is the 300th anniversary of the Anglo-Scottish Union of Parliaments and a major chance to show we do not want it—that we are sick of Scotland being used as a NATO military and nuclear missile base by the English government, and deprived of every industry that the Scots pioneered, and once made Scotland famous. (Gray 2009, 259)

The demand for independence is put into the context of the Union of Parliaments, which not only adds nostalgia but also emphasises the legitimacy of Scotland returning to its former state of independence.

Nostalgia is a sentiment often expressed in the genre of the historical novel, of which the dominant Scottish writer is without doubt Sir Walter Scott. However, as Mariadele Boccardi (2007, 97) argues, Scott is also the reason "[t]here is an inherent tension in the very concept of the Scottish historical novel […] [, as] his legacy to the Scottish novel has consisted largely of a disengagement from the actualities of history and the modern world in favour of anachronistic romanticisation". Rather than opening up the opportunity to investigate the present via the past, the historical novel in Scotland seems to be limited to a reiteration of its glorious past. Cairns Craig has repeatedly argued that Scottish narration locates itself 'out of history' (as is also reflected in the title of one of his publications; Craig 1996),

<sup>28</sup> Today, the question of representation has emerged again in what has become known as the 'West Lothian question': since the devolution of power to the Scottish and other Parliaments, English MPs cannot vote on matters concerning Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, whereas MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the House of Commons can vote on matters only affecting England.

since Walter Scott's novels have "been seen in Scotland as disengaging Scotland from the processes of history, or as symptoms of the disengagement of Scottish history from the modern world" (Craig 1999, 117). This may be the reason why the majority of contemporary Scottish novels stay firmly located within the 20th century instead of drawing on material from Scotland's rich and complex history. The perceived need for historical fiction to explain the concept of Scotland only came to the fore again after the country re-established its political structures through the process of devolution; therefore, the 21st century has seen a reinvigoration of the genre:

Historical fiction in particular must be regarded as closely related to the country's reacquisition of an institutional political dimension. Exploring the conditions for a national narrative and hence the imaginative recreation of the nation's history, historical fiction draws new, meaningful links between the past and the present rather than romantically engaging with discrete historical events in anachronistic isolation. (Boccardi 2007, 98)

Another genre that has an important standing within contemporary Scottish fiction is crime writing. Gill Plain (2007, 132) argues that Scottish writers "adopted the genre as a means of exploring systemic rather than individual criminality". Prompted by the desire to express opposition to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, "crime fiction developed into an ideal formula for investigating the state of Scotland" (Plain 2007, 132). As both the historical novel and crime fiction are employed to invest in the establishment of a Scottish national narrative, they are relevant for this study. Thus, in chapter seven, which is concerned with the representation of space and place in a postcolonial dimension, several crime novels will be analysed, such as *Set in Darkness* by Ian Rankin and *Garnethill* by Denise Mina. Equally, the historical novel is also represented in this study through the example of *Joseph Knight* by James Robertson. In addition to demonstrating the potential of a postcolonial interpretation of these novels, this study shows that Scottish fiction's preoccupation with the nation is still present and can be found across a wide variety of genres. Pittin-Hedon sees the subversion of genres as a general trend in Scottish fiction, which makes the inclusion of genre fiction in any study of contemporary fiction all the more necessary:

Another feature that defines contemporary literature in Scotland is its refusal to align itself with the conventional division into generic category, with the concept of 'genre fiction' as opposed to 'mainstream/literary fiction'. The codes that govern genres are often made to interact; they are displaced, distorted, parodied, pastiched, or simply transferred from one form of narrative to another. (Pittin-Hedon 2015, xvi)

The resistance to a unifying national narrative as well as the construction of Scotland in a range of oppositional frameworks, which can be found in both Scottish genre fiction and Scottish literary fiction, has been analysed by various critics. In addition to the theories, scrutinised in detail in the preceding chapter, asserted by Gardiner, Stroh and Lehner, Douglas S. Mack shows that the negotiation between the continued allegiance to the British Union and the demand for Scottish independence can be found throughout the history of Scottish fiction. In his study *Scottish Fiction and the British Empire* Mack argues that the element of opposition is not the only element that dominates Scottish fiction but that there are two different strains of writing: on the one hand, writers such as Sir Walter Scott and John Buchan write from within the power structures of an imperial Britain, whereas, on the other hand, other writers, such as James Hogg and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, represent a subversive, subaltern voice (Mack 2006, 2).29 Although both traditions are present in contemporary Scottish fiction, Mack argues that "[…] recent Scottish writing […] has likewise been energised by the continuing vitality of the non-elite Hogg/Gibbon tradition" (Mack 2006, 227). As the historical perspective in chapter two has outlined, the experience of Scots as subaltern came to the fore in particular when Britishness was no longer perceived as a viable concept for the construction of Scottish identity. This is reflected within Scottish literature, as "[t]oday there is a striking and surely revealing absence of imaginative writing from Scotland that communicates (as Scott and others once did) a positive ideology of Britishness" (Crawford 2014, 8). At the same time, as Schoene points out, Scottish fiction of the late 20th and of the 21st centuries, particularly after the 1999 devolution, has turned these responses of resistance around: "Discontinuity and adaptability have become Scotland's cultural trademarks. 'Statelessness' and a postcolonial disposition no longer signify lack and inferiority, but harbour a resourceful flexibility" (Schoene 2007c, 9). In the following subsection a detailed look will be taken at two contemporary novels that follow in the tradition of subversive, non-elitist writings such as Hogg's and Gibbon's, which will illustrate how these novels respond to the postcolonial disposition.

#### **3.2 "Ah hate the Scots"—Postcolonialism and Abjection in the Fiction of Irvine Welsh and Kevin MacNeil**

This section will illustrate how the subaltern Scottish experience is represented in fiction with the help of two novels that explicitly position Scotland's status as colonial. The texts are highly different from each other and represent contrasting

<sup>29</sup> The subversion present in James Hogg's writing is particularly visible in his formal experiments with unreliable narration and mimicry. Due to the combination of these experiments and his working-class origins, Hogg seemed to be the opposite of his contemporary Walter Scott. Equally, Lewis Grassic Gibbon engaged in presenting a subaltern perspective by focusing on the disintegrating Scottish rural communities after World War I. In his novels, such as *Sunset Song* (1932), Gibbon negotiates a Scottish literary voice by "[…] placing narrators and characters on the same linguistic level, rather than having a third-person English-speaking narrator hierarchically elevated as the voice of authority over the Scots-speaking folk of the story" (Crawford 2007, 561).

experiences. Irvine Welsh's novel *Trainspotting* is narrated from the viewpoint of a new urban underclass living in Edinburgh in the 1990s, but is deeply influenced by the social and political transformations of the Thatcher years. In comparison, Kevin MacNeil's *The Stornoway Way* concentrates on the representation of an individual and is set in the eponymous city of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis; first published in 2005, this novel also underlines the fact that the idea of Scotland as a colony is not present only in the fiction of the 1990s but has continued to feature in fiction even after devolution.

Irvine Welsh's novel *Trainspotting* was first published in 1993. It consists of several loosely connected episodes of the lives of several friends in Leith, focusing on their drug addictions and their unemployment. Though the fragmented nature of the novel has often been criticised (Peddie 2007, 131), this fragmentation may have resulted from the fact that Welsh published several chapters as short stories before the original publication of the novel. Although the novel was reasonably successful from the start, the film version directed by Danny Boyle in 1996 consolidated the book's cult status and ensured high sale figures. The effects the book has had on contemporary Scottish literature are substantial. Kirstin Innes (2007, 301) claims that "Scotland's literary landscape has never quite recovered from *Trainspotting* […]". Consequently, the academic research on the novel, as well as on Danny Boyle's hugely successful 1996 film adaptation, is extensive. Three volumes in particular provide extensive analyses of the novel and will thus be highlighted here. Firstly, both Aaron Kelly and Robert Morace have published comprehensive monographs that analyse Welsh's writing and impact on Scottish fiction as a whole (Kelly 2005; Morace 2007a). Similarly, Berthold Schoene's *Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh* presents a selection of essays that begins with a comprehensive introduction to Welsh's work and then focuses on certain aspects of interpretation, such as gender, drugs, and translation (Schoene 2010). In addition to this, various academic papers focus on single aspects of *Trainspotting*, such as language (see for example Pollner 2005; Williams 1999), or link Welsh's novels to the postcolonial (see for example Farred 2004; Jackson & Maley 2000).

The novel stands out in regard to both content and form. Written in demotic Scots that often includes explicit and coarse language, which, in combination with the fragmented structure of the novel, sometimes makes it challenging to determine which character is speaking, the general form of the novel underlines the focus on the marginalised working class in Edinburgh, more specifically in Leith. The focus on Edinburgh, Welsh's native city, also signifies a new development in Scottish fiction: "While new departures in Glasgow writing flourished in the 1980s and 1990s in the fiction of Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and the poetry of Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead, post-industrial working-class Edinburgh seemed inarticulate, until Welsh" (Riach 2005b, 45). Welsh's style is dominated by references to popular culture, such as football, music or film, a style he shares with several other writers of his generation who emerged in the 1990s, such as Alan Warner or Laura Hird. This wave of contemporary literature had already started a few years before Welsh thanks to the work of young Scottish authors such as Janice Galloway and Duncan McLean and the publication of anthologies of new literature by Duncan McLean's Clocktower Press as well as Kevin Williamson's Rebel Inc*.*;30 however, with Irvine Welsh, a marketable figure entered the scene. Due to the affinity for techno music and synthetic drugs described in their writing, these writers have repeatedly been subsumed under the label 'Chemical Generation' for marketing purposes. Leanne McRae (2004, 118) has suggested the term 'Repetitive Beat Generation', taken from Steve Redhead's eponymous title, as a suitable description for these emerging authors who also have a specific cultural and political agenda. For her, the term describes "[…] Irish and Scottish authors writing from the fringes of Britishness about dancing, drug taking, violence and football" (McRae 2004, 118). Furthermore, this term places Welsh and his fellow writers decisively in a postmodern context, since the Repetitive Beat Generation is characterised by a "capacity to move outside of linearity and structures of meaning" (McRae 2004, 125).

The novel *Trainspotting* is interspersed with allusions to Scotland as the victim of an English colonising mission. In many instances, the description of the English as colonisers is combined with the description of their class status: Sick Boy meets a woman speaking with "a posh, English-colonial voice" in the city centre of Edinburgh, and asking the way to the tourist hotspot of the Royal Mile (*TS* 29); a group of "middle to upper-middle-class English" men is described as "whitesettler types" who turn Scottish universities into "a playground for failed Oxbridge home-counties types" (*TS* 302); and Renton describes his brother Billy, who is in the army, as an "imperialist lackey" (*TS* 133). However, one of the most forceful and vigorous passages of the novel that comment on Scotland's status is Renton's often quoted "Ah hate the Scots" speech:

Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Bebgie [*sic*]. Cunts that are intae baseball-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fucking failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots. (*TS* 78)

<sup>30</sup> Duncan McLean started the Clocktower Press as a fanzine in the early 1990s; most notable is his anthology *Ahead of its Time* (1997), which featured stories written by young Scottish writers such as Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, James Kelman and Janice Galloway. Kevin Williamson started *Rebel Inc. Magazine* as a fanzine in 1992. After publishing Irvine Welsh and the success of *Trainspotting*  following the film release in 1996, Rebel Inc. (the magazine's publishing house) became part of the independent Scottish publisher Canongate. On the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, Williamson speculated in the online magazine *Bella Caledonia* about reviving Rebel Inc. (Williamson 2012).

This outburst is a reaction to Renton's 'double-date' with Begbie and their girlfriends, Hazel and June, to which Begbie already arrives drunk and eager to be provoked into violent and menacing behaviour.31 This passage is the overture to one of the most graphic illustrations of Begbie's erratic and violent behaviour, when he throws his beer glass over the balcony in the pub, severely injuring another guest (*TS* 79–81). Begbie's behaviour is seen as exemplary for Scotland, which, for Renton, is "a country ay failures" (*TS* 78). Renton does not accept the common notion of Scotland as a victim of oppression as an explanation for its current state. Instead, he takes the colonised state of Scotland as a given, thus already relegating the country to an inferior position. However, this sense of repugnance is multiplied by the fact that Renton also perceives the coloniser as inferior and weak when he states that Scotland has been "colonised by wankers", and in consequence it is "ruled by effete arseholes" (*TS* 78). As a result of this double failure, Renton can only feel self-hatred and abjection: "Ah hate the Scots" (*TS* 78). Patricia Horton quotes Frantz Fanon's concept of the 'fracture of consciousness' described in Fanon's seminal study *Black Skin, White Masks*: "In assuming the white mask the 'negro' regards himself with loathing, locates himself as inferior and abject" (Horton 2001, 226). The coloniser's devaluation of 'indigenous' culture is enhanced in Renton's view because he identifies the allegedly superior culture as "effete" and not "decent, vibrant and healthy" (*TS* 78). Furthermore, this central passage also points out the issues internal to Scottish culture that are a direct consequence of being colonised by England: the ignorance of the "servile" (*TS* 78) nature of the Scots leads to their mystification of romantic nationalism and virile opposition to the colonising English, illustrated through characters like Begbie who "are intae baseball-batting every fucker that's different." This mystification results in the glossing over, or even the denial, of internal marginalisations as well as of a damaged self-image:

The myth of Scotland and its "factual" corollary have combined to produce, according to Renton, a profoundly dangerous misconception—a national self-delusion powerful enough to obscure the "white trash" from itself because it is clothed in and historicized into a heroic oppositionality. (Farred 2004, 220)

Irrespective of the self-debasement that Renton describes in his rant against the 'effete' coloniser, this passage also underscores his seemingly bleak outlook for Scotland, as he can see no alternative and makes no demands for devolution or independence—demands that would usually be expected after such accusations.

<sup>31</sup> In Danny Boyle's film version (1996) this passage is put into quite a different context, as the film omits the class and gender dimensions stressed in the novel, focusing instead on a purely nationalistic angle. In the film version, Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and their healthy, athletic, non-drug-taking friend Tommy take a trip outside the city. When they disembark from the train, Tommy is enthusiastic about 'the great Scottish outdoors' and asks his friends if it does not make them proud to be Scottish, to which the reaction is Renton's speech.

Grant Farred points out that this emphasises the Scottish debasement even further, as Renton cannot conceive of alternative models to colonialism:

Renton is well beyond self-recrimination or self-pity here. He rejects any notion of Scottish romanticized national self-founding […] While he may borrow from the Fanonian vocabulary of anticolonial resistance, Renton is far removed from the Martinican's view of subjugated communities. […] Renton cannot even conceive of an anticolonialism; all he can conjure up is an alternate colonizer, presumably one that boasts a "decent, vibrant, healthy culture". (Farred 2004, 218)

The choice of characters and setting of the novel further underlines Scotland's marginalised status within Great Britain. The unemployed, drug-addicted and criminal men and (handful of) women do not live at the centre of Scottish society but rather at its margins in terms of class, access to power and social standing. The abandoned station in Leith is a powerful symbol for these disenfranchised parts of Scottish society:

Inhabitants of society's periphery, the trainspotters may be citizens of the world, but they live in a decentred city, a peripheral nation within a fading imperial state. In all ways, they are on edge. They are shadows cast by the social mainstream, beyond the rail tracks which no longer extend to their homes in sunny Leith, between the grammars which polarise their context. (Freeman 1996, 254)

In agreement with Lehner's (2011) contribution, Kelly advocates the application of the Subaltern Study Method to the postcolonial context of Scotland, as it

[…] permits an understanding of how large sections of Scottish society benefited from British imperialism while others were subject to its destructive force. A subaltern methodology ruptures the idea that the nation proffers an identity of interest supposedly shared by all Scottish people equally. (Kelly 2005, 65)

*Trainspotting* illustrates the fact that, for those subaltern Scots who feel marginalised, there are two possible reactions to this marginalisation: "Some, like Billy, or Begbie, aptly named 'Franco', turn imperialist, empowering themselves by visiting aggression and violence on those they consider weaker and inferior. Others, like Renton and Spud, embrace their abjection" (Horton 2001, 231). The compensatory behaviour of the first type of reaction, which results in violence and the overemphasis of masculinity caused by a feeling of national inferiority, will be discussed further in chapter six. Thus, Renton's "Ah hate the Scots" (*TS* 78) litany reveals the diverging reactions that Scots display as an answer to the country's postcolonial dilemma and further complicates the message of the text, as it seems that he is not capable of conceiving of an anti-colonialism, instead advocating the end of the nation-state per se:

Welsh's novel, […] disrupts the Scots' dominant anti-English paradigm completely because he deals a deathblow to that most fundamental of postcolonial imaginaries: Renton sees no value in the nation-state, the symbol and articulation of selfhood, of independence, of (initially) triumph over and (subsequently) equality with the colonizer. (Farred 2004, 223)

The rejection of the nation-state as a meaningful framework and the advocacy of a post-national world is explicitly vocalised by Renton in the first chapter of the "Exile" section, entitled "London Crawling", when he goes to a pub called Britannia in London and denounces the validity not only of a British national identity but of national identity in general:

The pub sign is a new one, but its message is old. The Britannia. Rule Britannia. Ah've never felt British, because ah'm not. It's ugly and artificial. Ah've never really felt Scottish either, though. Scotland the brave, ma arse; Scotland the shitein cunt. […] Ah've never felt a fuckin thing aboot countries, other than total disgust. They should abolish the fuckin lot ay them. (*TS* 228)

This is further consolidated by the conclusion of the novel when Renton betrays his friends and leaves for Amsterdam with the money they made in a drug deal. This audacious action emphasises the radicalism of his departure, as it makes a return to Scotland almost impossible. Renton points out that it is somewhat ironic that it is Begbie in particular, who he sees as representative of Scotland's malaise, who is his main reason for staying away:

Ironically, it was Begbie who was the key. Ripping off your mates was the highest offence in his book, and he would demand the severest penalty. Renton has used Begbie, used him to burn his boats completely and utterly. It was Begbie who ensured he could never return. […] He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. (*TS* 344)

Farred concludes that "Welsh's novel can be read as an implicit rejection of the postcolonial in favor of the transnational—or Europe as the much-desired cosmopolitan, the European 'global'" (Farred 2004, 225). To illustrate the fact that Welsh goes further than transcending only the concept of the nation in his novel, Horton refers to Homi Bhabha's theory of 'fixity', according to which the coloniser hardens a fixed identity of the colonised through the use of narrow stereotypes:

This idea is at the heart of *Trainspotting* for Welsh's primary concern is to challenge fixed identities of all kinds and to show them to be contradictory, ambiguous and plural. Not only does he disrupt the narratives of imperialism and nationalism by emphasising Scotland's ambiguous position as both participant in and victim of empire, but he complicates this further by an attention to class politics, religious identities and regional differences. (Horton 2001, 231)

Another technique employed by Welsh to transcend stereotypes of Scotland as the victim of English oppression is his negotiation of Scotland's seemingly paradoxical duality as simultaneously the colonised and the coloniser:

Renton may take his distance from the nation, but not without addressing its key aspects: Scottish self-conception (and self-deception), its relationship to England, and its understanding of itself as the "anti-colonial colony"—the colony that is situated simultaneously within and relegated to the fringes of the imperial center, an integral part of the empire and yet in an adversial relationship to a hegemonic Englishness. (Farred 2004, 219)

Since Scotland does not offer an alternative to 'hegemonic Englishness', as the complicity of Scots in the imperialist mission is highlighted, a more suitable frame of identification for Renton is Irishness, which is constructed in the novel as an opposition to Britishness and Englishness (MacLeod 2008, 100). Renton ascribes to the Irish the qualities that he sees as lacking in the Scots:

Some say that the Irish are the trash ay Europe. That's shite. It's the Scots. The Irish hud the bottle tae win thir country back, or at least maist ay it. Ah remember getting wound up when Nicksy's brar, down in London, described the Scots as 'porridge wogs'. Now ah realise that the only thing offensive about that statement was its racism against black people. Otherwise it's spot-on. Anybody will tell you; the Scots make good soldiers. Like ma brar, Billy. (*TS* 190)

The relationship between Renton and his brother Billy illustrates the opposite ends of the spectrum of Scottish identity, as Billy identifies with the hegemonic Britishness displayed by the army and Renton becomes a rebel, opposing such notions of a unified national identity (MacLeod 2008, 99). The contested relationship between the Scots and the Irish and the underlying sectarian conflicts between the two are evident throughout the novel. All of these varying strands of identity are exemplified in Renton's family, which is "a microcosm of this Scottish dualism" (Spittal 1998, 201), since his father is from Glasgow and his mother is Irish. The duality and differences between the brothers are further emphasised by their respective support for Edinburgh's rival football clubs: Renton supports the Hibs (Hibernian), traditionally regarded as Catholic, whereas Billy supports the Protestant Hearts (Heart of Midlothian). This attitude towards Ireland places Renton back into a more conventional perception of a postcolonial Scotland, since he praises the Irish for having the "bottle tae win thir country back" (*TS* 190). Thus, his appeal to abolish all nations may stem from the idea that, due to its infinitely inferior status, Scotland could never conceive of an anti-colonial status, which thus becomes a useless construct. Horton points out that the sense of community with Ireland finds a basis in a shared feeling of oppression, clearly marking Scotland as a postcolonial country:

Characters in the novel identify with Ireland on the basis of a shared sense of oppression, grounded in a sentimental romantic nationalism and inflected by Catholicism and working-class affiliations. […] it is constructed in response to a demonised 'Other', defined as Protestant, English and imperialist. (Horton 2001, 227)

The cultural context of the novel, which is set in the early 1990s, locates the Otherness of Scotland not in contrast to an imperialist England in general but in opposition to the specifically Conservative England of the Thatcher years. As illustrated above, the 1980s saw an increasing feeling of under-representation in Westminster, as the Conservatives did not gain a majority in Scotland. The Thatcher era is in general mainly characterised by its focus on the free-market economy and the rise of individualism and consumerism. The characters in *Trainspotting*, and Renton in particular, do not feel represented by this societal system and, thus, consciously choose to deviate from it. The rejection of consumerism and of a middle-class lifestyle is illustrated in the following passage:

Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life. (*TS* 187)

Renton explicitly distances himself from this concept through his self-negating conclusion to this statement: "Well, ah choose no tae choose life" (*TS* 188).32 Thus, Renton emphasises his own status as Other in a hegemonic society dominated by consumerism, which is personified by Margaret Thatcher.33 Craig points out that the setting of the novel in a drug subculture can thus be read as a bleak outlook on the society of the future:

By 1993, in the bleak environment of the unemployed under-class of Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting*, the free-market economics of rampant and materialistic Thatcherism that had been heralded as a new beginning for British society was presented as no more than a legal version of the selfish and exploitative


world of drug pushing and drug addiction that was undermining all sense of national community. (Craig 2001, 18)

The potentially damaging individualism of Thatcherism, propagated in her famous quote that 'there is no such thing as society', is established in the first chapter of the novel when Renton reflects on the statement made by his drug dealer, "[w] e are all acquaintances now" (*TS* 11), and concludes that it is "a brilliant metaphor for our times" (*TS* 11). The egoism of a society praising individualism is graphically illustrated in the episode "Goes Without Saying" (*TS* 51f.) when Renton prepares a shot of heroin to comfort Lesley who has just found out that her baby has died. Renton makes his priorities clear when he states, "Lesley comes first, eftir me. That goes without saying" (*TS* 56). In the reading of the novel as resistance to the hegemonic Englishness represented by the Thatcher government, the ending also becomes a strong statement against established English values. Through his escape to Amsterdam, Renton propagates a rejection of the nation-state while simultaneously strengthening his identity as defined by broader frames of reference, such as the European Union: "In giving up the nation, however, Renton acquires access to the global, or, at the very least, to the pan-European, a construct so reviled by the English—especially Thatcher and Major, the Tory leaders who destroy communities such as Leith" (Farred 2004, 224).

The criticism of British politics and, more specifically, of the economic and cultural changes initiated by the Thatcher government is a recurring theme in Welsh's novels. In his novel *Filth* (1998) the protagonist, policeman Bruce Robertson, is plagued by a tapeworm. The taking-over of the tapeworm is mirrored literally on the book's pages through a typographic experiment, whereby the tapeworm's 'words' are printed over Robertson's; the tapeworm thus literally takes over Robertson's voice. According to Berthold Schoene (2004, 133), the tapeworm is an "internal parasite […] [that] also stands for Margaret Thatcher's 'enemy within'". *Porno* (2002) revisits the main characters of *Trainspotting* ten years later, focusing on Sick Boy and an amateur porno scene. This novel can be seen as a sequel not only due to its reoccurring characters but also due to its criticism of consumer culture: "*Porno* is also quite blunt in its assault on consumer capitalism and its negative effects on Scotland in general and Leith in particular. As a result, it invites being read as continuing the 'resistance to the culture values of Thatcherism' which began with *Trainspotting* […]" (Morace 2007b, 230).

The criticism present in *Trainspotting* of Scotland's political status and alleged inferiority, of the romanticism regarding a supposed glorious past and the denial of Scotland's ambiguous role in the Empire, and of the contemporary marginalisation of Scotland, which is mainly blamed on the Thatcher administration, ultimately displays a resistance to hegemonic cultural models as well as a re-writing of established discourses. Jeffrey Karnicky (2003, 141) summarises the various kinds of resistance that are present in *Trainspotting* as Welsh's representation of new subjectivities. Reading *Trainspotting* as a postcolonial novel, Patricia Horton points out that Julia Kristeva and Homi Bhabha provide suitable models to theorise the kind of subaltern resistance present in the novel, as

[b]oth theorists are keen to show that minority groups who have been colonised and located as abject can challenge fixed modes of representation and open up spaces for transgression. (Horton 2001, 220)

Welsh challenges the dominant stereotypical construction of Scottishness not only by re-writing the general Scottish point of view but by focusing on the point of view of those who are on the periphery of a marginalised Scotland. Carla Sassi claims that contemporary Scottish literature has avoided the pitfall of re-writing that often results in essentialist, backward-oriented postcolonial discourse:

Here […] resistance to cultural assimilation has not led to a desire to set back the hands of time and to revert to a pre-colonial, 'unmixed' past, nor to construct a monolithic definition of Scottishness, shaped on that very model (that of the centralised nation-state) which determined its marginalisation. (Sassi 2005, 4)

The renunciation of a monolithic Scottish culture is emphasised in the novel by Welsh's refusal to present simple binaries. In particular, he challenges stereotypes with regard to the novel's setting, further complicating notions of centre and periphery by revealing the internal hegemonic relationships between Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as between Edinburgh and Leith. As Michael Gardiner (2003, 104) asserts, "Irvine Welsh's throwing a spanner into the image of the proud British city of Edinburgh is one salient point in an increasingly apparent modern tradition of interventions into this history of obedience". The construction of Edinburgh as a British city is particularly important in contrast to the construction of Glasgow as a Scottish city. Renton points out that within Scotland the construction of a rough, working-class identity is alleged to be only authentic when it originates in Glasgow: "Ah've never met one Weedjie [Glaswegian] whae didnae think that they are the only genuinely suffering proletarians in Scotland, Western Europe, the World. Weedjie experience ay hardship is the only relevant experience ay it" (*TS* 191). In addition to criticising the dominance of Glasgow as the sole representative of working-class identity, Welsh questions the hegemonic image of an Edinburgh that is predominantly perceived as a picturesque tourist attraction by focusing on Leith as a prototype for the marginalised spaces of the city:

[…] the parts of the city that are features are not those in the Old and New Towns that would make Edinburgh a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995; rather they are the unpicturesque marginalized areas, including Leith. […] [T]he city of *Trainspotting* is one described in all its particulars (real places and streets), traversed on foot and by bus and taxi rather than (as in Ian Rankin's Rebus novels) private car. It is a city divided in various ways: by economics, by drugs (or drug dealers), by familiarity. (Morace 2007a, 40)

By making Leith the centre of his narration, Welsh enacts the same marginalisation on Edinburgh as tourist hotspot (Morace 2007a, 40). Thus, the binary postcolonial opposition of English versus Scottish is further complicated, as Welsh constructs the relationship between Edinburgh and Leith as a postcolonial one "insofar as the capital city has forcibly amalgamated Leith and re-figured it as the 'outskirts of Edinburgh' rather than an autonomous space" (MacLeod 2008, 89). This issue of socio-economic marginalisation is further emphasised by the symbol of the derelict train station in Leith and the name of the novel: "Dependent on the dole and and petty crime to support their habit, [the characters in the novel] have nothing to do but 'train spot'—watch the world pass by their meaningless lives as the English middle classes once indulged an inane hobby" (Farred 2004, 217).

All the issues raised in *Trainspotting* regarding Scotland's status as an oppressed colony of England are explicitly explored again in Welsh's second novel *Marabou Stork Nightmares* (1995). The protagonist, Roy Strang, is in a coma after trying to kill himself. In his comatose dreams he projects himself into a fantasy world where he sets out to kill a Marabou Stork. Flashbacks provide Roy's life story, which includes sexual abuse and violence perpetrated against him as well as his part in football hooliganism and a gang rape. Roy's family temporarily emigrates from Scotland to South Africa, and Roy sees strong parallels in the oppression of blacks in Apartheid South Africa and the oppression of the working class in Scotland:

Edinburgh to me represented serfdom. I realised that it was exactly the same situation as Johannesburg; the only difference was that the Kaffirs were white and called schemies or draftpaks. Back in Edinburgh, we would be Kaffirs; condemned to live out or lives in townships like Muirhouse or So-Wester-Hailes-To or Niddrie, self-contained camps with fuck all in them, miles fae the toon. Brought in tae dae the crap jobs that nae other cunt wanted tae dae, then hassled by the polis if we hung around at night in groups. Edinburgh had the same politics as Johannesburg; it had the same politics as any city. (*MSN* 80)

This passage has often been discussed and Ellen-Raïsa Jackson and Willy Maley rightly call it provocative when they outline the debates in response to the novel:

Welsh plays upon Edinburgh's imperial past and cosmopolitan pretences throughout his work, but his most provocative move comes when he draws an explicit analogy between the plight of Scotland's urban poor and the victims of apartheid in South Africa, a comparison whose appropriateness has been challenged by critics who see it as an act of appropriation. But as ideas about Otherness become more sophisticated, questions of class, race, gender and national identity are being increasingly applied across cultures, and social and political segregation is seen to have various analogues. (Jackson & Maley 2000, 188)

In parallel to the depiction of Scotland as postcolonial in *Trainspotting*, *Marabou Stork Nightmares* does not draw a simplistic binary comparison of the postcolonial states of Scotland and South Africa. While the postcolonial perspective is not unusual of a Scottish novel written in the early 1990s, as Robert Morace contends, the novel is nevertheless aware of the ambiguous role of Scotland in the British Empire:

Through Roy's African fantasy and the Strang family's brief immigrant sojourn, Welsh confronts Scotland's complex participation in the British Empire: in the one as self-proclaimed (and often self-deluded and self-aggrandizing) explorers, rescuers and missionaries, in the other as just a handful of the many working-class Scots who felt compelled to leave Scotland […]. (Morace 2007a, 107)

His own experience of marginalisation in Scotland does not lead Roy to be suspicious of these constructions of power. Rather, he enjoys being part of the allegedly superior ruling class in South Africa, as "[…] the colonial African setting allows Roy to escape his feelings of degradation in Scotland and recall the feelings of racial superiority and empowerment that his few childhood years in South Africa offered him" (March 2002, 17).

Another parallel between Welsh's first two novels is the de-centring of the middle-class Scottish experience and, thus, a re-writing of history with a focus on the working-class experience. Roy calls the fantasy world of his coma dreams 'Jamboland', which according to Cristie L. March is an allusion to Edinburgh, as "Jambo is a slang Hibernian term for a Hearts supporter in football" (March 2002, 26). Furthermore, March demonstrates that, for example, the football riots in which Roy takes part in the novel are based on real events, and calls the alteration of these small details a "micro-revision of Scottish history [that] reflects a larger tendency to localise working-class experience […]" (March 2002, 26).

The fact that Scotland's postcolonial status is not reduced to being a part of an English/Scottish binary in Welsh's novels but is instead shown to reveal a zigzag of contradictions has been praised by various critics (see, for example, Sassi 2005; Schoene 2007b). As the novels examined above were predominantly written in the 1990s and, thus, before devolution, another novel will be analysed in detail in order to ascertain whether the perception of Scotland as a colony changed after devolution began in 1998. Kevin MacNeil's novel *The Stornoway Way* was first published in 2005 and is thus firmly located in the time frame between the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 and the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. *The Stornoway Way* is Kevin MacNeil's debut novel. MacNeil is a native of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, and, in addition to his novels, has published plays and poetry both in Gaelic and in English. *The Stornoway Way* is described on its cover as 'the best Scottish book since *Trainspotting*', placing it firmly in the tradition of Scottish 'in-yer-face' writing in the vein of Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner, among others. The significance of alcohol is underlined by the depiction of a bottle

that becomes progressively emptier in the place of chapter numbers. The novel presents an allegedly authentic manuscript by an anonymous writer who has chosen the pseudonym R. Stornoway and sent it to Kevin MacNeil for publication. R. Stornoway has returned to Lewis after travelling as a busker. The novel begins with an "Author's note" outlining the contact between the two writers (*SW* ix–xv). The first part of the novel is interrupted by a chapter by MacNeil describing an encounter with Stornoway (*SW* 175–180) and alluding to an ongoing friendship between the two. The chapter ends with MacNeil's invitation to Stornoway to write down what is depressing him. The second part of the novel then accordingly outlines the events prior to Stornoway's return to Lewis. The concluding third part consists of a "Letter to Kevin, with Permission to Publish", in which Stornoway narrates his imminent suicide. In the "Acknowledgements" Kevin MacNeil thanks "the man known herein as R. Stornoway for his honesty" (*SW* 251), thus further purporting the myth of editorship rather than authorship. This technique is vaguely reminiscent of James Macpherson's *Ossian*, a key text of the Gaelic Revival, since MacNeil also attempts to map a mythology for the Outer Hebrides here, albeit a dark and satirical one. Furthermore, Schoene points out that the novel is very much part of a Scottish tradition of writing:

From the first page *The Stornoway Way* connects with two traditional strands of modern Scottish writing, that of the drug-fuelled nationalist invective and that of the tale of the doppelgänger, converging in a well-rehearsed portrayal of true (albeit 'backwater') Scotland's indigenous culture pitted more or less hopelessly against an encroaching imperialist world that threatens to assimilate its uniqueness. (Schoene 2007c, 12)

Similarly to *Trainspotting*, *The Stornoway Way* is written from a postcolonial point of view. Scotland in general, and Lewis or the Islands specifically, is placed in an antagonistic relationship to England, while the novel focuses on the periphery of Scotland. In this case, the marginalisation is quite literal, as the novel mainly takes place in Stornoway, the biggest city on Lewis, an island of the Outer Hebrides off the north-western coast of Scotland. The importance of the location for the development of the main character is emphatically stated on the first page with the following quotation, which is repeated on the last page that precedes the acknowledgements and only contains the quotation on an otherwise blank page: "We are who we are because we grew up the Stornoway way. We do not live in the back of beyond we live in the very heart of beyond" (*SW* 247). Throughout the text, Stornoway laments the constant marginalisation of Lewis and presents this as the major reason for his dark and depressed mood. The first chapter is called "Learn Your Own Way to Hold the Map", and refers to a map of Scotland printed before the chapter. Scotland is depicted upside down, marked only with the cities of Stornoway on Lewis, now located in the south-east, and Edinburgh, accordingly found in the north. Stornoway stresses that identity construction depends on positionality when he states that "[e]veryone needs to learn their own way to hold a map. For me the Island looks better upside down, with our blood relatives in Scandinavia to the left, our blood relatives in Ireland to the right" (*SW* 18). The effect of this marginalisation, which he sees continued in the tilted maps of the weather report on TV, is accordingly described: "No bastards wonder we're the ways we are. The most effective brutality is subtle; it has to be subtly evinced" (*SW* 18).

The first part of the novel, set in Lewis, describes an array of alcohol-hazed encounters and hangovers. Parallel to the characters' self-destructive behaviour in *Trainspotting*, Stornoway describes his life in terms of debasement and abjection. The sole reason for this depressing and futile outlook on life is found in the marginalisation of the Celtic fringe by the English. Stornoway links the Gaels explicitly to other postcolonial people:

Like Native Africans and Native North Americans and Aboriginal Australasians, we Gaidheals were stripped of the right to our own land, our own heritage. In our case—most humiliatingly—we were rounded up like sheep to make way *for* sheep. Treated like the scum that scum wipe off their boots so that other scum can look down on them. Our language, code of dress, social structure, customs and land all stolen from us. […] Nowadays, colonized by a nation of shopkeepers, we're a nation of shopkeepers' assistants. (*SW* 128)

Although Stornoway emphasises the regional identity of a group within Scotland when he links the Gaelic-speaking inhabitants of Scotland to Africans and Native Americans, his last sentence relates to the Scottish nation in general. It is this absence of nationhood in particular that he lists in his suicide note as the reason for his act, along with other absences in his life: "*Absence of nationhood, even. Scots—genuinely—are almost twice as likely to kill themselves as their oppressor-neighbours. I'm sorry, but that figures*" (original italics; *SW* 233). The binary relationship towards England is again underlined when Stornoway switches on the TV and flicks through the channels, seeing and hearing nothing but English voices:

BBC1. Ugly natured Cockneys screaming at each other. Zap! BBC2. Englishman commentates breathlessly as a pair of turtles copulate. […] Zap! 'S'TV. English lads out on the town […] Zap! Channel 4. English businessman, boasting about how much money he makes […]. (*SW* 52)

This culminates in his switching to the black screen of Channel 5—"Don't care about us in this part of the country—or don't realize we exist—and so we get no signal" (*SW* 52)—and the realisation that the island is quite literally outside the reception of British mainstream culture. At the same time, the coloniser's ignorance towards the local culture and its resultant loss of significance leads to a feeling of futility that inevitably leads to self-destructive behaviour: "The Western Islander's response to our diminishing way of life is that of the oppressed the world over, from Native American to Australasian aborigine: a powerful urge to drink oneself underground" (*SW* 16).

Apart from the feeling of inferiority and insignificance he experiences as a colonised subject, Stornoway blames the parochialism and conservatism caused by the isolation of Lewis for his inability to construct a stable identity: "*Lewis is a place of death and if it is published my book will say something about this and also about life and about the hurt that even small 'c' conservatism brings about; conservatism is diluted fascism*" (original italics; *SW* 228). It is only after his move to Edinburgh, described in the second part of the novel, that he feels free to explore his identity and regain his self-confidence:

I begin to half-believe in my potential. I can do what I want without any gossip, without penalty, without that loathed nosiness masquerading as concern. I am an untethered boat. For the first time in my life I am utterly anonymous. Far from the suffocating criticism of Lewis. That terrible ballast disappeared. (*SW* 184f.)

However, ironically, it is also in Edinburgh that he meets Eva, from Budapest, who falls pregnant after a night spent with Stornoway and then aborts the child without first consulting him. This abortion seems to be the trigger for the depression that ultimately leads to his suicide, which underlines the utterly bleak outlook on life that the novel presents. Stornoway's inability to construct a stable identity is sarcastically re-figured as something positive: "That's almost an advantage of being a fucktup *Leòdhasach*. Insecurity loves disguises, loves adopting new roles. You can't figure who you really are, so you can be anyone" (original emphasis; *SW* 142).

The parochialism of Lewis is exemplified by the "Lewisest Story Ever to Come From Lewis. Also known as the World's Greatest Small Town Story. Or, as the ministers know it, the Ultimate Parochial Story" (*SW* 89). The story is told by one of Stornoway's friends at a ceilidh and relates the events of the night of the moon landing, watched on TV by several neighbours during a rainy and stormy night. Mrs Muffin, the minister's wife, provides the punch line when she says, "No, but seriously, it's a brave, brave thing those men are doing and my prayers are with them. 'Going all that way,' she says, 'and on a night like this'" (*SW* 91).

Despite the self-debasement and feeling of inferiority that permeates the novel and is caused by Stornoway's lack of autonomy, the novel outspokenly pursues a re-writing of common stereotypes. Even in his first letter to Kevin MacNeil, Stornoway describes his writing thus: "*This is the writing of adversity: cultural, personal*" (*SW* xiv). Similarly, the author's note emphasises that the book "describes a place that is much more recognizable to the average Stornowegian than the island paradise that tourist industry pamphlets glorify" (*SW* x). In an interview with the *Scotsman*, Kevin MacNeil explicitly states that it was his intention to break with conventional, romanticised images of the Islands as a tourist destination: "I wanted to write a strong, literary novel that portrayed the fact that living on a Scottish island isn't like living in a paradise, the way that some people convey it" (The Scotsman 2005). However, this re-writing is ultimately undermined by MacNeil. In the first part of the book, footnotes provide not only translations for Gaelic words used in the text but also a range of further vocabulary. The intention of this, according to Stornoway, is to fight the misconception that Gaelic does not have vocabulary to describe modern words and also to underline the impossibility of translation, as he points out that "*most of these words do not have an Englishlanguage equivalent*" (original italics; *SW* 17). The majority of these definitions are comical and absurd, for example: "Circebost: *the uncontrollable wish you sometimes have that you could live in a cartoon world—unpancake yourself after a safe has fallen on your head, walk off cliffs and defy gravity until you notice you're midair, survive a fall of any height with a brief dusting afterwards, etc.* […]" (original italics; *SW* 54). This act of defiance seems to boost the value of Hebridean, in other words Gaelic, culture by insisting on its unique features. However, in a satirical move only accessible to Gaelic speakers, the footnotes do not list real vocabulary but rather Gaelic place names, which the interviewer in the *Scotsman* called "a sly in-joke at the expense of non-Gaelic-speakers" (The Scotsman 2005).

Despite its focus on the adversity towards the English, who, as tourists, are "English incomers patronizing us and destroying our culture and abusing our children and opening fucking traditional craft shops" (*SW* 18), the novel also contains instances where this antagonism is transcended and the importance of globalisation in eliminating local culture is recognised. This is initially visible in the opening author's note, which states that "[the Isle of Lewis's] culture *is* indeed conforming, both subtly and overtly, to the spread of globalization" (original emphasis; *SW* x). This is exemplified in the novel through the example of whisky, which is of paramount importance to all of the characters in the novel. When Stornoway visits a friend who serves Jack Daniel's he is affronted: "I frown. 'What's wrong with proper whiskey? Why the drink-it-for-the-shitey-image stuff? […]' 'It's just the American alternative.' 'Fucking ass-kicking Americans, issit?'" (*SW* 131). The inability to regard globalisation as a positive development that can help to overcome the binary relationship with England by forming virtual bonds with other countries has been criticised. This inability becomes evident in the reaction to a joke told at the ceilidh about how God created Scotland as a beautiful, lush country and, when asked if He was not too generous to the country, answers: "'*Wait until you see their neighbours*'" (original italics; *SW* 81). This is one of Stornoway's friends', Johnny Banana's, 'party piece' in which he lists the "Neighbours We Could Have Had", giving the name of every country in the world, stretching over more than three pages (*SW* 81–84). Schoene has rightly highlighted that this depiction ignores the benefits of a globalised, networked world that renders this criticism null and void:

While possibly intended to demonstrate the survival of an oral tradition of indigenous merry-making, it effectively puts a lid on the novel's self-obsessed interiority and irremediable postcolonial pathos, signalled by its oblivious blindness to the fact that in the twenty-first century these countries *are* of course Scotland's neighbours, or at least they could be if the Scots so chose. (original emphasis; Schoene 2007c, 14)

Schoene's criticism specifically relates to the "Neighbours We Could Have Had" passage, but could also be extended to the novel as a whole, as the majority of the text constitutes a rather unsubtle, one-sided argument that fails to transcend the binary relationship between Scotland and England in any significant way. *The Stornoway Way* does not offer complicating paradoxes like those evident in *Trainspotting* in order to transcend the opposition of Scotland and England, for example by engaging with Scotland's problematic position concerning the presence of British armed forces in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, in contrast to *Trainspotting*, which offers a post-national or European framework as a possible solution for a new identity, *The Stornoway Way* ends on a depressing and hopeless note with the protagonist's suicide; his depression brought on by the abortion of his child, thus predicting the metaphorical death of a future. Schoene also points out that this lack of an alternative vision makes the novel fall behind the achievements of Scottish literature in the 21st century, stating that

[…] MacNeil's novel ultimately appears dishearteningly out of time, a selfdefeatist swansong unattuned to the majority of new Scottish literature's experimentation with less isolationist and more cosmopolitan and 'planetary' modes of narration. No fruitful countervision emerges from *The Stornoway Way* […]. (Schoene 2007c, 13)

Nevertheless, this severe criticism should be qualified. In hindsight, the novel seems not to be "dishearteningly out of time" considering the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, which showed that feelings of being oppressed are still very much present in a significant part of the Scottish population. Despite its simplistic depiction of the relationship between Scotland and England and its bleak outlook, the novel still proves successful in capturing the mood of much of the Scottish population following devolution.

#### **3.3 Conclusion: Postcolonial Scotland in Fiction**

As the analysis above has shown, even after devolution, Scottish fiction displays an ambivalent feeling towards England. However, since the influence of globalisation on entering the 21st century continues, it has become increasingly obvious that Scotland is located in networks of a larger, European, or even global, scale. This has led some writers to speculate whether Scotland could ever be truly independent and whether its inevitable involvement in a global world order will merely mean being on the receiving end of yet another hegemonic partner. Robert Crawford sees this issue as prevalent in contemporary fiction:

What is obvious is that a number of writers have raised the matter of Scottish independence in the context of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Part of the motivation here may be to highlight the fact that these were wars in which Scotland as a nation lacked any specific say: the Scottish Government (though wishing, for instance, to rid Scotland of nuclear weapons) has no control over UK foreign or defence policy. (Crawford 2014, 223)

One example for this is the character Carl in Welsh's *Glue*, who ponders on the concept of Britain and declares it to be artificial, since it was a "PR con in the service of the Empire", and stresses that the new hegemonic power is the USA (Welsh [2001] 2002, 489). This new reality leaves no feasible alternative for Scottish nationalism, since even a devolved, independent Scotland would be exposed to these hierarchies of power:

Carl's thoughts here on Britishness position nationality directly in relation to global circuits of power and multinational capital that are in perpetual states of transformation and readaptation. Hence, the idea of a new, plural and diverse Scotland […] is debunked by an awareness of the socio-economic disadvantage maintained by the newly devolved nation and its imbrication in these global networks of power. (Kelly 2005, 181)

As early as 2004 Tom Nairn pointed out in his trademark figurative language that the face of the enemy has changed considerably over time and that in the 21st century England itself is subject to an asymmetrical power relation:

In the 1970s, when the lineaments of break-up first showed through, the smaller UK countries still imagined themselves as nation-states—that is, frustrated nationalities of the old order. By the year 2000, they were less frustrated, but the old order had largely disappeared. The dominant nation from which they sought political emancipation had become itself a new style of colony—the sergeant-major and cheer-leader of American-led globalisation. Once conceived as a stepping stone towards final independence, devolution now risks turning into a life-sentence as fleas upon the monkey of the Washington organ-grinder. (Nairn 2004, 29)

The relationship between Scotland (as part of the UK) and the United States is elegantly illustrated in Iain Bank's novel *The Steep Approach to Garbadale* (2007). The novel relays the events surrounding a family meeting in Scotland to discuss the takeover of the family- controlled company by an American corporation that is interested in it due to the bestselling board game—with the telling name *Empire!* invented by their great-grandfather in the 19th century. Besides the many internal conflicts that arise between the family members during their stay at the family estate, the heirs are torn between the wish to preserve their heritage and the prospect of gaining a fortune from the deal. During the course of the discussions, Alban gives a strong statement against the sale:

Personally, I believe that when faced with an imperial power—and let's not kid ourselves, that's exactly what the USA is—one ought to do everything non-violent that one can to resist it, just on principle. […] Why do I think we shouldn't sell? Purely because of the politics of it. Resist imperialism, whether it's military or cultural. (Banks 2007, 351f.)

It is the USA as a neo-imperial power that is depicted as the opponent of Scotland and its family values. Employing the vocabulary of resistance, Alban deliberately presupposes a state of oppression that has to be resisted. Thus, the perception of Scotland as oppressed is perpetuated here, and it is only the oppressor that has changed, from England to the US as a proxy for the economic forces of globalisation.

To conclude, the analysis of Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* as well as Kevin Mac-Neil's *The Stornoway Way* has shown that Scotland is firmly positioned as opposed to England. Scotland is portrayed as oppressed, which leads to a feeling of lost self-worth and of abjection. At the same time, *Trainspotting* does not rely on the depiction of a stereotyped binary but instead reveals internal contradictions and an awareness of Scotland's ambiguous role within Britain. Both novels also serve the function of resisting a stereotypical portrayal of Scotland, positioning their characters in marginalised spaces within a Scotland itself seen as marginalised. This is evident in both texts, which describe their settings in opposition to the sugarcoated images of tourism. *The Stornoway Way* shows that Scotland's feeling of being a marginalised victim of oppression prevails even after devolution. Simultaneously, this novel also reveals a retrogressive move, as it resorts to simplified binaries rather than engaging with the complexities of Scotland and England's relationship with one another. However, the transcendence of restrictive binary relationships is also achieved by several novels that engage with power relations in global networks and characterise the influence of the USA as imperial.

## **4. The Queen's English?—Vernacular Language in Scottish Fiction**

The languages most commonly associated with Scotland are English, Gaelic and Scots.34 The 2011 Scottish Census for the first time included questions about the ability to read, write, speak and understand Scots: 30.1% of people over the age of three claimed to be able to speak Scots, whereas only 1.1% said that, other than English, they used Scots at home. In respect to Gaelic, the results suggested that 1.1% of the Scottish population are able to speak it and only 0.5% use it at home as a language other than English (National Records of Scotland 2015). It is only recently that the link between Gaelic poetry and postcolonial theory has been comprehensively analysed by Silke Stroh in her volume *Uneasy Subjects. Postcolonialism and Scottish Gaelic Poetry* (2011). Due to the small number of Gaelic speakers as well as the regional limitation of Gaelic mainly to the Highlands and Islands, however, the focus here will be on the use of Scots in contemporary fiction. Although the European Union has recognised Scots as a 'minority language' since 2001, the United Kingdom has not followed this move, and it was only in 2007 that the Scottish Executive prioritised the issue in their strategy paper *A Strategy for Scotland's Languages* (Unger 2010, 103), promising to promote the Scots language.

Language is an integral part of identity and, thus, the first focus of this study regarding a postcolonial reading of the Scottish novel. In a postcolonial context the question of contact between cultures is often negotiated in terms of language and understanding. The coloniser usually brings their language to a new territory and expects culture to be built on its foundation, denying the validity of indigenous or vernacular languages (see, for example, Young 2001, 393). Therefore, the main reason for the global expansion of the English language can be traced back to the vast spread of the British Empire. A paradigmatic example for postcolonial language use can be found in the opposition of the African writers Chinua Achebe, who published in English, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who changed his name back from the anglicised James Ngugi and started writing in his native language, Gikuyu, renouncing English as the language of the coloniser.

The same process of a 'dominator' or coloniser promoting a certain language as the 'standard' was evident in Scotland after the Union of Crowns, albeit in a different manner. After the court of King James VI moved to London, southern accents became the norm, and Scots wishing to advance in society attempted to sound as English as possible (Crawford 1992, 24).

In regard to Scotland, the term 'English' proves ambivalent, as it can refer to a language that is also considered a 'native' tongue in Scotland as part of the British Isles or that can be recognised as the imposed language of the coloniser who

<sup>34</sup> As Michael Gardiner (2005, 121f.) has adamantly pointed out, these should not be called 'native languages', as languages cannot be qualified in terms of race and/or nationality.

ensured it became the dominant language where, without colonial contact, Scots and Gaelic would have prevailed. Ismail S. Talib highlights this problem in his introductory volume *The Language of Postcolonial Literature*:

The word 'English' refers to both ethnicity and language. Its double meaning underlines a complication that is still with us. The word *English* also has a link to *nationality*, viewed in terms of residence, a sense of belonging to a community, or the citizenship of an existing political state. (original emphasis; Talib 2006, 3)

This is also apparent in the confusion whereby 'England' is used as a metonymy for 'the United Kingdom'. Many Scottish writers feel a certain uneasiness at being subsumed under the label of 'English Literature'. Talib's answer to this dilemma reveals exactly the type of ignorance he is trying to pre-empt, when he states: "For writers writing in English but who do not reside in Britain, it is generally agreed that the term literature in English is more appropriate" (Talib 2006, 5). This strategy that is aimed at including writers such as Salman Rushdie at the same time allows all Scottish, Welsh and Northern-Irish writers to be subsumed under the label of 'English Literature'.

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin describe two strategies regarding postcolonial language use, both of which are evident in contemporary Scottish fiction: abrogation and appropriation. Abrogation is defined as "[…] a refusal of the categories of the imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusionary standard of normative or 'correct' usage, and its assumption of a traditional and fixed meaning 'inscribed' in the words" (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 37). Abrogation is obvious in contemporary Scottish fiction, which often employs the vernacular and defies the alleged superiority of Standard English with Received Pronunciation. This is also James Kelman's objective when he endeavours to establish a thoroughly Scottish narrative voice, which is distinctively different from the majority of English literature. However, abrogation can only be meaningful if it is combined with appropriation of the language of the imperial culture; utilised on its own, abrogation will simply consist of a reversal of power relations, making the vernacular language normative (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin [1989] 2008, 37f.). This is evident in Hugh MacDiarmid's strategy during the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, in which he attempted to establish 'synthetic Scots' as a national language. Today, Scottish fiction shows great variety, with both strategies, abrogation and appropriation, being found in narration, rather than attempts at a simple reversal:

It seems to me that the real issue at stake in such writing has been to destabilise all monological narrative-cultural authority *per se*. In other words it is not sufficient simply to exchange one kind of textual and cultural authority for another—replacing an omniscient narrator in English with one in Scots. The value of the writing we have been exploring is that the linguistic and formal tensions of the conditions of its production have led it (consciously or otherwise) to call into question *all* socially, culturally and technically normative procedures and mechanisms. (original emphasis; Watson 1998, 33)

In this chapter, two novels will be analysed regarding their use of language in a postcolonial context. A short overview of the historical development of Scots will be given, which will subsequently be combined with an analysis of the linguistic debate as to whether Scots should be regarded as a language, a dialect or an accent. A second focus in this section will be on Hugh MacDiarmid as a prime representative of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, whose work is of particular interest due to his belief that language use is a choice that has political implications. A short overview of the use of Scots in contemporary fiction will then be given, followed by an exploration of its postcolonial dimension. Following this, the analysis of Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* will show how vernacular language is used both in form and in content in order to emphasise difference. In addition to this function of the vernacular, Scottish contemporary fiction often shows the ability or even the necessity to adapt the register to the dominant or desired discourse. In the ensuing section, James Kelman's political poetics will be analysed with the help of his novel *How Late it Was, How Late* (1994). Kelman is highly conscious of his preference of the vernacular to Standard English in his narrative voices and pursues a political agenda in enacting this preference. Welsh's and Kelman's views on language use will be scrutinised and put into a postcolonial context. In conclusion, all of these analyses will be evaluated in order to shed light on the ways in which postcolonial language is used in contemporary Scottish fiction.

#### **4.1 The Development and Importance of Scots in the Narrative Tradition**

Before turning to the historical development of Scots and the various reasons for its loss of importance, as well as to its many revivals, one key issue that sparks lively discussions amongst linguists should be raised. There are two prevailing theories about Scots: it is either considered a language in its own right, that is a discrete system with a variety of dialects, or seen as a dialect, namely a variety of English, with differences only found in lexis and syntax. According to Michael Gardiner, 'Scots' can refer to three things: firstly, the artificial literary dialect of the 1920s; secondly, a dialect of English; and, thirdly, 'Broad Scots', the language spoken in Scotland "with dialects corresponding to area but all constituting one linguistic continuum" (Gardiner 2005, 123). Gardiner claims that the current academic consensus favours the notion of Broad Scots, which is perceived as a separate language with a linguistic continuum of different dialects (Gardiner 2005, 122). However, despite his claims of consensus, many renowned scholars continue to argue for the case of Scots as a dialect. In 1985 J. Derrick McClure wrote about the attempts at the time to establish a unified Scots orthography (which is still not established today) and grammar: "[…] it cannot be realistically maintained that any form of contemporary spoken Scots is *functionally* an autonomous language" (original emphasis; McClure 1985, 207). Equally, in a more recent paper, Ronald Macaulay argues that the consensus remains that there is no substantial linguistic difference between Scots and English. Nonetheless, he posits that the differences between the two are significant enough to be of importance regarding the formation of Scottish identity (Macaulay 2004, 178). In addition to the fact that the differences seem to be exploited towards a certain goal, McClure (2010, 101) identifies the reasons behind claims of any such differences to be of an extra-linguistic nature: "Had social, political and cultural factors not been in operation, there would have been no case, either then or since, against considering them [Scots and English] as dialects of the same language". Within the scope of this analysis, this point is ultimately of more importance than the linguistic discussion as to whether Scots is a dialect or a language:35 the reasons why this controversy has been debated so vehemently is likely due to the negative connotations of Scots and the effect this has on Scottish national identity.

In his analysis *Language and Scottish Literature*, John Corbett distinguishes between four prevalent language forms in Scotland: rural Scots, urban Scots, Lallans and Standard Scottish English (Corbett 1997, 11–18). According to Corbett, Standard Scottish English (SSE) is the dominant form found in Scotland today: "[…] a variety of English which is a close cousin to the non-standard varieties of Scots, but which is even closer to English Standard English" (Corbett 1997, 10). While this assertion serves as a conclusion to this analysis of the debate on the status of Scots, it should be borne in mind that the question as to whether Scots is a language or a dialect misses the point anyway:

A failure to appreciate this elementary fact, that the status of a tongue is not a simple "language or dialect" choice but is dependent on a large number of factors both internal and external to the tongue itself, is the reason for the repetitiveness, and also the vacuity, of the discussions (which continue to the present day) of the status of Scots. (McClure 2000, 17)

This last point also aligns with the aims of this study: rather than undertaking a linguistic analysis of Scots, the cultural implications will be focused on and the questions will be pursued of why Scottish authors use Scots in their works and whether they have any agenda in doing so. Having established this, the following will scrutinise the history of the use of Scots.

Corbett characterises Old Scots as a mix of Old English and Old Norse, dating it back to 1100–1700 (Corbett 1997, 4). In the first half of the 15th century Scots replaced Latin as the dominant language, at least in Lowland Scotland (Lenz 1999, 4). At the end of the 15th century Scots had become clearly distinguishable from English, which was spoken in the South of Great Britain (Macaulay 2004, 179). During the 15th and 16th centuries Scots reached a high point (Unger 2010, 101) and, according to J. Derrick McClure (2010, 99f.), developed "[…] to the status of one of the greatest literary languages in Europe". However, the 16th century was

<sup>35</sup> But for more details on this discussion see, for example, Aitken (1984), Corbett (1997), and McClure (2000).

also a time of change and, as the London dialect gained prestige, English came to be considered a national standard language and, accordingly, Scots and English began to diverge even more:

As far as the written language was concerned, that is, the dialect continuum which had characterised the entire Middle English period was effectively gone; and in its place was a pair of mutually remote dialects each serving as the language of government, administration and letters in its own kingdom [namely England and Scotland]. (McClure 2010, 100)

At the same time, other developments in the 16th century gave rise to the dominance of the Southern dialect, i.e. English, across the whole of Great Britain, and it should also be noted that this language development did not occur in a homogeneous manner. Certainly, the Union of Crowns and the relocation of King James VI of Scotland to Westminster to become King James I of Great Britain in 1603 had already started the anglicisation of Scottish society as English became the language of the court. Another major influence can be attributed to the vernacular version of the Bible in English, the King James Bible. A Scottish equivalent was not available, which in turn made the King James Bible popular in Scotland as well, while the close link to religion also helped to raise the status of English in Scotland (Lenz 1999, 4). McClure sees the beginning of this change as twofold: "This gradual but inexorable disappearance of distinctively Scots features in printed texts is chronologically associated with the Reformation, but […] the fundamental cause was the advent of printing" (McClure 2010, 103). As the printing and publishing industry was mainly based in London in the 16th century, the vast majority of publications were in the English language (Görlach 1985, 23). Although the Reformation had a substantial influence on the decline of Scots, particularly in regard to its status,

[t]here is no reason to believe that a deliberate policy of linguistic Anglicisation was pursued by the Reforming party; but their success in the religious and political spheres laid Scotland and the Scots tongue open to English influence, which very soon undermined the integrity of both. (McClure 2000, 4)

The status of Scots changed again substantially in the 18th century, caused, amongst other things, by the successful integration of Scotland with the Union of Parliaments in 1707 as well as the Scottish Enlightenment. Although in some areas Scots and English were considered similar even in the early 18th century, this changed rapidly after the failure of the Jacobite Rising in 1745, as a result of which, on one hand, the interest in the Scots language was reinvigorated, while on the other the distinctiveness of Scots was more widely recognised (Corbett 1997, 8). Again, the reason for this is found in ideology, as, "[b]y the early eighteenth century, a new phase had begun in the *social* history of the language […] a deliberate revival of interest in Scotland's literary and cultural achievement of the past with a view to restoring national pride and confidence" (emphasis added; McClure 2010, 110). Despite this new interest in Scots as a literary language and as part of a distinctively Scottish identity, its social status declined significantly and the trend towards anglicisation continued. This led to the stigmatisation of Scots, enabling English to become the standard even throughout Scotland (Lenz 1999, 5f.). As already mentioned, McClure (2010, 104) draws attention to the effects of the Union of Crowns, which made speaking Standard English more socially desirable. The ability to adapt to the dominant discourse was also important regarding career opportunities: "Scots seeking to progress in British institutions were genuinely troubled by the way in which their language threatened to hinder them […]" (Crawford 1992, 27). Colin Milton (1992, 222) suggests that the general desire to standardise even the English language was largely advanced by the Scottish themselves, who saw the correct usage of English as a precondition for success in the United Kingdom. Aaron Kelly (2005, 21) cites James Beattie's *Scotticisms Arranged in Alphabetical Order, Designed to Correct Improprieties of Speech and Writing*, published in 1787, as an example of efforts at the time to sound less Scottish. Indeed, this orientation towards the South also seemed to emphasise the shortcomings of Scots:

During the Scottish Enlightenment, in the mid-eighteenth century, Scottish people of education increasingly preferred English, looking toward the sophisticated culture south of the Border for their literary models; and their interest in investigating their ancient historic origin did not lead them to a more favourable attitude towards the Scots language of their own time. (Yoneyama 2010, 245)

Scots was seen as increasingly archaic, as most of its vocabulary remained unchanged compared to that found in historical sources and, thus, was perceived as lacking terms for modern concepts (Lenz 1999, 5).

Another factor that undermined the status of Scots was the lack of a standardised orthography or grammar. In order to address this, writers and poets in particular attempted to develop comprehensive rules for Scots, the most acknowledged of which attempt was the so-called Makars' Style Sheet, which was put together in 1947 by writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance: this enterprise was driven by nationalistic motivations, as the writers perceived the establishment of a Scots national literary tradition unfeasible while Scots spelling continued to be based on English (McClure 1985, 205). McClure summarises the key developments that damaged the social status of Scots:

Scots […] has been spoiled by two conflicting developments: on the one hand, the characteristics which made it distinctive in earlier times have been obscured or lost by a wilful assimilation to the norms of metropolitan English; on the other, an ill-considered attempt to counter this has taken the form of an unregulated importation, not of words and phrases characteristic of the language in its years of uninterrupted independent development, but merely (or at least predominantly) of illiterate and vulgar expressions. (McClure 2010, 116f.)

Thus, not only was Scots perceived to be an archaic dialect, but it was also associated with an alleged inferiority to English. In a postcolonial context, this inferiority was construed as a seemingly positive authenticity which itself further underlined the asymmetrical relationship between Scotland and England: "Scotland seemed a prime location for noble savagery, so the Scots language seemed more 'authentic' or 'purer' than its southern counterpart" (Corbett 1997, 9). This association of national identity with language has contributed significantly to the current situation, in which dialect is acceptable in speech and in literary writing, whereas in any official writing only Standard English is acceptable. Furthermore, the use of Scots is not only linked to informal situations but also closely associated with the working class, since the newly established middle class in the 19th century mainly spoke in Standard English (Lenz 1999, 6f.).36

Ronald Macaulay lists several factors that contributed to the perception of the Scots vernacular as distinctive to Scotland and as a marker of difference, which also accounts for the language's conservatism:

[…] [T]he desire of a minority group to maintain its distinctiveness from the dominant majority group; a relatively low level of prosperity, which limited social mobility and contributed more to emigration than immigration; a cultural traditionalism that takes many forms; the Scots' view of their national character; and no doubt many other [factors]. (Macaulay 2004, 180)

The use of vernacular as a marker of difference and of an expression of national identity is only possible if a standardised speech form exists that is deemed to be more prestigious, in this case English. As Talib points out, the privileging of one particular dialect as the national standard is closely linked to economic power:

The development of what is regarded as 'good' or 'standard' English is a case in point. Its development, especially with regard to pronounciation, was determined by the socio-economic dominance of certain regions within England itself. […] The norm of what 'good' or 'standard' English is, is derived from one of the dialects of English spoken in south-eastern England, which was relatively wealthier than other parts of England. (Talib 2006, 14)

Comparably to other (post)colonial contexts, for instance India, the higher prestige of Standard English in relation to other languages and dialects was further strengthened by the centrally organised school system:

[Scots'] social prestige, declining since at least the eighteenth century, […] received a further blow from the 1872 Education Act, which replaced the parish schools established at the time of the Reformation with a uniform,

<sup>36</sup> This fact also explains the linguistic differences between Scotland's two major cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Edinburgh saw the rise of the new middle classes in the 19th century, which remains evident today, whereas in Glasgow a larger proportion of the population belongs to the working class and, consequently, more people use the vernacular.

centrally-directed system in which great emphasis was placed on speaking "properly"—that is, speaking Standard English. (McClure 2000, 18)

Colin Milton (1992) describes his own memories of corporal punishment in school as a result of answering the teacher's questions in his local vernacular. This experience of Scots as a language forbidden in the classroom has been treated in many Scottish works of fiction37 (Milton 1992, 224). In *Our Fathers* Andrew O'Hagan uses this common conflict, disagreement between student and teacher about which language to use, and reverses it:

The English teacher disliked me. He knew I was born in England. He was all for the Scots and the language of his forefathers, 'them that fought to unsheathe the iron tongue'. […] Our Scottish voices were canons and cutlasses to him. Our every word was an argument-in-the-making […]. He wanted us to know that the way we spoke was a political matter. 'They'll try hard to take your language away,' he said. (*OF* 28)

Rather than insisting on the use of English, the teacher here wants his students to speak the vernacular: "The children in Jamie Bawn's class are oppressed not by an English voice, but the insistent hectoring Scottish tones of Mr Buie" (Goldie 2005, 535). In the teacher's view, the Scottish language is closely linked to nationalism and the adherence to tradition as a compulsory part of patriotism. A supply teacher offers a different view to the pupils:

'This nation was not always so obsessed with the way it *sounded* on paper. For many years it paid great attention to other things as well. To the way it *thought*. The Scottish Enlightenment shows us that there is more than one way to make English Scottish. More than one way to write Scottish English. '*A strong Scots accent of the mind*,' she wrote. 'Discuss'. (original emphasis; *OF* 29)

Rather than returning to the 'old ways', the supply teacher encourages the students to make the 'foreign' language their own. This strategy is also described in Gilles Deleuze's essay "Language: Major and Minor". He argues that the deviance from the major language releases creative potential and differentiates between the major language, in this case English, and the minor language, here Scots. Deleuze posits that a resort to the vernacular inevitably means a return to tradition and a former identity, which he rejects. Instead, he highlights the fact that language is always changing and that the more effective way to deal with the tensions that arise between major and minor languages would be to "deterritorializ[e] the major language" (Deleuze 1993, 149), to change it according to one's own life, to make it one's own. This means the minority language is constantly in a process of alteration in

<sup>37</sup> Milton focuses his analysis of Scots as a language forbidden in the classroom on Lewis Grassic Gibbon's *A Scots Quair* and on the poetry of J.C. Milne and Charles Murray, as well as on William McIlvanney's *Docherty* (Milton 1992, 224‒234). See also Andrew O'Hagan's *Our Fathers* (1999) and Anne Donovan's short stories in *Hieroglyphics* (2001) for examples of the treatment of this subject in contemporary fiction.

relation to the majority language. Thus, a postcolonial society must regard "the majoritarian as a constant and homogeneous system; minorities as subsystems; and the minoritarian as a potential, creative and created, becoming" (Deleuze 1993, 150).

In defiance of the notion of vernacular Scots as an archaic and vulgar dialect, and in contrast to the perception of Standard English as educated, Scots has become a marker of national identity and, furthermore, a means to underline the perceived difference to England. However, this in itself constructs the vernacular as inferior. In the postcolonial context, there is a "[…] double reason for their [Scots'] form of speech: (1) to assert their Scottishness and separateness from the English and (2) to affirm their working-class loyalty and rejection of middle-class values" (Macaulay 2004, 180). This assertion encapsulates the main argument of this chapter: that the use of Scots has a postcolonial dimension, as in Scotland, similarly to other former colonies, the difference in speech from the colonial power is perceived as negative because the speakers do not adhere to the dominant standard of the coloniser, which is regarded as cultured and ultimately superior. The importance of language use is further underlined by the fact that Scots consciously use language to mark their national identity.

Despite the aspiration for linguistic correctness and the unifying tendencies supported by, amongst other things, the centrally organised school system, Scots regained importance in the 18th century during the so-called Vernacular Revival, and was used in particular in poetry. Derrick McClure points out contrasting tendencies:

As the Vernacular Revival progressed, and as the national self-confidence was restored by the enormous cultural and intellectual achievements of the Enlightenment, perceptions of the status of Scots became increasingly confused. The fashionable disdain for it […] became, if anything, still more marked; yet the quality and popularity of recent poetry in the language, culminating of course with Burns, not only underpinned its survival as a spoken vernacular but encouraged the continuing attention to it by scholars and literati. (Mc-Clure 2010, 114)

The popularity of Robert Burns' poems and songs certainly helped the Vernacular Revival, which, according to Donald Macaulay, appeared "[d]espite the anglicizing effect of the use of English in the church, schools, administration, and all written materials […]" (Macaulay 2004, 179). The writers of this time constructed a marked difference between Scots and English and regarded the former to be full of energy in contrast to "passionless" English (Grieve 2011, 25). The next considerable boost in the popularity of Scots appeared with the widely popular historical novels of Walter Scott. Scott wrote in Standard English, but used the vernacular in the direct speech of some of his characters. Here, the vernacular almost always marks a working-class background and often rural, humble origins. Thus, Scots was also transferred to narrative fiction, although the fact that Scots is solely used in dialogue confirmed the prejudice against Scots as a dialect only acceptable in spoken language (Lenz 1999, 11). In spite of being criticised for limiting the use of the vernacular to his lower-status characters, through this tactic Scott aided the dissemination of his novels: "[…] he may have 'betrayed' Scots by restricting it to the dialogues of some of his novels—but this fact made his novels readable and acceptable outside Scotland" (Görlach 1985, 26).

In combination with the rise of nationalism, the interest in Scots increased again in the 1920s and 1930s. Although, as Clausdirk Pollner points out, Scots did not have a high standing, it was considerably present in folk art:

In the minds of the Scottish people by this time [the beginning of the 20th century] Scots had been firmly relegated to the realm of songs, poetry, music-hall banter and "realistic" dialogue in novels, short stories etc., where it is usually the "lower orders" that are characterised by its use, and to two or three locally defined remote and rural dialects such as those of Buchan/the Northeast, the Scottish Borders, and Dumfries and Galloway. (Pollner 2007, 88)

The most prominent personality associated with the so-called Literary Renaissance is the poet Christopher Murray Grieve, better known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid. MacDiarmid argued for the use of a form of Scots he called 'synthetic Scots', based on the Lallans dialect. He argued that the Scots spoken in Scotland at the beginning of the 20th century was confined to the common people, and therefore could not be used for contemporary literature. Thus, he created an artificial dialect that he drew from historical sources, such as John Jamieson's Scots dictionary. This compositional method left traces in his work: "In later poems in Scots and English, a predominance of unusual words beginning with the same letter, or from the same part of the alphabet is also testament to this practice" (Grieve 2011, 27). Although he was a speaker of Standard English, MacDiarmid insisted that English was not his native language (Grieve 2011, 30). In the beginning not concerned with consistent spelling and widely using the 'apologetic apostrophe'38 to make his texts accessible for English speakers, MacDiarmid later changed his opinions "[…] and was persuaded to place a notice in *The Scotsman* to the effect that he desired any subsequent collection of his poems to be respelled in accordance with the Scots Style Guide" (Grieve 2011, 32). This emphasises the fact that MacDiarmid pursued a political agenda with the use of Scots in his poetry, maintaining that Lallans should become Scotland's national language. Although MacDiarmid's work is full of contradictions (his views on orthography, for instance), as were his political positions (he was a member of the National Party of Scotland as well as of the Communist Party—and was later

<sup>38</sup> The term 'apologetic apostrophe' is used to describe the apostrophes in "forms that supply an apostrophe where the Scots word 'misses' a sound which is present in its Standard English cognate: *ha'e* for *have*, *fu'* for *full*, *sparin'* for *sparing* and so on." (original emphasis; Grieve 2011, 32)

expelled from both), his achievement can be seen in his reinvigoration of the importance of the traditional Scottish vernacular:

[A] major change in the status of Scots occurred when Grieve and his successors insisted on the association of Scots with, not a socially restricted section of the Scottish nation, but the nation itself; and began to use the language as a counter in arguments on Scotland's actual and desired political status. (McClure 2000, 22)

While MacDiarmid's artificial dialect did not become a national language of Scotland, he can nevertheless be credited with reinitiating an important debate that began at the same time as the debate on Scottish nationalism (of course, this was no coincidence). However, MacDiarmid's views were never the consensus in Scotland. Edwin Muir, MacDiarmid's contemporary and equally notable poet, supported the opposite view; due to its historical development and its fragmentation, Muir saw Scots as a parochial language that was closely associated with specific locations and classes and thus could never represent the Scottish nation as a whole. He argued that by using vernacular Scots in literature, Scotland would be represented heterogeneously whereas the idea of the nation could only be conveyed in homogeneity. He compares Scotland's to Ireland's situation:

[…] Scotland can only create a national literature by writing in English. This may sound paradoxical: in a support of it I can only advance my whole case in regard to the Scots language […] and the contemporary case of Ireland. […] Ireland produced a national literature not by clinging to Irish dialect, but by adopting English and making it into a language fit for all its purposes. […] The difference between contemporary Irish and contemporary Scottish literature is that the first is central and homogeneous, and the second is parochial and conglomerate; and this is because it does not possess an organ for the expression of a whole and unambiguous nationality. Scots dialect poetry represents Scotland in bits and patches, and in doing that it is no doubt a faithful enough image of the present divided state of Scotland. […] And until Scottish literature has an adequate language, it cannot exist. Scotland will remain a mere collection of districts. (Muir [1936] 1982, 111f.)

However, both poets agree on the need for a Scottish national language in order to express what Muir called "the central reality of Scotland" (Muir [1936] 1982, 112).

In narrative fiction, the majority of Scottish writers followed the convention established by Walter Scott, using English for narration and Scots vernacular for dialogue. A significant exception is Lewis Grassic Gibbon, whose major work, the trilogy *A Scots Quair* (1932–1934), also influenced the Scottish Literary Renaissance considerably. Gibbon makes use of the vernacular not only in dialogue but also in the descriptive passages of his novels, which was unusual at the time, and remains so today, as the following will demonstrate. Thus, in the first novel in this trilogy, *Sunset Song*, "[…] the usual clear distinction between narrative and dialogue is blurred; in both, Gibbon's style reflects 'the rhythms and cadences of Scots spoken speech' […]" (Milton 1992, 235). In this way the aforementioned difference in function of Scots and English is constructed within the novel, albeit with different implications: Scots is seen as the appropriate language for the description of feelings and passion, whereas English is constructed as the vehicle for a more rational and intellectual thinking (Milton 1992, 227f.).

Gibbon is a prominent example of a development that is visible throughout the 20th century. The general diversification of postmodern Scottish fiction also allows more freedom concerning language use and narrative perspective. Contemporary writers such as James Kelman or Irvine Welsh move between Standard English and Scots "according to context and nuance, as do most Scottish people" (Gardiner 2005, 128). It should be noted that not only in Scotland but also in Great Britain in general the trend is to move away from Received Pronunciation, as the common practice of an institution as conservative as the BBC clearly proves (Gardiner 2005, 128). Jeremy Scott (2005, 1) states that the "unifying concern with issues of 'voice' in narrative" is a trend particularly in Scottish fiction and that the reasons that this is peculiar for the Scottish context can be found in the wish to create a contrast to Standard English and to contrast oral and written forms of language. This subsequently leads to his observation that in Scottish narrative fiction the authority of the narrator is more often replaced by the voice of the characters (Scott 2005, 2). Apart from the diversification of literature in general, another reason for vernacular language becoming more acceptable in narrative fiction can be found in the fact that the 20th century saw the working class becoming established in fiction both in terms of authors and in terms of characters (Lenz 1999, 14).

While this development has resulted in the long overdue representation of formerly marginalised groups in literature, it also brought with it "[…] a tendency towards the mundane and repetitive in demotic narratives, a certain belligerence which can alienate readers and the essential question of who this writing is *for*" (original emphasis; Scott 2005, 1). Furthermore, the question of 'authentic' representation remains. Non-standard language continues to be linked to an inferiority of intellect and class, and thus it is difficult to create an 'authentic' character who speaks the vernacular but also defies these stereotypes (Lenz 1999, 20). The problem of authenticity will be further scrutinised in relation to Kelman's writing.

To conclude this section, J. Derrick McClure will be quoted for a measured assessment of the current situation:

A poet who writes in Scots is certainly *ipso facto* proclaiming his Scottish nationality and his allegiance to a distinct Scottish identity; but a Scottish literary culture expressed in Scots is by now thoroughly "establishment": many, indeed most, of the Scottish literary coterie are fully as committed to Scottish political autonomy as they were in MacDiarmid's time; but they can no longer expect that the mere fact of writing in Scots is an active contribution to the cause of political independence; or even necessary expression of radical socialism, as it was for MacDiarmid and […] Tom Scott. A political dimension is certainly still conspicuous on the Scottish literary scene in the sense that many writers are committedly nationalist and socialists; but it is now clear that the association of this with a Scots voice is contingent rather than inherent. (original emphasis; McClure 2000, 222)

Although McClure's statement rings even truer for poets than for writers of narrative fiction due to the stronger poetic tradition in Scots, the following analysis will take the intentions and effects of vernacular language use into consideration before continuing with the analyses of Irvine Welsh's and James Kelman's major works of fiction. A closer look at Welsh's work will show how the vernacular is used in his novel *Trainspotting* as well as in other texts to mark any kind of difference. Subsequently, the use of language in Kelman's novel *How Late it Was, How Late* will be examined to point out the author's ideas and theories as to why it is necessary to write in the vernacular and which political views he endeavours to convey by doing so.

#### **4.2 Vernacular Language and Difference—Irvine Welsh's** *Trainspotting*

The very first sentences of the novel *Trainspotting* (1993) set the tone and atmosphere for the remainder of the book. Vernacular Scots is not only employed in direct speech, as is usual in the majority of Scottish narrative fiction, but also employed for the first-person narrator. The novel starts as follows: "The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling. Ah wis jist sitting thair, focusing oan the telly, trying no tae notice the cunt. He wis bringing me doon. Ah tried tae keep ma attention oan the Jean-Claude Van Damme video" (*TS* 3). This heavy use of vernacular Scots has led to criticism similar to that directed at James Kelman after the latter received the award of the Booker Prize in 1994, namely, that the novel was unintelligible for English audiences or was even written in a foreign language. Jeffrey Karnicky (2003, 139) asserts that "[…] this claim that *Trainspotting* was written in a foreign language is more than a joke", since in the USA the edition of the novel contained a glossary to cater for American audiences who might not be familiar with the Scottish accent.

*Trainspotting* is a collection of loosely combined stories that focus on a group of drug-using friends in Leith, a deprived area of Edinburgh. Most episodes are narrated from Mark Renton's viewpoint. Due to his notoriety in the film adaptation (where he is played by high-profile Scottish actor Ewan McGregor), Renton is often considered to be the main protagonist. The characters narrate various episodes from their lives, which often intersect and depict the same characters. What links the group of friends is their shared drug addiction, their unemployment and their desperate search for the next hit. There are also interludes in the novel entitled "Junkie dilemmas" that focus on Renton's point of view (for example, *TS* 14) and are numbered consecutively from 63 to 67 until they are replaced by the section "Straight dilemmas No.1" (*TS* 299–301)*.* Though the use of the vernacular, even in the narrative voice, was not new (see the analysis of James Kelman's work in the following section of this chapter), Welsh's combination of this with the unusual characters and topic led to him being celebrated as the originator of 'New Scottish Writing'. As Nicholas M. Williams points out, it was his use of language in particular that was considered original:

[W]e might characterize the "newness" of the "new Scottish writing" in other ways: 1) it eschews the quotation marks which have traditionally set off Scots as a largely oral and non-authoritative medium of communication, to occupy the narrative proper; and 2) it expands the use of Scots in narrative beyond a mere "exoticizing" of an otherwise Standard English […] instead employing it as a workable medium for narration generally. (Williams 1999, 221)

Several critics have pointed out that the use of language in *Trainspotting* is neither artless nor simply a representation of oral speech: "Though the first impression is that all characters in *Trainspotting* have the same speech patterns, in fact Welsh manipulates language so as to identify individual personalities and attitudes" (Spittal 1998, 198). According to Alan Freeman (1996, 254), this varied use of language "exists to express the fragmented and hybrid nature of all cultures and identities". Equally, Ricarda Weißenberger (2006, 382f.) highlights a major difference between Welsh and Kelman in that with Welsh "[t]he use of Scots is impressive in range and variety, and the reader notices that Welsh does not want to censor his characters by presenting them as non-sexist and non-racist, like Kelman did". A closer look at the novel reveals that the characters indeed differ widely in their use of language and that each character has their own characteristic voice. For example, Spud's voice is recognisable by his use of the tag 'ken' and the interjection 'likesay'. This appears not only in his direct speech but also in narrative passages that focalise his point of view:

The Fit ay Leith Walk is really likes, mobbed oot man. It's too hot for a fairskinned punter, likesay, ken? Some cats thrive in the heat, but the likes ay me, ken, we jist cannae handle it. Too severe a gig man. Another total downer is being skint, likesay. Pure Joe Strummer, man. Aw ye dae is walk aroond n check people oot, ken. Every cat's dead palsy-walsy likesay, but once they suss that you're brassic lint, they sortay just drift away intae the shadows… (*TS* 119f.)

Renton's voice usually employs a slightly higher register and often uses the royal 'we' in order to refer to himself. Excerpts such as the following from the chapter "It Goes Without Saying", which describes the discovery of baby Dawn's death, show that Renton's lexicon is more extensive and varied than other characters':

Sick Boy wis on his feet. His eyes bulged oot like a frog's. That's what he reminded us ay, a frog. It was the wey he sort ay hops up, becomes suddenly so mobile fae a stationary position. He looks at Lesley for a few seconds, then nashes through tae the bedroom. Matty and Spud look around uncomprehendingly, but even through thir junk haze, they ken thit somethin really bad's happened. (*TS* 51)

Begbie's use of language, in contrast, is characterised by his excessive use of swear words and of the word 'cunt' in particular. Two passages are narrated from Begbie's viewpoint, "A Disappointment" (*TS* 84f.) and "Inter Shitty" (*TS* 109–119). The former begins as follows:

Ah minded ay the cunt. Fucking sure n ah did. Ah used tae think he wis a fucking hard cunt, back in Craigie, ken? He fucking hung aroond wi Kev Stronach and that crowd. Fucking bams. Dinnae git us wrong like; ah thoat the cunt wis fucking sound. But ah mind, thir wis one time some boys ask the cunt whair he fucking came fae. This boy goes: —Jakey! (that wis the cunt's name like), ur fae fuckin Grantin or Roystin? (*TS* 84)

The fact that Begbie also refers to his girlfriend as well as to two bottles of Becks beer as 'cunt' (*TS* 109) underlines the universal character the word has for him.39

The question of whether vernacular language is a mere representation of oral speech will be discussed in more detail in regard to James Kelman's work, as this issue is even more prominent in his fiction. However, Welsh's use of urban dialect has also been viewed with the same preconceptions that it is simply a transcript of Scottish people conversing. Welsh's language style, which Kirstin Innes (2007, 302) has called "expressly non-literary urban speech", is distinguished in particular by its 'non-literariness' and its deviation from the usual tone of the contemporary novel:

Welsh normalizes what a previous generation either marginalized, questioned, excluded or felt compelled to assert. Welsh uses the vernacular urban Scottish dialect in a far more 'natural' and less self-consciously literary way than Kelman and with greater ease and confidence than Tom Leonard in linguistically politicized poems such as '6 O'Clock News', where for reasons as much generational as political, Leonard must assert what Welsh all but takes for granted. (Morace 2007a, 25)

What Robert Morace contends here—the fact that the use of language in *Trainspotting* is more natural and thus authentic, particularly as it is used more consistently—also opens up the possibility for misinterpretation, as the following quotation illustrates: "Drop-outs really live and talk just the way he [Irvine Welsh]

<sup>39</sup> The use of the word 'cunt' to describe women and their bodies has in turn been appropriated by some Scottish women writers: "'Cunt is never employed by a female to describe her genitalia in a positive or unproblematic manner in either Galloway's or Kennedy's writing; as a semantic vehicle of oppression, it is invariably applied by males to denote and control women's bodies. […] All the more significant, then, that post-*Trainspotting* Scottish women writers Laura Hird and Zoë Strachan, both on record as admirers of Welsh, have taken a very different approach to creating a literary female space and corporeality, within which not only the word 'cunt', but the whole realm of women's sexual pleasure, comes to be owned by the female characters themselves. Hird's Welshian novel *Born Free* (1999) is partly mediated through the perspective of angry teenager Joni, for whom 'a cunt' denotes any irritating older woman or man. […] Strachan's agenda is more overtly feminist than Hird's. Her protagonists are exclusively female, beset […] by a succession of one-dimensional predatory males" (Innes 2007, 305).

describes them in his novel. When reading *Trainspotting*, the reader will notice that the characters speak as they think. It is the 'normal' colloquial speech, dialogues are written down just as they might have been uttered" (Weißenberger 2006, 377). This notion is highly problematic, as it assumes that the particular accent used is a deviation from the norm that is only spoken by 'drop-outs' and serves as a marker of authenticity. Furthermore, considering Irvine Welsh's novel to be a mere transcript of voices denies it the status of a literary text. This attitude reinforces exactly those notions of power into language that Welsh and other Scottish authors endeavour to contest.

To assume that Welsh uses the vernacular witlessly in his novels would be inaccurate. Indeed, though Scots dominates *Trainspotting*, several chapters are rendered in a Standard English narrative voice. There are two characters in particular whose stories are told through a third-person narrator, who focalises their viewpoints in Standard English: Nina and Stevie, both of whom narrate only one episode each in the novel. Nina describes the funeral of her uncle and the ensuing confusion when a plugged-in electric blanket makes the body seem still alive ("Growing Up in Public" *TS* 32–40). Stevie, on the other hand, returns from London to Edinburgh on New Year's Eve and relates his feeling of alienation in the chapter "Victory on New Year's Day" (*TS* 41–50). Nicholas M. Williams sees parallels in the two characters, which Welsh expresses by changing the narrative voice in these two instances:

What these two characters have in common […] is their distance from the low-life authenticity which has just been so memorably exemplified in the section spoken by Renton. […] In both cases, Welsh replicates this sense of psychological distance in linguistic terms: while the thoughts of both characters are rendered indirectly in Standard English, they speak Scots, as if their distance from their surroundings were paralleled by an inner division, a part of them having gone south to England never to return. (Williams 1999, 228)

It is already obvious from these examples that Standard English is used to express a distance to Scotland.

This distance is also evoked by the novel itself as a literary form, which Welsh associates with a very specific English social milieu of Oxbridge fiction (Morace 2007a, 26). Thus, the form of the novel helps to portray and disseminate middle-class values. These values are linked by Renton to the consumerism of the 1980s with his 'Choose life' speech (*TS* 187), which the film adaptation made so famous by using it in its marketing strategy. The ending of the novel, which sees Renton deceiving his friends and escaping to Amsterdam with the profits of a drug deal (*TS* 341–344), shows a slight approximation to these loathed values. Although the narration is structured to underline the fragmentation of the characters and, hence, society, the last chapter paints a different picture:

The final chapter is significantly narrated in the third person, the conventional novelistic framework of the bourgeois individual and its milieu. In terms of the politics of literary register, the Standard English of this passage and its omniscient narration suggest that Renton's newly made selfhood is an assent to the bourgeois subject. (Kelly 2005, 67)

Several critics have applied M.M. Bakhtin's theories to *Trainspotting*. In his essay "Discourse and the novel", Bakhtin argues that the novel as a genre is characterised by heteroglossia, which reflects a "polyphony of voices" due to the separation of the national language into various regional and social dialects (Bakhtin 1994). Heteroglossia also includes certain linguistic codes of authority, trends, or generations, amongst others (Sasse 2010, 119). Kelly (2005, 25) locates this concept of heteroglossia in Welsh's work: "Welsh's writing revels in what Bakhtin calls grammatica jocosa, the transgression of conventional grammatical order and the revelation of erotic, obscene, punning or resistant counterpoints and over-turnings of received meanings." This becomes particularly important in a postcolonial context, as the dialogue of voices inevitably leads to the struggle between an authoritative standard and a deviation: "For Bakhtin, language is fundamentally *dialogic*: a continual struggle over meaning and of resistance by those deemed 'barbarians' and 'lower social strata' to their incorporation within and subjugation by a standard language of power" (original emphasis; Kelly 2005, 18). This struggle is also apparent in Scottish literature where English and the vernacular enter a dialogic relationship in which English is the superior language:

The superintending and authoritative register is in Standard English: it is the language of power and objectivity, a language that can be trusted. Working-class or regional dialects and accents never assume narrative control and where they do appear in the conventional novel it is only as a character's speech, which can be regulated by the Standard English of the main narrative and safely cordoned off with quotation marks that prevent it from assuming the elevated level of thought or intellectual complexity. (Kelly 2005, 18)

As previously mentioned, the convention described above was the default mode for the Scottish novel for a long time, before authors like Lewis Grassic Gibbon, James Kelman and Irvine Welsh changed this fundamentally by using the Scottish vernacular voice as the narrator. Another aspect of Bakhtin's theory can also be illustrated by contemporary novels, such as *Trainspotting*. Heteroglossia, which in the context of Scottish literature refers to the variety of sociolects and dialects in Scotland, has the effect that the ability to switch between the different voices becomes a vital skill for speakers of the less privileged or inferiorised language. Several episodes in the novel *Trainspotting* allude to the difficulty concerning language use, the most striking of which can be found in the chapter "Courting Disaster" (*TS* 165–177), where Renton and Spud have been caught stealing books and have to appear in front of a court. Here, Renton has a considerable advantage because he is able to switch between the vernacular and Standard English. The chapter is narrated from a first-person perspective focalised on Renton. Although his speech is clearly marked by a Scots accent in the narrative passages, when he addresses the judge he switches to Standard English: "—Mr Renton, you did not intend to sell the books? —Naw. Eh, no, your honour. They were for reading" (*TS* 165). After explaining to the judge that he is interested in Kierkegaard's philosophy and this was the reason why he stole the books, Renton very self-consciously adapts his behaviour again in order not to let on to the judge that he is pretending: "Ah cut myself short. They hate a smart cunt. It's easy to talk yourself into a bigger fine, or fuck sake, a higher sentence" (*TS* 166). Spud's behaviour is very different. He does not seem to realise that he should adapt to the language of authority, in this case the language of the judge: "—And you, Mr Murphy, you intended to sell the books, like you sell everything else that you steal, in order to finance your heroin habit? That's spot on man … eh … ye goat it, likesay, Spud nodded, his thoughtful expression sliding into confusion" (*TS* 166). The failure to ingratiate himself with the judge by adapting to the expected standard of language is disastrous for Spud: he is sent to prison, whereas Renton's responses convince the judge to suspend his sentence (*TS* 167). Aaron Kelly offers an interpretation that argues that the failure is not in the character's inability to adapt to the language of power but in the authority's refusal to provide space to the marginalised voices:

The incapacity of the court and its language of power to understand Spud's predicament is symptomatic of a broader misapprehension of the experiences of the oppressed by those in power. The judge's inability to attribute feelings to Spud is directly related to the incapacity of the dominant discourse which the judge represents to permit an articulation of oppressed voices. Hence, the importance of the vernacular in *Trainspotting* is that it is offered as a mode that is capable of thought, feeling, intelligence, philosophy and so on. The polyphony of demotic voices provides a range of experimental discourses that articulate those oppressed groups without register in Standard English. (Kelly 2005, 54)

This analysis correctly reveals the relationship of power that is apparent when it is assumed that the marginalised voice, in this case Renton's and Spud's, should be 'intelligent' enough to adapt itself to the major language. This again can be seen as a postcolonial relationship. In order to succeed in society, the characters of *Trainspotting* have to adapt to the dominant language, in this case Standard English. If they fail to do so, they will fail within the system. Kelly's argumentation shows that exactly the opposite should be true: the recognition of the vernacular as an equally official language, rather than a sign of insufficient intelligence and inferiority.

There are many examples of this diglossia in the contemporary Scottish novel. Even genre fiction such as Denis Mina's bestselling crime thriller *Exile* (2000) self-consciously plays with the vernacular as a marker of difference. In *Exile*, the ability to switch between Standard English and Scots vernacular is described as a kind of 'street smart' that helps the private investigation made by the Scottish main character, Maureen O'Donnell, although she is troubled by her own concession to stereotypes that she knows are inaccurate. When talking to a working-class suspect, she changes the way she speaks: "'Why would Ann say you hit her if ye didn't?' She noticed herself changing her accent to speak to him, paring down her language, as if Jimmy was so thick he wouldn't understand if she spoke normally. She hated herself " (Mina [2000] 2001, 64). In this way, the connection between intelligence and vernacular language is stated while simultaneously criticised by Maureen's negative feelings. Further into the novel, the vernacular is employed to reveal the 'real' character of a person and, thus, is supposed to function as a marker of authenticity. Maureen and her best friend Leslie go to Fraser's, a popular upper-market chain of department stores, to ask about a missing woman. Through her description of her surroundings, the narrative voice reveals a subliminal disdain, which is emphasised by the contrast between the appearance of the store and the characters:

The makeup was on the ground floor, a vast bazaar a-glitter with tatty perfume promotions and giant photographs of airbrushed teenagers. […] Leslie's leathers and dirty hair would be chic in a biker bar but in the glittery galleria she looked as seemly as a dead toenail in a pair of strappy sandals. (Mina [2000] 2001, 185)

The woman the friends have come to interview, Maxine, is described as artificial and pretentious, wearing too much make-up and generally overdressed (Mina [2000] 2001, 185). They suspect her of being involved in drug dealing and state that Maxine "was well practiced at not letting on" (Mina [2000] 2001, 185f.). However, when the friends address her, she seems to let her guard down, revealing her true identity through language: "'Look,' she said, under her breath, her accent dropping two social strata […] 'I'm at my work here, leave us alone, will ye?'" (Mina [2000] 2001, 186). This quotation illustrates two aspects: on the one hand the vernacular marks authenticity, which is contrasted to the fake consumer world of the department store. On the other hand, this passage also shows the previously criticised connection between the notion of deviation and vernacular: Maxine's suspected connections to drug dealing are assumed to be confirmed by her use of the vernacular. Thus, the association between the vernacular and 'lower social strata' is consciously employed by Mina to convey Maxine's deviant character.

In James Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late* (1994), the main character, Sammy Samuels, is beaten by the police and is blinded as a consequence. When he goes to see a doctor in order to register for disability benefits, it becomes obvious that their way of speaking is profoundly disparate. Sammy continues talking in the vernacular, whereas the doctor talks in Standard English:

Are ye saying that you dont really think I'm blind? Pardon? Ye saying ye dont think I'm blind? Of course not. Well what are ye saying? I told you a minute ago. Could ye repeat it please?

In respect of the visual stimuli presented you appeared unable to respond. So ye're no saying I'm blind? It isn't for me to say. Aye but you're a doctor. Yes. So ye can give an opinion. Anyone can give an opinion. Aye but to do with medical things. Mister Samuels, I have people waiting to see me. Christ sake! I find your language offensive. (*HL* 225)

This dialogue represents an example of the consequences of an inability to adapt to the dominant discourse. The doctor evades any clear statement with his formal—but to Sammy, cryptic—manner of speaking. When Sammy expresses his frustration, he is immediately sanctioned by the doctor. This contrast between the use of the vernacular and Standard English can be linked to Anne Donovan's work, which endeavours to convey a similar idea: "Her writing portrays Scots as the natural language of feeling and emotion, expressing fundamental psychological aspects of the human condition, whereas Standard English is depicted as the language of authority, rationality and logic" (Scott 2005, 14). Like Donovan's work, the excerpt from *How Late it Was, How Late* reveals the lack of humanism displayed by the doctor, which here is emphasised by his use of Standard English.

In Alan Bissett's novel *The Incredible Adam Spark* (2005) the creative use of vernacular language underlines the individualism of the outsider Adam Spark, who suddenly develops superpowers. The novel is narrated by Adam in a stream-of-consciousness mode that often uses phonetic transcriptions rather than the common orthography of Scots: "Everybodys dead xcited. Big prade ommpa-pa oom-pa-pa, we all march march marchtay the big grass park nextay the cottages barandlounge and theres a corry-nay-shin by a slebrity who says i now pronounce you the hallglen and glen village gala day queen" (Bissett 2005, 1).

The use of the vernacular in contemporary Scottish writing can be summarised as a strategy to articulate an experienced difference. This distance is expressed not only in the use of the vernacular voice but also in the fragmented narrative perspective as well as the choice of 'taboo' subjects such as drug use (O'Keeffe 1996, 7). However, language functions here as the most powerful tool employed by the characters to distance themselves from an entire value system: "The vernacular, working-class Edinburgh voice is a rejection of the Queen's English in the same way that Renton's sentiments are a rejection of conventional middle-class values" (O'Keeffe 1996, 7). This also makes language use postcolonial, since Welsh gives a voice to formerly marginalised voices, which can be seen as one core objective of postcolonial writing:

It could be argued that it has been the great achievement of many writers commonly associated with the postcolonial area of literary studies that they have managed to communicate the quotidian lives, thoughts and discourse of their own people; in short, to have given a voice to a specific and localized constituency, often with great success and via a large, international and highly eclectic readership. (Scott 2005, 23)

The marginalisations that Welsh addresses are, as illustrated above, manifold: Scottish working-class characters rather than the prevalent English middle class are the subject of the novel; set in Edinburgh, the novel focuses on the deprived district of Leith rather than the beautiful parts of the festival city; furthermore, the unemployed, drug-using characters are a marginalised group within their own community.

The depiction of marginalised characters and the attempt to represent their vernacular speech patterns authentically not only is a way to raise awareness of these parts of society but also comes with its own pitfalls and challenges. Several times, Renton refers to 'Pakis', 'poofs', 'woks' etc.: "Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Bebgie [*sic*]. Cunts that are intae baseball-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye" (*TS* 78). Equally, misogynist behaviour is never properly sanctioned. Kirstin Innes asserts that this is the downside of representing an authentic voice:

Whereas there can be no doubt that *Trainspotting* has successfully ruptured the hegemony of middle-class Standard English narration, the novel's popularity has helped facilitate the reconsolidation of other hegemonic structures. The much-fêted new visibility of Scottish culture, which coincides with the working-class male's literary enfranchisement, appears to be won at the expense of women, gay men and ethnic minorities, whose voices are silenced by the new literature's blatant misogyny, homophobia and racism. (Innes 2007, 303)

*Trainspotting* also elaborates extensively on the link between language and class. The use of Scots vernacular is synonymous with a working-class background while Standard English is associated with the allegedly exclusively English upper class. When the distance to Standard English is created within the novel, it is almost always combined with a reference to class:

There is fanny of every race, colour, creed and nationality present. Oh ya cunt, ye! It's time tae move. Two oriental types consulting a map. […] —Can I help you? Where are you headed? ah ask. […] —We're looking for the Royal Mile, a posh, English-colonial voice answers back in ma face. (*TS* 28)

This divide is exemplified in the contrast between the characters, such as Begbie, and tourists:

Begbie's speaking voice, as written by Welsh, obviously marks both national and class distinctions. He defines his dialect as "the Queen's fucking English," and he cannot understand why people from another English-speaking country might have trouble understanding him. Likewise, Begbie's need to speak with a higher-class, "posh" accent points to a wide class divide between tourists with disposable income and working-class people like himself. (Karnicky 2003, 140)

This connection between language and class will be further scrutinised in the following section, which focuses on James Kelman's novel *How Late it Was, How Late*, whereas class as a category of analysis will be further considered in chapter five. In contrast to Welsh, who depicts the new generation of the "unemployed working-class" (McGuire 2010, 21), Kelman's characters represent a more traditional Scottish working class and their challenges, one of which is also unemployment.

#### **4.3 James Kelman's Political Poetics in** *How Late it Was, How Late*

James Kelman is one of the most eminent writers of contemporary Scottish fiction. Often cited as a role model by younger authors, such as Alan Warner and Irvine Welsh, he started publishing short stories and novels in 1973. His work, consisting of several novels as well as collections of short stories and of plays and essays, has sparked much response in academic criticism. Kelman's public impact stemmed mainly from the debate that followed the award of the 1994 Booker Prize for his novel *How Late it Was, How Late*. The choice of the judging panel was widely criticised, with critics questioning the literary value of the book on grounds of the use of vernacular, its 'common' main protagonist, or its frequent use of swear words or, indeed, all three. Even within the panel, not everyone agreed with the chosen winner, with judge Julia Neuberger calling the book "crap" (Neuberger quoted in Pitchford 2000, 701). The importance of language and narrative voice in Kelman's novels becomes clear in the remark of one Booker Prize judge who reported that his wife suggested that the book be excluded from the selection because "it was not written in English" (Kövesi 2007, 157). Furthermore, Kelman himself is outspoken about his poetics, which, for him, entail a political dimension, particularly when it comes to the question of narrative perspective. This is evident in his two collections of essays *Some Recent Attacks*, published in 1992, and *And the Judges Said*, first published in 1999. Furthermore, Kelman has often defended his point of view and explained his perspective on his work in various interviews in academic journals (see, for example, MacNeill 1989; Toremans 2003; Gardiner 2004b).

Academic research on James Kelman and his fiction is, as could be expected, manifold. The following highlighted works are not exhaustive but should highlight some selected aspects of Kelman's work. Stephen Bernstein (2000) offers an extensive overview of Kelman's writing that is enhanced by a biographical perspective. Mary McGlynn (2002) also offers an illuminative introduction to Kelman's work. Nicola Pitchford's (2000) paper helpfully summarises the Booker controversy and its implications for the understanding of the term 'culture'. Regarding monographs, Simon Kövesi's (2007) volume on Kelman was published in the Contemporary British Writers series, and focuses on Kelman's novels, offering analyses of his fiction

up to *You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free* (2004). Kövesi also gives an extensive summary of the negative criticism concerning Kelman and Scottish realism, though he concludes that, "[a]t the time of writing in 2006, Kelman has become *the* senior Scottish fiction writer of urban alienation. His work is chief among a generation of writers who follow his stylistic lead […]" (original emphasis; Kövesi 2007, 1–3). Kelman is also included in the Edinburgh Companion series (Hames 2010a), in which three out of five essays in a section entitled "Critical Context" focus on language use (Craig 2010; Hames 2010b; Gardiner 2010). The analysis of Kelman's use of language is also a frequent topic featured in academic articles. Of the numerous examples, Drew Milne (1994) in particular focuses on Kelman's urban dialect, while Jeremy Scott (2005) analyses the use of the demotic voice in contemporary Scottish fiction, and in his later monograph dedicated a chapter to Kelman's fiction (Scott 2009). In the majority of these examples of academic research into Kelman's work, the link between Kelman and postcolonialism is only made in passing. Only Carole Jones (2009a; 2009b) offers a conclusive analysis of Kelman's work in regard to postcolonial gender constructions, while Lambert (2011) has recently linked Kelman to Nigerian writers, thus placing his work in a postcolonial context.

Kelman's importance is emphasised in particular by his outspoken political opinions. For him, literature is not confined to artistic spheres but actively pursues an agenda in politics. This may also be the reason, apart from his seniority in years, that Kelman is seen as *the* eminent Scottish vernacular novelist rather than Irvine Welsh, whose work has often been criticised for being too commodified: "The significance of Kelman's contribution to the political enfranchisement of Scottish voices is his precise reticence in the face of the journalistic culturalism and 'satanic kailyard' of Welsh's work" (Milne 2003, 170).

Regarding the choice of text for the present analysis, at first glance it might have been more obvious to choose Kelman's novel *Translated Accounts* (2001), in which the use of language and the representation of narrative voice are also central themes; the novel contains accounts by different people that seem to have been translated, since the original speakers are not English native speakers.40 While this foregrounds questions of representation and translation, *How Late it Was, How Late* focuses more on the problem of narrative voice and the use of the vernacular. Furthermore, the notoriety of the novel, caused, amongst other things, by the award of the Booker Prize, has increased its profile and popularity both in Scotland and in Britain as a whole. As this study aims to provide paradigmatic analyses in order to illustrate how the Scottish contemporary novel can be read in a postcolonial context, it is coherent to focus on such an influential novel. In the following, excerpts from *How Late it Was, How Late* will be examined in relation to Kelman's political poetics, namely his theories concerning the narrative voice and their political implications.

<sup>40</sup> For a detailed analysis see, for example, Hagemann (2005).

The novel *How Late it Was, How Late* (1994) begins with Sammy Samuels, the main protagonist, waking up in a street corner after a weekend of heavy drinking. He cannot remember much of what happened during the weekend. After starting a fight with some plain-clothes policemen, Sammy is beaten and, consequently, arrested. In the prison cell he wakes up blind, a disastrous effect of the beating he received. After being released, Sammy attempts to adapt to his new situation. His girlfriend, Helen, seems to have left him, and he is once more arrested and questioned about his connections to a man named Charlie Barr, a suspected terrorist. The novel concludes with Sammy entering a taxi with the intention of escaping to England after his son gives him his £80 worth of savings.

The most prominent characteristic of the novel is its unusual use of narrative voice. Both narrative voice and direct speech are rendered in vernacular Scots, or, to be more precise, a Glaswegian urban dialect. The narrative perspective changes constantly, and is described by Scott (2005, 4) as a fluctuation between inner and outer voice that can be seen by the shift from first-person to third-person narration. The following passage from the novel exemplifies this:

He had been gony change his life too; even afire this shit, that was the whole point. He telt her too. Tried to I should say, it hadnay fucking worked. She took the needle about something whatever it was he didnay know cause she wouldnay tell him she just gave him the silent treatment. Sometimes ye wonder about women man I'm telling ye. (*HL* 133)

That first- and third-person narration are not the only perspectives becomes obvious at the beginning of the novel, which begins, "Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye; these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it; […]" (*HL* 1). Further characteristics of Kelman's narrative style are his use of demotic speech; stream of consciousness that sometimes includes incomplete sentences; the mixture of free direct and free indirect discourse; and the use of skaz (Scott 2005, 4). Simon Kövesi describes this variety of stylistic devices and narrative perspectives as specific to Kelman:

Kelman's fictional texts are not voiced in standard English, or in standard Scots: occasionally pockmarked by quasi-phonetic rendition, and linguistic markers of locality—always of Glasgow where recognisable—the voices are broadly variable, polyvalent, inconsistent, and rendered in fluid, changing Kelmanese, a style all of his own making. (Kövesi 2007, 7)

With regard to punctuation, Kelman also employs an unusual strategy, as he does not use inverted commas or any other punctuation to signal direct speech:

This is typical of Kelman's most radical reinvention of fictionalised urban speech. Although none of his novels have been first-person narration, the reader might easily be forgiven for thinking that they are. […] Kelman liberates the strictly third-person narrative voice and plunges it into the same world as his characters, denying the usual authoritative, pseudo-omniscient, 'standard English' voice its hegemony over his fiction. (Baker 1996, 247)

The unusual perspective is further underlined by Sammy's blindness. As the novel is solely narrated by Sammy himself, the reader is forced to remain blind as well, as the reader is not supported by an omniscient narrator but is limited to Sammy's perspective: the reader has to share Sammy's perspective and can never be sure who is speaking (Scott 2005, 3). In how far Sammy's voice is reliable remains an open question. According to Nicola Pitchford, this strategy elevates Sammy's power of representation: "So Kelman's narrative technique limits both the authority of the reader to claim knowledge of Sammy (or those like him) and the power attributed to Sammy as representative of the marginalized, working-class subject" (Pitchford 2000, 709).

The problem of representation is further negotiated in the character of Ally. Ally approaches Sammy at the Department of Social Security (DSS), offering him his services as a 'rep', supporting him in the legal procedures of his disability claims. Sammy declines his help, but Ally remains relentless, finally convincing the blind Sammy to sign contracts. However, Sammy becomes increasingly annoyed by the obscure representative. The dilemma of narrative representation is voiced explicitly when Sammy complains, "there is a difference between repping somebody and fucking being somebody" (*HL* 241). Scott Hames, who points out parallels between Sammy and John Milton's *Samson Agonistes*, sees the embodiment of Kelman's critique of narrative perspective in Ally:

This profoundly ambiguous character—even his name, Kelman suggested in an interview, is doubtful—embodies a number of tensions and uncertainties surrounding narrative authority. Ally's resonance with Samson's father underscores the paternalism of the conventional narrative technique that Kelman is most directly criticizing here—the third-party narrator who "reps" the thoughts and experiences of the character within the discourse of power and objective authority. (Hames 2009, 514)

It is important to keep in mind that Kelman was not the first to use vernacular Scots for both the dialogue and the narrative voice: Kövesi (2007, 13) points out that Lewis Grassic Gibbon uses a vernacular 'folk narrative' voice. However, Kelman is a prominent example in contemporary fiction, not least because he is so outspoken about the political insinuations of his use of voice. For him, the use of vernacular is a conscious act of rejecting English values, as the novel, with its usual third-person narrator, represents English middle-class values and thus cannot be employed to represent Scottish life. Kelman expressed his frustration with this latter kind of writing in his essay "The Importance of Glasgow in My Work":

Whenever I did find somebody from my own sort of background in English Literature there they were confined to the margins, kept in their place, stuck in the dialogue. You only ever saw them or heard them. You never got into their mind. You did find them in the narrative but from without, seldom from within. And when you did see them or hear them they never rang true, they were never like anybody I met in real life. […] And another striking thing: everybody from Glasgow or working-class background, everybody in fact from any regional part of Britain—none of them knew how to talk! What larks! Every time they opened their mouths out came a stream of gobbledygook. Beautiful! their language a cross between semaphore and morse code; apostrophes here and apostrophes there; a strange hotchpotch of bad phonetics and horrendous spelling—unlike the nice stalwart upperclass English hero […]. (Kelman 1992, 81f.)

By "my own sort of background", Kelman could mean both his Scottish nationality and his working-class background. Furthermore, his choice of words, such as "margins", already hints at his perception that Scots and/or members of the working class are marginalised in relation to any kind of centre. In a much-quoted interview with Kirsty MacNeill, Kelman has explained what he perceives to be the centre in respect to which Scotland is marginalised; in response to the interviewer's statement that he tries to obliterate any narrative voice in his fiction, Kelman replies:

Not every narrative voice, just the standard third party one, the one that most people don't think of as a 'voice' at all—except maybe the voice of God—and they take for granted that it is unbiased and objective. But it's no such thing. Getting rid of that standard third party narrative voice is getting rid of a whole value system. (MacNeill 1989, 4)

For Kelman, the standard third-person narrative perspective in the tradition of the English novel is not a neutral representation of the characters or the narration but instead represents a certain set of values. According to Kelman, these values can be explicitly linked to a middle-class, English background. He objects to the fact that few writers are conscious of the implications of the use of the standard narrative voice.41 In an interview, he polemises:

They [Golding, Waugh, Greene] all use that standard narrative, they've all assumed the value system, they're all part of it. […] But none of them seems to have bothered working out that this 'third party voice' they use to tell their stories is totally biased and elitist, economically secure, eats good food and plenty of it, is upper middle class paternalist. (MacNeill 1989, 5)

It is important to note how closely language or dialect is linked to class for Kelman. A perceived generic relationship between being Scottish and being working-class

<sup>41</sup> In an interview, Kelman exemplifies this with one of his students: "One of my students has an ugly kind of middle-class English accent, and she actually said that she envied people with an accent, because she doesn't have an accent. But it's important to see that these people are not lying or being hypocritical in any way—they actually *believe* that they don't have any accent. People who control the way we should talk have no accent. They never consider what I was just saying" (original emphasis; Toremans 2003, 586).

underlines the alleged marginalisation by the standard narrative voice. Kelman's solution to the marginalisation caused by the standard narrative voice is his strategy to 'liberate' the character from direct speech, which, amongst other things, is evident in his refusal to use inverted commas. Furthermore, his use of the Scottish vernacular for the narrative voice suggests a change of perspective to an entirely different system. As Cairns Craig highlights, this use of dialect is the instrument Kelman employs in order to achieve this change to a different system: "Dialect, in this sense, is the place of the maximum of linguistic freedom, the maximum assertion of individuality; it is the liberated, anarchic complement of the predetermined, fixed rules from which all language is generated" (Craig 2010, 78). As so many critics have identified, Kelman uses narrative voice as a tool of opposition, as "[…] the authorial voice of the classic realist text is seen as representing the oppressor, while the voice of character seeks to speak for the oppressed" (Scott 2005, 2). Dietmar Böhnke goes further, claiming that

[t]he strategy underlying Kelman's writings […] is one of subversion. A subversion of any kind of conventional (English) literary practice whatsoever, including plotting, scene-setting, atmospheric description, the structure of beginning-middle-end, and 'British' value system of good vs evil, niceness vs nastiness etc. In a way, he is a literary terrorist […]. (Böhnke 1999, 59)

The usual distribution of the vernacular voice in dialogue and Standard English in the narrative voice is turned upside down by Kelman, who uses the vernacular voice for both direct speech and narration in *How Late it Was, How Late*. Moreover, he uses Standard English to undermine the earnestness of authority. This becomes apparent when the doctor who examines Sammy for the DSS turns to empty phrases instead of answering Sammy's questions. One prime example of this is the doctor's reaction when Sammy asks him if he thinks that Sammy is really blind: "In respect of the visual stimuli presented you appeared unable to respond" (*HL* 225). Geoff Gilbert points out that the doctor's language and Sammy's swearing in reaction to it emphasise the deep opposition between them:

It is clear that language is not being used to communicate here, but rather takes part in a contest of opposed positions. The anger which issues in Sammy's swearing is a recognition of this relation, and swearing functions to clarify it: to make manifest and to increase the opposition between the positions the two speakers occupy. Here Sammy Samuels refuses to accommodate himself to the language of institutions. Although at other moments he displays the ability pragmatically to switch codes, the angry refusal here, concomitant with his 'decision' to get blinded, is part of the perverse self-definition which the representation adumbrates. (Gilbert 1999, 228)

Even more pointed is the subtle accusation made by an officer of the DSS: "Mister Samuels if ye *feel* that you have sightloss then it is in yer own interest to register it in respect of the physical criteria required for full-functioning job registration" (emphasis added; *HL* 108). Nicola Pitchford calls the usual confinement of vernacular voices to the margins a hierarchy of discourses, which Kelman reverses:

Such hierarchy is generally denied in *How Late It Was*, and when it does appear it is inverted: the Standard English of the middle class—often described as an enemy tongue that works only to frustrate the intentions of the marginal speaker who adopts it […] is framed within the narrative discourse in such a way as to appear exaggerated, artificial, and self-parodying. (Pitchford 2000, 703)

In order to solve his dilemma of feeling unrepresented in the English literary tradition, Kelman turned to foreign writers, reading American writers, as well as translations of French, German, and Russian literature: "I found literary models. I found ways into writing stories that I wanted to write; I could realize the freedom I had. I mean just the freedom other writers seemed to take for granted, the freedom to write from their own experience" (Kelman 1992, 83). He also offers his own explanation as to why he felt forced to turn to literary traditions other than the English one to find suitable role models: "It hadn't dawned on me that there might be very good reason why these literary models didn't exist in my own backyard; yes, censorship and suppression. I quickly bumped against it through the elementary matter of my chosen artform, language" (Kelman 1992, 83). What Kelman describes here as censorship also became apparent after his Booker Prize, when many critics attempted to devalue his literary achievement. In his acceptance speech, Kelman once again voiced his point of view very unambiguously, claiming that his work is not regarded as cultural because he employs the vernacular, which is still perceived to be inferior. Moreover, he states that the elitism regarding language in his case even amounts to racism (Kelman 1994).

In this speech, Kelman also makes an explicit connection between Scottish literature and postcolonialism. He describes a tradition which he sees his work as belonging to and which is based on two objectives: "1) The validity of indigenous culture; and 2) The right to defend in the face of attack. It is a tradition premised on a rejection of the cultural values of imperial or colonial authority, offering a defence against cultural assimilation, in particular imposed assimilation" (Kelman 1994). Not only does he see Scottish culture as being 'indigenous', he also mentions the postcolonial strategy of resistance. For Kelman, literature has the function of rejecting dominant discourses and of drawing attention to the marginalised voice. He sees the Scottish voice, and more precisely the voice of the Scottish working class, as such a marginalised voice. The inherent bias in dominant perceptions of which types of literature should be valued is further underlined by numerous reactions to Kelman winning the Booker Prize. For example, critic Simon Jenkins (quoted in Bell 1994, 12) wrote that reading the book felt like sitting next to a drunken Scot on a train; with this, he proves Kelman's criticism right:

However, what his [Jenkins's] attack and his use of the figure of the Scottish drunkard epitomize is that the history of Scots is not that of a "neutral" medium of communication, but instead a class-inflicted history by which Scots increasingly comes to be associated with the uneducated, impoverished, and (to Jenkins) negligible working class of Scotland. (Williams 1999, 224)

By explicitly pointing out his rejection of the English literary tradition, Kelman consciously constructs himself as an Other, positioning his writing and his characters in a marginalised position that is determined by the centre, England. This emphasises Kelman's intention to use his writing as a form of resistance. In accordance with other postcolonial writing, he strives to establish a 'counter' tradition that challenges the implicitness of English superiority:

His [Kelman's] writing positions itself firmly, proudly and defiantly as 'other' to the so-called canon of English Literature, and it defines its territory linguistically, culturally and socially—as well as geographically. […] [He is] writing against a centre monopolized by their dominant language and attempting to challenge its hegemony. (Scott 2005, 5)

With this strategy, Kelman uses the textual strategy of abrogation as described by Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin ([1989] 2008, 37). Similarly, J. Christopher Bittenbender maintains that this strategy can be termed postcolonial, also highlighting the close link between the nation and language:

While the authority that Kelman's protagonists react to at times seems primarily linguistic, it is imposed from a political center that is primarily English. In this sense, Scotland, and to an even greater extent Glasgow, can be read in Kelman as potentially "postcolonial" geographies that have suffered from systems of English authority that remain in the national (or regional) consciousness after years of economic, linguistic, and cultural dominance. When Kelman's characters leave Scotland for England and elsewhere, one senses that the departure is both an effort to escape from cultural ambivalence as well as an unconscious attempt to redefine a national self. (Bittenbender 2000, 159)

Ian Lambert (2011) links Kelman's writing to that of postcolonial writers from Nigeria, namely Ken Saro-Wiwa and Amos Tutuola. He finds parallels not only in the use of language but also in the perception of entanglement of nation and power, and the ways in which language is exploited by these authors:

The engagement of the Ogoni people with the Nigerian state and multinational oil companies certainly resonates with Kelman's activism on behalf of people who are up against the machinations of government *and* industry […]. The way that these power relationships are enacted through language becomes an explicit thematic of Kelman's work. (original emphasis; Lambert 2011, 203)

Kelman's published opinions concerning the relationship between Scotland and England also point to the feasibility of interpreting his use of language as postcolonial. However, the conscious construction of Scots as a marginalised Other that stands in contrast to England, the perceived imperial centre, has been challenged and will be analysed in the following.

When a new edition of Kelman's novel *The Busconducter Hines* was to be issued, he asked his publishers not to seek consistency in the spelling. While this was an expression of resistance to the conventions of the literary market, according to Kövesi this also highlights Kelman's perception of the nature of his language: "Kelman's defence of linguistic inconsistency is evidently meant to be anarchically liberating while also keeping faith with his understanding of oral speech and 'real' thought patterns" (Kövesi 2007, 26f.). During the debate following the award of the Booker Prize, Kelman was repeatedly accused of having recorded a script rather than having composed a novel. Pitchford also emphasises the important function of orality in Kelman's work: "Indeed, in *How Late It Was*, his manipulation of narrative point of view functions to *insist upon* the spoken language of Sammy and his peers, not only by reproducing that language but by making it the exclusive language of narration" (original emphasis; Pitchford 2000, 702). However, as Hames counters, the fact that Kelman's language appears to be a faithful rendition of spoken language does not mean that the novel is scripted: "Even the majority of Kelman's defenders tended to imply that he was an essentially documentary 'dirty realist', and that his use of vernacular entailed the transcription of oral speech. This misconception is with us still" (Hames 2009, 497). The implications of this prejudice against Kelman's work are wide-reaching. In his contribution to the *Edinburgh Companion to James Kelman*, Scott Hames argues persuasively that Kelman's language can be described as art-speech and that the perceived orality of his texts is created rather than recorded: "Kelman is a real *artist*; he does not ventriloquise an unselfconscious 'oral culture' engaged in 'natural' verbal activity. […] The seemingly 'raw' and artless features of Kelman's vernacular are in fact the most stylised and deliberately crafted" (original emphasis; Hames 2010b, 89). Those who deny Kelman the status of an artist simultaneously exclude him from the literary establishment while also strengthening the position he already laments due to his working-class background. As Hames's choice of wording demonstrates, the notion of Kelman's fiction as recorded speech implies the image of 'unselfconscious' and 'natural' people. The alleged contrast between nature and culture adds to the perception of Kelman's books as uncultured, marking them again as peripheral. Michael Gardiner claims that this reflex denies the right of peripheral voices in general:

The idea that writing is simply a reflection of speech—and that there are 'vernacular' languages which are somehow not textual—denies peripheral fiction access to much of the literary thought of the last half-century or so, in which writing has specific properties and is powerful for what it does *as writing*. (original emphasis; Gardiner 2010, 102)

By positioning himself in a marginal position as an Other who differs from hegemonic cultural norms established by the English establishment, Kelman promotes the notion of Scotland as colonised culture. However, this emphasis on the marginal also has its disadvantages. As Kelman's language is deliberately crafted to express difference, there is a danger that this overemphasis may have a contrary effect, leading to a certain exoticising of the Other. This has been pointed out by Samantha Matthews in a review of Anne Donovan's *Buddha Da*:

For the Sassenach reader, the pitfall of Scottish writing lies less in understanding (context generally supplies gaps in knowledge) than in a version of orientalist response, in which unfamiliar language is enjoyed for its "exotic" or poetic qualities, and understood primarily as documentary of another culture. (Matthews 2003, 21)

If language is constantly marked as an expression of deviation, it is susceptible to being overvalued. Fabio L. Vericat (2011, 136) highlights this danger, which he sees as a neo-colonial rather than postcolonial act; however, he is also aware that other critics, such as Craig, assert that Kelman has avoided this trap, as Kelman "transliterates into a phonetic orthography that seeks neither to patronise nor to dignify the actuality of Scottish speech" (Craig quoted in Vericat 2011, 136).

Jeremy Scott (2005, 1) also criticises demotic narratives as mundane and uninspiring in general, a critique that can also be applied to Kelman's style. Furthermore, Scott is critical of the overemphasis that the insistence on the vernacular places on language, as

[…] it could be construed as an act of condescension to both the speaker of the dialect and to the reader to alienate the voice in this way, or to give it such artificial prominence. The demotic voice will seem more disconnected from the reader's experience, not less, and a linguistic form which might seem relatively commonplace in real life becomes de-familiarized. (Scott 2005, 23)

This criticism implies that Kelman to a certain extent dismisses his readers: his way of writing insinuates that the reader cannot detach the narrative voice from the value system he assumes it embodies. His is a problematic assumption, as it implies that, for example, working-class backgrounds can only be conveyed by a demotic voice. As in the debate between MacDiarmid and Muir, there are also contemporary writers who do not share Kelman's views. Scott cites Duncan McLean as an example:

Where Kelman uses phonetic representations of dialect, McLean confines himself to Standard English; he feels that to represent Scots phonetically is to accede to the assumption that it is somehow inferior to the 'norm'. In short, Standard English should, it could be argued, perform as a 'normalised', neutral discourse which can be conventionally assumed to stand in for any dialect […]. (Scott 2005, 21f.)

In addition to the challenges pointed out above, the question of authenticity also has implications for the postcolonial context. Kelman complained in an interview in 2004 that writing in his own voice, which he calls 'indigenous' language, leads the public to assume his work to be naturalism, which he strongly contests (Gardiner 2004b, 101). According to Vericat (2011, 134), this problem is partly caused by the fact that there is no standard Scottish narrative voice and that Urban Scots is seen as a low and/or deficient language. Thus, the problem of an 'authentic' representation of marginalised voices reveals the danger of marginalising these voices even further, as the focus on their 'authenticity' makes them stand out even more; the focus on dialect indeed makes the language seem artificial. Kövesi cites a peculiar example that serves to illustrate this point: in one of his short stories, Kelman uses the term 'margarine' rather than the term 'butter' for the character buttering his toast (Kövesi 2007, 22); the disparity between the usual phrase 'buttered' and Kelman's 'margerined', which is used to refer to the character's working-class background—due to which he cannot afford butter, instead resorting to the cheaper margarine—is taken by Kelman to illustrate class politics. However, this use of language stands out, as 'margarined' is not in common usage, even though many people use margarine instead of butter. Thus, this particularity serves to make the language even more 'other' by making it artificial and 'exotic'. Kövesi even questions Kelman's ability to represent a certain group of people, arguing that "[Kelman] repeatedly asserts that his written language is the language of 'his' culture, of 'his' class. So why the coined verb 'margarined' which might possibly come only from Kelman?" (Kövesi 2007, 23).

Another problem that thus arises from Kelman's writing is the question as to whether he as a writer is in fact representative of the working class. However, this criticism is based on a prejudice that denies the working class the capacity to be cultured, a conception that Kelman has often criticised:

Kelman's position poses an interesting paradox: he needs to demonstrate that, contrary to conventional assumptions, working-class writers are capable of rhetorical heft and stylistic verve, yet this point is somewhat in tension with his political and technical desire to allow control of his narrative by his characters, whose voices have long been the defining counterweight to notions of learning and eloquence. (McGlynn 2002, 66)

At times, the characters within the novel demonstrate a questionably large scope of lexicon, which on one hand serves to undermine the preconception of an illiterate working class, but on the other hand seems artificial: "So there ye are. So he was due something; an extra couple of quid. Surely to fuck? Nay sight meant ye had lost yer seeing function, yer seeing faculty" (*HL* 68). However, this paradox can also be used in a productive, positive way, allowing Kelman the chance to create an image of Glasgow and Scotland that defies the usual stereotypes and reveals them to be preconceptions. Sammy is an ambivalent character: while the novel begins with him waking up after a weekend of drinking, of which he has no memory, during the course of the novel he hardly drinks at all. He is keen on American country music and is also creatively inclined, as he dreams about writing song lyrics himself (*HL* 186). Furthermore, he is interested in literature (*HL* 127), which is one of the few things he bewails he can no longer indulge due to his blindness. This is the contrary to the preconception of the 'othered' Scottish working class, which are traditionally constructed as uncultured and uncreative, only interested in drinking and petty crimes.

Kelman uses his novels to underline that the usual preconceptions of Self and Other are inaccurate in the Scottish context. Of course, in Great Britain class differences and the marginalisation of the lower classes is not specific or limited to Scotland versus England. These divides are also visible within England, as well as within Scotland. However, Scott (2005, 6) underlines that, in this context, the marginalisation is more profound, as it stems from outside—which emphasises the productivity of postcolonial theory in this context. Yet, it seems necessary to point out the limitations of Kelman's project; although he endeavours to free his voices of marginalisation, he does this in a highly specific and limited scope: "Despite Kelman's earlier efforts to disrupt complacent linguistic complicity between the reader and writer, here they are in unison again, communicating with each other in an exclusively white, straight, working-class, androcentric code" (Innes 2007, 303).

Further criticism can be levelled at Kelman's continued attacks on the established literary elite. As above examples from younger authors such as Irvine Welsh and Denise Mina have demonstrated, vernacular language is still used as a marker of difference; nevertheless, it has to be considered that society has changed since the early 1990s, as Kövesi points out:

[There are] little signs of changing in Kelman's polemics against what he calls the literary 'élite', though, by 2006, university and school curriculums have undertaken massive revisions of the range and variety of literature studied and, implicitly, legitimised, including writers of working-class life like Kelman. (Kövesi 2007, 10f.)

#### **4.4 Conclusion: Postcolonial Language Use**

Despite McClure's claim that the political dimension of Scottish writing (though he focuses specifically on poetry) is "contingent rather than inherent" (McClure 2000, 222), the analysis of Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* and James Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late* has shown that vernacular language is used to indicate difference in contemporary Scottish fiction. This demotic voice highlights the postcolonial context in which Scottish writers position themselves, as the use of voice undercuts the claim of Standard English to be a superior standard for fiction. The abrogation of a supposedly 'pure' standard and its replacement with a vernacular Scottish voice criticises and attempts to undo the notion of the vernacular as inferior. James Kelman in particular pursues an explicitly political agenda with his writing. In this way, he focuses on the question of narrative perspective and criticises the standard third-person narration of English novels as a biased, class-conscious instrument employed to marginalise the lower classes. By using a vernacular voice both in direct speech and for narrative passages, he endeavours to circumnavigate this problem. However, as has been identified above, this is not without its challenges. Nevertheless, this analysis has proven that the use of language is as ambiguous in Scotland as in other postcolonial countries.

Keeping this in mind, it is worth examining the alternative to living as marginalised offered by the analysed fiction. The examples considered here all suggest that the need to negotiate the use of the narrative voice in regard to demotic or vernacular voices is unavoidable. This is particularly important in a postcolonial context, in which Scottish voices have been forced to the margins. Writers such as James Kelman who pursue a political agenda with their writing address the implications that vernacular language use has for power relations in their work. However, it is interesting to note that the two main examples analysed here conclude with the main protagonists escaping from Scotland. Mark Renton supposedly escapes to Amsterdam with the stolen drug money, whereas Sammy Samuels' last scene sees him entering a taxi, and the reader believes England to be his ultimate destination. This seems to offer a transcendence of postcolonialism, as it is implied that the writers of the colonised culture do not see the future in a strengthened nationalism but rather in an internationalism: "Kelman and Welsh, although recognizably 'un'-English, are critical of Scottish nationalism, offering instead a literary internationalism of the localized voice" (Milne 2003, 160). This can also be deducted from the fact that both authors chose international settings, such as the USA, in some of their later works. Of Kelman's novels published after *How Late it Was, How Late*, only *Kieron Smith, Boy* (2008) is set in Scotland. Irvine Welsh also set some of his work outside Scotland—for example substantial parts of his short-story collection *If You Liked School You'll Love Work* (2007) and the entirety of the novel *Crime* (2008).

Similarly to the preceding chapter, of which the explicit construction of Scotland as England's colony was the focus, this chapter has revealed a transcendence of binary relationships between Scots and Standard English within Scottish literature. It has also been demonstrated here that language is closely bound to the concept of class; the intimate connection between the two has been stressed by Cairns Craig in his seminal book *Out of History*, in which he emphatically frames language and class as discriminating categories:

It is not by our colour, of course, that we have stood to be recognised as incomplete within the British context, it is by the colour of our vowels: the rigidity of class speech in Britain, the development of Received Pronunciation as a means of class identity, is the direct response of a dominant cultural group faced by a society in which the outsiders are indistinguishable by colour. (Craig 1996, 12)

Accordingly, class will be at the centre of the following chapter, in order to analyse how class is used in Scottish fiction—in relation to the use of vernacular language—as a marker of difference.

## **5. Class in Scottish Fiction**

The previous chapter discussed the use of vernacular language as a marker of difference. The alleged inferiority of the Scots language is reinforced by its close connection to the working class; as Scots is predominantly used in informal situations, it becomes a marker of that class (Lenz 1999, 6), relegating it to the sphere of the stereotypically rough and uneducated. Furthermore, as the previous chapter has illustrated, language is taken as an identifying feature for class affiliation in a British context. These assumptions work in both directions, as is evident from the description of James Kelman as "acting the part of an illiterate savage" in a review of *How Late it Was, How Late* (Jenkins 1994, 20), while, on the other hand, the Scottish protagonists in *Trainspotting* flippantly term all English people they meet "posh" (for example *TS* 29). This chapter will explore how Scottish fiction represents class and how a Scottish working-class identity is constructed in opposition to English identity. It will be demonstrated that Scottish writers' preoccupation with the working class functions as postcolonial resistance and re-writing. In the context of postcolonialism the importance of class as a category for discrimination has often been pointed out, most notably by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1995). Equally, the term 'subaltern', coined in a postcolonial context by Spivak (1995), is sometimes wrongly used interchangeably with the term 'working class'. This conflation stems from Antonio Gramsci's use of the term 'subaltern' rather than the censored term 'proletarian' in his prison diaries (Behrends 2011, 6). Gramsci also underlines the relationship between class, language and nation in an example that can be compared to Scotland:

According to Gramsci, [South Italian farmers'] subalternity was mainly created by the fact that they did not speak the language of the dominant culture. This also meant that they were excluded from any form of representation of what was considered the "Italian nation". (Behrends 2011, 8)

The conditions that arose in Scotland following the 1707 Union of Parliaments were parallel to those alluded to by Gramsci, as the Scots had to rid themselves of their accents in order to gain access to a British national identity. Thus, speaking vernacular Scots became associated with an 'un-British' inferior class that did not have access to education and, thus, 'improvement'.

After a short overview of the tradition of working-class writing in Scottish fiction, this postcolonial resistance will be exemplified by two currents of writing: firstly, writers such as James Kelman advocate the inclusion of working-class writing in order to de-centre a predominantly middle-class, English canon. This can be achieved either by a humanistic, as well as nostalgic, image of working-class childhood, as in Kelman's novel *Kieron Smith, Boy*, or by transcending the stereotypical depiction of working-class bleakness in imaginative writing, such as Des Dillon's novel *Itchycooblue*. A second strand of writing focuses on the new unemployed working class, the formation of which resulted from structural industrial changes in the 1980s: this topic is particularly prone to being re-framed in a postcolonial context of resistance, as the unpopular Thatcher government was blamed for these changes in Scotland. The analysis in this chapter will focus on Irvine Welsh's novel *Marabou Stork Nightmares*, and will be supplemented by examples from Alan Warner's writing.

Building on Karl Marx's concept of classes as determined by the ownership of the means of production or labour, Max Weber defines class more widely as a social category:

We may speak of a 'class' when (1) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their life chances, insofar as (2) this component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labour markets. (Weber [1948] (1991), 181)

Bell hooks quotes writer Rita Mae Brown to underline that class is an even more pervasive concept that not only influences people's lives in relation to work and life chances, but permeates every aspect of existence:

Class is much more than Marx's definition of relationship to the means of production. Class involves your behavior, your basic assumptions, how you are taught to behave, what you expect from yourself and from others, your concept of a future, how you understand problems and solve them, how you think, feel, act. (Brown quoted in hooks 2000, 103)

The idea that any "concept of a future" is predetermined for the working class becomes particularly significant in the novels analysed in the first section of this chapter, as they focus on the experiences of childhood in the working class.

In the title of his article "We're A' Jock Tamson's Bairns: Social Class in Twentieth-Century Scotland", renowned Scottish sociologist David McCrone quotes a common idiomatic phrase42 that is used in Scotland to assert the equality of all people. This phrase is based on the assumption that Scotland has a fundamentally different class system to England's: "What has been called 'the Scottish myth', the belief that Scotland is a more egalitarian society than England, and that social mobility is somewhat easier, has a long cultural history. […] It is also true that the egalitarian myth is fairly impervious to falsification" (McCrone 1996, 113). This myth is further perpetuated by the plot of the 'lad o'pairts', a boy or young man from a poor background who is able to overcome the obstacle presented by a lack of money with his talents. In an analysis of statistical data, McCrone (1996, 112) observes that proportionally a larger share of the Scottish population belongs to the working class (as opposed to the middle class) than is the case in England. Nevertheless, he emphasises that social mobility is fairly equal in England and

<sup>42</sup> The *Dictionary of the Scots Language* (2004) defines the phrase 'Jock Tamson's Bairns' (literally: 'children of Jock Tamson') as meaning "the human race, common humanity".

Scotland. That the myth of an egalitarian Scottish meritocracy prevails in spite of this can only be explained by differing cultural factors between the two countries: "Put simply, 'class' in Scotland will not be interpreted and explained in the same way as in England, simply because key institutions such as law, education and religion, will mediate structures and experiences to produce different political and social outcomes" (McCrone 1996, 113). This myth or legend has been described as "a deep, distinctive cultural marker" (McCrone 2012, 677), which, according to McCrone, changed in the second half of the 20th century. The tendency to see the Scottish class system as distinctly different from that of the English stems from a time in which Scotland was increasingly constructed as a colony of England, as, for example, by Michael Hechter's (1975) analysis of Scotland as an internal colony. This idea of a different class system in Scotland has even been extended recently, as "[t]he view that class was an alien imposition from England has been supplanted in recent years in nationalist quarters by a more radical view that Scotland is itself a 'class', or rather an 'ethno-class colony' of England" (McCrone 1996, 105). This has led to the construction of England and Scotland as fundamentally different societies, "to the extent that class and nationality are often [jointly] insinuated" (McCrone 1996, 115). In consequence, to be Scottish means to identify oneself as working-class by default, and, more importantly, to define oneself in contrast to an upper-class England. A working-class identity is also interwoven with the identity of the Scottish man—the centrality of the workplace for the self-image of the stereotypical Scottish 'hard man' will be analysed in detail in chapter six. The importance of class in creating an unambiguous identity as Scottish has led to a strategy that further reinforces working-class allegiances, forcing middle and upper classes to identify themselves as working-class in order to justify or strengthen their national identity (McMillan 2003, 70). To be in the Scottish middle or upper classes would consequently question the strength of a Scottish national identity that heavily relies on the 'we're a' Jock Tamson's Bairns' myth. In 2012 McCrone asserted that this attitude towards class perseveres even when the statistical evidence suggests that the middle classes are increasing in size: "Has Scotland become a 'middle-class' society? Here we have to tread carefully. […] Scots are far more likely to describe themselves as 'working class' compared with people in England, almost regardless of their own 'objective' class position" (McCrone 2012, 678). Class affiliation has become a myth itself and not only is used in Scotland to articulate a certain standing within the class system but furthermore positions Scotland in a moral opposition to England by stressing communal values and meritocracy. According to McCrone (1996, 105) it is the political value of this romanticisation in particular that has ensured the endurance of this rhetoric.

It follows from this analysis that Scottish literature is dominated by workingclass literature. In the medium chosen for this study, the novel, the connection between the working class as characters in or as producers of novels warrants further scrutiny, since the novel is intimately connected to the emergence of an English middle class:

[…] the novel emerged concomitantly with the historical rise of the middle class and the nation state. Resultantly, the novel has traditionally served as one of the cultural arenas wherein bourgeois society ratifies itself and bolsters its own self-identity and hegemony. In particular, bourgeois society tends to view itself as the culminated and harmonious fruition of historical progress and development: hence, bourgeois society is self-affirmingly a normal society. (Kelly 2005, 15)

The prevalence of the middle-class novelist was caused in part by the working class' limited access to education. On account of this, autobiography was the dominant literary form for representing working-class experience until the beginning of the 20th century, since it was "the most accessible and readily available for worker-writers" (Fordham 2009, 133). Ian Haywood (1997, 1–8) identifies Chartism as the inspiration and starting point for working-class fiction in 1837. While their limited access to education arguably restricted the number of working-class writers during the 19th and early 20th centuries, this argument cannot be applied to the post-war period, which saw the advent of the welfare state and, thus, free access to education. However, preconceptions have not changed considerably; in an interview in 1989 James Kelman airs his anger at the persisting stereotype of the working class as illiterate and uninterested in culture of any form:

Reading books has nothing to do with class. Neither does writing them. It's not even to do with educational attainment. There's something more at work than that. […] Why are we still having to argue that the literate class isn't logically distinct from the working class, that folk read and write literature from every social position. There's an ideological stance behind such reasoning that has been open to perusal for the past 150 years and longer, for anyone who's ever felt the urge to go and look. (MacNeill 1989, 7)

Though in British literature in general the importance of class as a category for the construction of identity has been supplanted by the focus on discourses concerning gender and race (Haywood 1997, 4), as the analysis will demonstrate class continues to have a significant impact on the identity of Scotland. Thus, Irvine Welsh told his interviewer in 2002 that his identity as a writer is in conflict with his class affiliation, as "[w]riting is seen as a sort of poncy thing to do in the culture I come from. It's difficult to say to all your mates in the pub" (O'Neill 2002, 32).

Reminiscently of the more inclusive definition of class by Weber and Brown quoted above, it is limiting to define the working-class novel as those novels produced by working-class writers. Nevertheless, this definition is employed by several critics to ensure a level of authenticity, although this authenticity is difficult to define: "Working-class fiction will be defined here by the way it responds, in a peculiarly local and vital way, to a *lived* experience that middle-class novels have only been able to *observe*" (original emphasis; Fordham 2009, 131). In contrast to this, Horst Prillinger (2000, 29f.) presents a more inclusive definition of the working-class novel when he asserts that work and class do not have to be central topics and that the working-class novel is not limited to a realist presentation. Furthermore, he provides a definition of the *Scottish* working-class novel that takes into consideration the perpetuation of the myth of Scotland as universally working-class when he points out the importance of the working class for a shared sense of identity:

In fact, part of the Scottish identity is its 'working-class-ness'; this goes hand in hand with the notion of having been defeated (possibly a part of the often-quoted 'Scottish Inferiority Complex'), so that the defeated worker is an image with which many Scottish people, even those who are not workers themselves, can identify. (Prillinger 2000, 29)

Research literature on the British and more specifically the Scottish class system from a political or sociological angle is abundant (see, for example, Davidson, Mc-Cafferty & Miller 2010; Atkinson, Roberts & Savage 2012; Tyler 2012; Savage 2015). However, the volume of research on working-class fiction in general, as well as on the Scottish working-class novel in particular, is limited. Many of this limited number of studies include Scottish authors but focus on Britain. Particularly notable are Pamela Fox's *Class Fictions* (1994), which focuses on the time frame between 1890 and 1945, and Ian Haywood's *Working-Class Fiction from Chartism to Trainspotting* (1997). Haywood's study gives a comprehensive overview of key texts up until the late 20th century as well as providing their socio-historical context; however, the book has been criticised for its focus on male writers. In her dissertation *Writing on the Poverty-line*, Maike Behrends enumerates several noteworthy examples of women writers that Haywood fails to mention (Behrends 2011, 41). From a Scottish perspective, many women authors are still missing from academic analysis—Dot Allan is one of many such examples. The bulk of research on Scottish working-class fiction focuses on the writing of James Kelman (for example, Baker 1996; Kirk 1999; McGlynn 2002), and the majority of this research consists of articles. There are only two monographs that focus on Scottish writing: Horst Prillinger's (2000) *Family and the Working-Class Novel* analyses Scottish working-class fiction from 1984 to 1994 in regard to its negotiation of family; and Mary McGlynn's (2008) *Narratives of Class in New Irish and Scottish Literature* scrutinises class narratives in a wider approach, focusing on the 20th century, and also including Irish writing in her analysis. Another notable study is Ian Lambert's contribution to the volume *Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature* (Macdonald, Gardiner & O'Gallagher 2011) comparing James Kelman's writing with that of the postcolonial writers Ken Saro-Wiwa and Amos Tutuola (Lambert 2011): though the focus of this article is on Kelman's use of postcolonial language, the discussion draws on Kelman's specific working-class background, since, as pointed out above, language and class are inevitably intertwined (Lambert 2011, 202).43

43 Another article from this volume that focuses more specifically on class is Liam Connell's and Victoria Sheppard's "Race, Nation, Class and Language Use in Tom Leonard's *Intimate Voices* and Linton Kwesi Johnson's *Mi Revalueshanary Fren*". Since this text focuses on poets, it is not included

In Scotland the working-class novel has a rich tradition. However, it has been denied appropriate representation in the canon because, as Prillinger (2000, 27) highlights, for a long time the working-class novel was typically a Kailyard novel. This led to a degradation of the working-class novel as the plots became more and more generic:

Indeed the most important one, that of the young male worker escaping his class and making it to the top has been pushed to such an unrealistic and romantic extreme in the Scottish kailyard novel that it has lost much of the power it has in the English working-class novel. (Prillinger 2000, 29)

Substantial change only emerged with the publication of George Douglas Brown's novel *The House with the Green Shutters* in 1901, which Robert Crawford (2007, 532) calls "an antidote to the Kailyard". The tendency to describe working-class life as dire, dark and depressing became more common in the economically strained 1930s. Examples of notable working-class novels of that time are Dot Allan's novels *Makeshift* (1928) and *Hunger March* (1934), as well as the well-known novels *The Shipbuilders* (1935) by George Blake and *Major Operation* (1936) by James Barke. The next surge in Scottish working-class writing appeared in the 1970s and focused on the urban working class in the west of Scotland, specifically in Glasgow, and coincided with the beginning of the gradual decline of heavy industry in this area. One key text from this time is William McIlvanney's novel *Docherty* (1975), which Duncan Petrie (2004, 20) sees as a defiance of the established, 'bourgeois' novel. Inspired by this, the 1980s and 1990s saw the publication of a whole range of novels that engaged with the working class and their issues; most notable are Alasdair Gray's revolutionary novel *Lanark* (1981) and James Kelman's writing for example, his debut *The Busconductor Hines* (1984), *A Disaffection* (1985), and *How Late it Was, How Late* (1994). Further examples include Agnes Owen's short stories as well as her novels—for example *Gentlemen of the West* (1984)—and Jeff Torrington's *Swing Hammer Swing!* (1992). Mary McGlynn has shown in her study that the representation of the working class also took a new direction in the second half of the 20th century when "[t]he working-class perspective […] [became] a tool, not an end in itself " (McGlynn 2008, 5). She also points out that there has been a considerable shift towards the local, which influences the formal characteristics of these novels:

[…] we can characterize certain formal decisions as symptoms of this emergent local literature that retreats from nationalism and working-class stereotypes. [The authors discussed in this study] decline to use quotation marks, transliterating dialect on the page; all include dialect—including

in the analyis above; nevertheless, the authors make a strong case for the importance of class especially in a Scottish context when they say: "This is not to argue that class is the determinate political category, but it is to argue that class remains an irreducible component of the identities of place these poets articulate" (Connell & Sheppard 2011, 174).

profanity—within any normative narrative voice; and all favour less plotdriven novels, regularly privileging mundane, local, everyday experience. (McGlynn 2008, 8)

This focus on the local and the everyday also pervades the childhood stories *Kieron Smith, Boy* by James Kelman and *Itchcooblue* by Des Dillon, both of which will be analysed here.

In conjunction with the change in style, the Scottish working-class novel in the second half of the 20th century also increasingly functioned as a tool of resistance to the framework of the English novel that was and continues to be perceived as dominant: "During the pessimistic 1960s and 1970s, the Scottish novel had become largely synonymous with the working-class urban novel, a phenomenon explained by Manfred Malzhan [*sic*] as the rejection of the English middle-class novel" (March 2002, 4). Malzahn elaborates:

[W]orking-class features are important because they are more identifiably Scottish than their more anglicised urban middle-class counterparts. Consequently, the assertion of a working-class identity in a Scottish context is likely to appear also as the assertion of a Scottish identity […]. (Malzahn 1987, 230)

Thus, the strong affiliation with the working class can be understood as a strategic move to underline Scottish national identity. John Fordham argues that the perpetuation of working-class values makes these novels prone to functioning as counter-narratives:

[…] in the articulation of working-class consciousness in written forms, such as in the novel, what is often of primary value is a sense of embeddedness in place and community, in those values of the lived experience which bind and sustain people through hardship and struggle. In this sense, it is the relative permanence or stability of the common life that becomes the source of working-class resistance […]. (Fordham 2009, 132)

This ability to stage resistance through the emphasis on working-class values such as community and rootedness in place, which could be summarised as the 'democratic intellect' that has been ascribed to Scotland, makes the Scottish working-class novel particularly productive for a postcolonial analysis. The resistance of an allegedly quintessentially working-class Scotland that is found in these novels is easily read as the opposite to an English society dominated by the upper class and perceived to be deeply divided by class discrimination. In addition to this, the Thatcher government facilitated the persistence of these stereotypes by its insistence on individualism, privatisation and a free-market economy.

Several studies have pointed out that this postcolonial resistance directed at England is visible in Scottish crime writing. Gill Plain, for example, has pointed out that the two most influential fictional Scottish detectives, William McIlcanney's Jack Laidlaw and Ian Rankin's John Rebus, "[…] act as assertions of a specifically Scottish working-class urban masculinity against an Englishness still perceived as soft, rural and middle-class" (Plain 2003b, 58). In her analysis of Ian Rankin's novels, Kirsten Sandrock argues that this class opposition is personified in Inspector Rebus and his English colleague Siobhan Clarke:

[…] the relationship between Rebus and Clarke is shown to be shaped by their cultural background, which goes hand in hand with their educational and socio-economic background. Rebus stands for the original, working-class Scot who functions as a subversive force against political and cultural norms, whereas Clarke represents the English-born, intellectual newcomer who is eager to fit in with her new Scottish context even if she does not entirely understand it. (Sandrock 2011a, 161)

Apart from the close connection between class and gender identity in Rankin's work, which will be further analysed in the following chapter, Sandrock also emphasises that Rankin scrutinises the socio-economic influences that determine class and, in consequence, life chances. However, rather than reducing this to a simple binary between the English upper class and Scottish working class, Rankin also points towards the internal divisions that permeate Scotland: "[…] Rankin focuses on the cultural and socio-economic forces that have brought forth the internal divisions of Scottish identity. He represents Edinburgh as a city that is not united in plurality, but rather divided along the lines of ideology and class" (Sandrock 2011a, 155).

It is again Margaret Thatcher and her new economic policies with which the decline of the traditional heavy industry in Scotland is associated and which has also had an effect on working-class fiction. In the 1980s Scotland was one of the regions hit hardest by the recession, as "Scotland, along with much of the industrial North in the United Kingdom, saw a rapid decline in manufacturing jobs with the recession in the early 1980s: 1.5 million manufacturing jobs were lost, and unemployment rates ran between 15 and 20 percent in the North, Scotland, and Wales" (McGlynn 2008, 2). Even after the reinvigoration of British industry and the successful attraction of 'new' industries to Scotland, such as those located in the so-called Silicon Glen, the negative effects of the recession were not reversed, since the new prosperity "tended not to 'trickle down', despite the Tory embrace of Reaganomics" (McGlynn 2008, 3). The subsequent paradoxical situation that a considerable fraction of the working class were in fact *not* working led to the emergence of the term 'underclass', to describe those whose class status was considered to be beneath the working class because they were unemployed or in vulnerable employment. The term 'underclass' was proposed by American sociologist Charles Murray, and in Britain the emergence of this new class was mainly blamed on Thatcherite policies (Behrends 2011, 52). This plunge from the working class to the underclass has several implications in relation to class and gender identity. Neil McMillan (2003) describes the fall from well-respected worker to unemployed man as a move from 'hero to zero'. At the same time he notes that this had positive effects for the representation of class in Scottish fiction, as "[i]ronically, coterminous with that move is a shift in form through which the proletarian

protagonist begins to speak and think in his own voice, freed from the trappings of bourgeois, standard English narrative" (McMillan 2003, 73). This new ability to speak is found in the fiction of writers such as Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Laura Hird, whose fiction gives a voice to those unemployed or precariously employed working classes. Sammy, the protagonist in Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late*, is also characterised by his reliance on state benefits. As Jones points out, this is a reoccuring topic: "Much of Kelman's fiction is concerned with a 'non-working class', the burgeoning group of unemployed and casually employed labour subject to the insecurities and vagaries of the changing industrial landscape of the 1980s" (Jones 2009a, 33). The next chapter will illustrate how Kelman and other authors negotiate ideas of childhood within these changing class contexts.

#### **5.1 Childhood Stories of the Scottish Working Class—James Kelman's** *Kieron Smith, Boy* **and Des Dillon's** *Itchycooblue*

This section will analyse and contrast two novels that focus on the experience of children growing up in a Scottish working-class milieu. James Kelman's novel *Kieron Smith, Boy* was published in 2008 while Des Dillon's short novel *Itchycooblue*  was published in 1999 and revisits the main characters from Dillon's debut novel *Me and Ma Gal* (1995).

Both novels' protagonists are boys growing up in Scotland who are also the respective narrators of their stories. Kelman locates his novel in the Glasgow of the 1940s and 1950s whereas Dillon's story takes place in the 1970s. *Kieron Smith, Boy* follows the protagonist for some years of his childhood, which is marked by his transfer to secondary school. In contrast, Dillon offers a small glimpse into the life of his main character, Derrick, and his best friend, Gal, covering a few days or weeks at the most. Both novels are firmly situated in a working-class context, and the similarity of the boys' family situations concerning their fathers is particularly striking. Kieron's father is unemployed and, over the course of the novel, struggles to find and keep a job; originally a sailor in the Merchant Navy, he disrupts the image of the working patriarch, as he spends the majority of his time at home, either on leave from the navy or, later, looking for an alternative job (*KS* 4; 121). His presence in the limited living space of the family leads to conflict. Similarly, Derrick's father is in a vulnerable position and is no longer able to fulfil his role as breadwinner. He suffers from asbestosis, and one of the plot trajectories is Derrick's plan to procure the egg of a moorhen to add to his father's collection in order to cheer him up. Derrick's father's workplace has made him sick, and in the course of the novel his condition worsens, whereas at the beginning Derrick seems hopeful that his father will soon be able to return to work:

Ma Da can't get a job the now. He can't work anymore cos of the roofs. Before he worked on the concrete he worked on the roofs. Sheetin. But he breathes funny now. He's got Bestos. Sometimes he's good sometimes he's bad. But thing's're pickin up he says. Won't be long now. Get a job anywhere ma Da. (*I*)

Both novels thus focus on everyday experiences rather than on any singular event in the lives of the boys. The decision to focus on the viewpoint of children allows the writers to present narrators who seem not yet biased by politics and ideology. Interestingly, both protagonists reflect on the process of growing up and mediate the opinions voiced by their parents, thus searching for ways to construct their own identities. Kieron repeatedly begins his reflections with comments his mother or brother has made or what he perceives to be common sense, and from this reference point he tries to find his own position. A reoccurring motif of the novel is the sectarianism in Glaswegian society. Kieron comes from a Protestant family and is mocked for his Catholic-sounding name, which in turn makes him anxious that he might secretly be Catholic (*KS* 43). Kieron is reprimanded by his brother, Mattie, for saying he likes the Catholic Bonnie Prince Charlie and is presented with the value system he should adhere to: "The Irish were true Papes. So it was the English, that was who ye were if ye were Scottish, that was what Mattie said, ye were just a true Protestant and it was the Redcoats ye liked, if it was true Protestants, ye must be for England" (*KS* 42). Derrick also speculates that adopting the vocabulary used by his parents, and thus a particular point of view, will mark him out as an adult: "Mibbi that's how ye grow up. Ye start using their words. Before ye know it all yer words're what yer Maw and Da say. An that's you. Big" (*I*). From this perspective, the negotiation of identity while growing up seems to be quite a challenge, thus providing ample material for a novel without the inclusion of any other singular events. For Kelman, the focus on the seemingly mundane everyday experience is a political decision because, as he argues in an interview, this reflects the living conditions of the majority of people:

Ultimately with me anyway it's to do with politics. I think the most ordinary person's life is fairly dramatic; all you've got to do is follow some people around and look at their existence for 24 hours, and it will be horror. […] The whole idea of the big dramatic event, of what constitutes 'plot', only assumes that economic security exists. The way that literature generally works in our society you never have to worry about these every routine horrors, the things that make up everyday reality for such an enormous proportion of the population. In the Anglo American literary tradition there's almost no concrete reality, no economic detail. All kinds of abnormal events and dramatic plots are required, […] because these writers never seem to have to worry about the next bite of grub, or where the rent's coming from. For 80% of our society life is constantly dramatic in a way that the 20% who control the wealth and power find totally incomprehensible. (MacNeill 1989, 9)

*Kieron Smith, Boy* reflects a common experience of working-class families in Scotland in the 1950s. After living in a traditional tenement house in the city centre, Kieron's family moves to the outskirts of the city to a new housing estate; for Kieron this move means not only a longer way to school but also the separation from his grandparents who live in the former neighbourhood. Richard Finlay describes this breakup of communities as a common experience in Scotland at that time: "The break-up of the inner-city tenements and the displacement of large swathes of the population to the new towns or the new city estates meant that traditional social relations began to break down and different ones were formed in the new environment" (Finlay 2007, 9). The formation of new social relations is illustrated by Kieron's friends. In the tenements Kieron could perceive a clear dividing line between the Catholic and Protestant children who went to different schools, while at the same time he was aware that religion is not a visible marker of identity, and relays his strategy for 'recognising' Catholics thus:

Some ye saw in the street and did not know they were Papes till then they were talking to the Nuns. Ye watched for that. Usually Papes had black hair and peelywally skin or else ginger hair and freckles. […] But some did not and they just looked ordinary so ye did not know. (*KS* 29)

Although Kieron questions the distinction he has been brought up to make, his life in the tenements is clearly divided by religion. He goes to a Protestant school and, thus, only has Protestant friends to play with. This changes when Kieron's family moves to the estate. In addition to the isolation he suffers due to living on the outskirts of the city, Kieron's former stable framework of identification is disturbed, since he is no longer part of a homogeneous group: "I did not like it in the new scheme. Maybe I hated it. If I did hate it. And I did not have any pals. Except John Davis. Then if it was Pat and Danny, but they were Catholic" (*KS* 129). This situation worsens from Kieron's point of view when his mother urges him to go to another school in which there is a dark-skinned Belgian Catholic boy in his class (*KS* 312f.). The changing living conditions and loss of community are ongoing concerns in the fiction of Kelman, who at the same time is aware of the fact that these kinds of communities have become obsolete: "The relocation to the margins of urban life is not so much a positive choice made by Kelman, but a recognition that the traditional working-class communities so often eulogised in urban realism have simply ceased to exist" (Baker 1996, 244).

Kelman's choice of subject, a Protestant boy from a Unionist family, is surprising given his tough political stance on Scottish nationalism. He broadens his perspective in *Kieron Smith, Boy*, overcoming oversimplified binaries—one prominent example of this is the Catholic-sounding name of the Protestant protagonist. Beyond the scope of the novel, Kelman has shown in his writing that he sees the Scots as doubly marginalised due to their nationality and due to their class:

Kelman's writing also discloses a tension […] between the mobilised discourse of anti-imperialism and the discourse of class struggle—between oppression derived from colonialism and oppression derived from class relations. This is again related to the 'spatial' imagination at work in the writing, emerging in the tracing of colonialism's commodification of space, and capital's disruptive, de-investment strategies. Nationalist struggle and class exploitation are combined concerns. (Kirk 1999, 115)

The inferior position of the Scottish working class leads Kelman to "[…] implicitly equat[e] the Scottish working class with colonised cultures elsewhere […]" (Jones 2009a, 35). Jones sees two diverging implications for Kelman's view of the working class as colonised, which either expresses solidarity with the oppressed or, more problematically, is perceived as an "act of appropriation of the suffering of others to put white British masculinity back at the centre of privileged attention" (Jones 2009a, 35). Of course, it is questionable to focus on the oppression of the privileged white male, but, from a Scottish perspective, it should be considered that the seemingly inclusive term 'British masculinity' does not adequately represent the Scottish experience and, furthermore, that Scottish masculinity occupies a vulnerable position that is deeply influenced by Scotland's postcolonial condition, as chapter six will demonstrate.

Both novels stand out due to their imaginative use of language. Kieron's seemingly unmediated speech is artfully crafted to give the impression of the boy rambling on to himself. At times, this can be a challenging read, exemplified here with a passage in which Kieron muses on the problem that he cannot go to the football trials at his school because he is working after school:

Boys were talking about how they were all going. It would be great, but it was no good. I wanted in the school team. Except I had the job and could not go to the Trials. If ye did not go ye did not get picked. So ye had to go. But then if ye could not. And ye needed to, else ye could not play, never ever, how could ye, ye could not, ye would just never be able to play, so that was you and ye never ever could ever ever. How could ye? Ye could never. (*KS* 371)

According to James Meek (2008, 6), this internal narrative perspective, which has similarities with the stream-of-consciousness technique, is a way for Kieron to "[…] [find] release through a waking dream life, flowering on the page at close intervals as his mind wanders". The use of language in the novel is also of paramount importance on an intradiegetic level. Kieron's mother is constantly reminding him to speak 'right' and not to use dialect: "Oh it is not weans it is children. Oh Kieron, it is children and girls, do not say weans and lasses" (*KS* 92). For Kieron's mother, language use is a possibility to distance herself from the working class, or, in other words, a way to express her desire for upward mobility. When Kieron remarks that all his friends speak English with a Scots dialect, using words such as 'aye' and 'maw', she reveals her biased opinion of the working class: "Oh yes Kieron but they are keelies. My maw said, Do you want to be a keelie all your life? That is what they are, just keelies. They will be stuck here till they are dead. They will never go anywhere and never amount to anything. You are not a keelie. Not in my house" (*KS* 92). Kieron calls his mother "snobbish and posh" (*KS* 301) but it seems that for him these concepts do not carry any deeper meaning. He rejects the notion of speaking correctly and becoming posh, because for him it means going to the

same secondary school as his brother, where Kieron will be separated from all his friends (*KS* 301). This aspect of the novel emphasises the fact that Kieron's life is determined by a restrictive class system even if he himself seems as yet unaware of its limitations. This restrictive class system also means that Kieron needs to construct his personal identity from two angles: firstly, he has to negotiate the system of society that he is born into, or "the accumulated hierarchies bequeathed by epochs of racial, class, religious, gender and generational conflict" (Meek 2008, 6). Secondly, he has to stabilise his identity in an existentialist way before he can deal with cultural specificities (Meek 2008, 6). Kieron faces existentialist challenges in his life when his community is taken from him by his family's move to the housing estate; later on, this taking away of community is personified by the death of his beloved grandfather. Kieron seems to be unsure whether he thinks it negative to stay a 'keelie', and thus a part of his community, for the rest of his life. Kelman's insistence on the use of the Scots dialect also exposes the implied hierarchy of class affiliation that is signalled by language use: "In James Kelman's narratives social grammars are also not closed but open, merging and competing with each other. This is where the use of contemporary, spoken Scots affirms the belief in equality between cultures, the validity of all language" (Freeman 1996, 253).

Peter Boxall (2010, 31) argues "that James Kelman's novels of the twenty-first century […] collectively shape a new kind of political fiction". He links Kelman to Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka, who insisted on the locality of the conditions they described and the language they used in order to re-write the dominant discourses of the centre, linking this practice to postcolonial writers such as Salman Rushdie and his axiom of 'writing back' (Boxall 2010, 32). This resistance is most visible in Kieron's language:

Kieron and Jeremiah [the protagonist of *You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free*] suggest a kind of cultural politics in that their idiom offers to reshape the language from within, to force written English to accommodate rhythms of speech and thought that have been excluded from the public sphere; […]. (Boxall 2010, 32)

Through this radical re-imagining Kelman does not advocate simply resisting established notions of the centre, but transcending these altogether, as Boxall notes:

[Kelman] is not writing back from margin to centre here, not least because his writing produced a wonderfully eloquent testimony to the stubborn refusal of thinking and writing, remembering and imagining, to stay confined within the boundaries of any subject position, or of any historical or geographical field, either on the margins or at the centre. (Boxall 2010, 40)

Through his transcendence of stereotypical, binary constructions of the Scottish working class, Kelman stages postcolonial resistance.

Parallel to *Kieron Smith, Boy*, language and imagination are the two main forces in Des Dillon's novel *Itchycooblue*. The wandering thoughts of main protagonist Derrick are interspersed with onomatopoeia and interjections. Told from Derrick's point of view, the text opens with him affirming his imagination: "See me. See ma magination. WILD. I won't take a tellin me so I won't. Nope. I just le ma head run away with me. Get me into bother one day ma Teacher says" (*I*). At the same time Derrick exposes himself as an unreliable narrator a few instances later: "PSST! LISTEN! See all that stuff on the last page I wrote? All about Strangler Joe not bein real? Well that's all lies. Strangler Joe was real" (*I*). Although the novel depicts the typical deprivation of the working class, exemplified by Derrick's sick and unemployed father, it is Derrick's imagination and the 'adventures' he embarks on with his friend, Gal, that transcend stereotypical depictions of 1970s working-class hardship and squalor. Cristie L. March included Dillon in her book *Rewriting Scotland* and argues that

Des Dillon […] offers the streets of working-class Scotland but spins them into a wonderland of excitement and danger through the eyes of his child narrator in *Me and Ma Gal* and *Itchycooblue*. In *Itchycooblue*, Dillon transforms the city estates into a land of adventure through which Derrick travels […] Dillon's *Itchycooblue* puts a fantastic spin onto lives traditionally depicted as meagre and bleak, illustrating the vibrancy that co-exists with the social problems that plague the urban estates. (March 2002, 162)

The re-imagining even goes so far as to trivialise the danger of the desolate workingclass landscape that, for the friends, functions as their playground; Derrick and Gal play in an abandoned house and find blue sheets of asbestos, aware of the danger that it poses, but downplaying it, calling it the eponymous 'itchycooblue'44 (*I*). By re-writing the stereotypes of working-class life in urban Scotland, Dillon engages in a postcolonial move of resistance that denies those stereotypes further influence.

The tendency to neglect workers' health, with the disastrous consequences that are exemplified by Derrick's father, is also present in Scottish working-class writing not focused on childhood, for instance in John Burnside's *Living Nowhere* (2003). *Living Nowhere* is set in the industrial English town of Corby, focusing on two families, and "can be read as a tale of two working-class families in the diaspora […]" (Klaus 2013, 111). The fact that one family is from Latvia and the other from Scotland highlights the marginalised position of the Scottish, as the families are considered to be outsiders to an equal extent. H. Gustav Klaus (2013) has convincingly argued that the novel should also be read in the tradition of the industrial novel. The fictive factory that overshadows the town and its inhabitants is described as a Gothic place that dwarfs everything else, which is emphasised

<sup>44</sup> The term plays with the two meanings of the term 'itchy coo'. According to the *Urban Dictionary* (2007) it either denotes the berries of rose hip bushes whose seeds can cause itching of the skin or is used as a term for insulation. This last definition ties in with the use of asbestos for insulation in the 1950s and 1960s, which sometimes used to come in the form of blue sheets (Urban Dictionary 2007).

by its cryptic name 'The Works': "All their lives they had lived and breathed The Works; their bodies were steeped in a miasma of steel and carbon and ore; all their stories had to do with the Corporation, or the Unions, or what happened in the blast furnaces" (Burnside 2003, 13f.). The novel describes several instances of accidents and deaths in the factory, and it is this "close attention to the risk of limb and life in industry, and to the mental damage done" (Klaus 2013, 123) that puts the novel firmly in the tradition of the Victorian industrial novel. Furthermore, Burnside also uses the novel to comment on class conflict when he reminds the reader "of the continuing existence of class contempt, which is of a piece with the upper classes' attitude to the workers in the manufacturing industries" (Klaus 2013, 121). The connection between the working class and slave labour is made more explicitly in James Robertson's historical novel *Joseph Knight*.45 Here, the colliers and mine workers support the black slave Joseph Knight by starting a collection to help to fund his trial for freedom from slavery. This conflation of race and class underlines the perceived gravity and the insuperability of the differences between the classes.

Anne Donovan's novel *Buddha Da* re-imagines working-class life in Scotland through an original plot, rather than through the use of imaginative language as in the examples explored above. In the novel the Glasgow-based painter Jimmy becomes interested in Buddhism, which puts a strain on his family life, as he increasingly withdraws from his wife and daughter to spend more time with monks. A review underlines the comic potential of the novel:

Donovan gets considerable comic mileage out of the incongruous pairing of working-class Glaswegian male with Eastern philosphy (and its middle-class adherents), as when the new head lama is erroneously identified as a baby girl born in Carmunnock, or when Jimmy's spiritual rebirth is rudely interrupted by a vicious bite from a squirrel and a trip to Casualty for a tetanus injection. (Matthews 2003, 21)

Apart from the personal differences that put a strain on the marriage between Jimmy and his wife, Liz, it is Jimmy's decision to move away from his working-class way of life in particular that intensifies the rift between them, which broadens as Jimmy successively denounces all alleged pillars of working-class life: after a birthday party where he gets drunk and fights with his brother, Jimmy decides to quit drinking alcohol (Donovan 2003, 75), become celibate (2003, 103), and prefers to celebrate the New Year on his own at the Buddhist Centre instead of in the company of family and friends as he used to (2003, 141). However, the novel ultimately concludes with the stabilisation of the family as Liz and Jimmy reunite, stressing the importance of family values as allegedly integral to the Scottish working class.

Many other Scottish novels contain characters that are distinctively working-class. As mentioned above, language is used as an important criterion to mark

<sup>45</sup> This novel will be discussed in more detail in chapter eight in regard to its depiction of race.

people out as belonging to this group. Class conflict is seldom the sole topic of Scottish novels, and yet remarks about the working class can be found in most. Needless to say, this is not to suggest that the Scottish novel is exclusively working-class. However, middle-class Scottish authors are more often regarded as British writers, particularly if they do not focus on their Scottishness. John Corbett advocates:

What we miss (not only because it's absent but because it's less obviously 'Scottish') is the middle-class novel. We do have William Boyd, Muriel Spark, Ronald Frame, Allan Massie and Candia McWilliam—but these authors are arguably more akin in their technique and their concerns to their southern counterparts. It seems that, like the Scottish accent, Scottish Literature becomes more like its English cousin when you move out of the country and into the urban or metropolitan middle classes. (Corbett 1997, 33)

The following section will analyse the effects of the deepening gap between the classes due to the increasing deterioration of the working class into a new underclass that are perceived to be set even further apart from middle-classes values.

#### **5.2 Irvine Welsh's Disenfranchised Underclass**

In his survey of working-class fiction in the 20th century, John Fordham marks out the extraordinary position that Scotland takes in this tradition:

[…] it is again from Scotland that the more innovative writing of the final decades [of the 20th century] emerges, extending the range of linguistic experiment by taking the reader not only to hitherto unvisited locations of working-class life, but to the borderlands of new kinds of class encounter. (Fordham 2009, 142)

Fordham highlights the later writing of James Kelman as representative of this new strand of writing. It is not only the formal experiments with narrative perspective and vernacular language that mark out Kelman's innovative approach to the working-class novel but also his choice of characters. Instead of the stereotypical working-class characters of his early stories and novels, such as the eponymous bus conductor Hines (Kelman 1984), his later novels are concerned with the newly emerging underclass: "much of Kelman's fiction is concerned with a 'non-working class', the burgeoning group of unemployed and casually employed labour subject to the insecurities and vagaries of the changing industrial landscape of the 1980s" (Jones 2009a, 33). In Scotland the changes and the development of a post-industrial landscape are predominantly blamed on Margaret Thatcher's policies (Behrends 2011, 52), which have led to a new condition of working-class experience: "[…] the atomised and dispossessed condition of the urban working class [… is] a product of deindustrialisation processes and community dissolution set in train by the political and economic events of the 1980s" (Kirk 1999, 110).

The new disenfranchised working class have been the concern of much of Irvine Welsh's fiction. In an interview Welsh agreed that he sees the working class as an internal colony when he stated, "[…] you see examples of the working class and the poor being oppressed, moved around, denied access, that sort of thing, maybe more than ever" (Peddie 2007, 134f.). The effects of Margaret Thatcher's policies are illustrated in his debut novel, *Trainspotting*:

By 1993, in the bleak environment of the unemployed under-class of Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting*, the free-market economics of rampant and materialistic Thatcherism that had been heralded as a new beginning for British society was presented as no more than a legal version of the selfish and exploitative world of drug pushing and drug addiction that was undermining all sense of national community. (Craig 2001, 18)

This disintegration of community is illustrated through the depiction of drug abuse in a society that is closely modelled on a neo-liberal system of free-market economics "where the basic rule is the survival of the fittest, where caring for others has become a luxury one cannot afford, and where the main thing that brings people together is business" (Prillinger 2000, 177). This continues in *Marabou Stork Nightmares* as well as Welsh's later novels. *Glue* (2001), for example, focuses on the process of social change in Scotland:

*Glue* grants a much more reflective historical sweep in its handling of social upheaval. […] *Glue* focuses directly upon the working-class experience of social convulsion. […] For betrayal is structurally and thematically central to *Glue*—in terms of not only the main characters' fears of betraying one another but also the selling out of certain sets of communal values and codes. (Kelly 2005, 177)

This is then continued in *The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs* (2006) by the two main characters who try to escape their respective families' working-class traditions by entering the civil service. In his third instalment of the series of novels with the *Trainspotting* characters, *Skagboys* (2012), Welsh goes back to the early 1980s to describe the upbringing of the characters in the early Thatcher years. This recurrence of the negotiation of class issues underlines Welsh's belief that this remains the most important factor that influences access to the literary canon (Kelly 2005, 5). At the same time, Welsh's fiction also stresses that, in spite of postmodern debates, class as marker of identity has not vanished (Kelly 2005, 46). In *Trainspotting*, this is illustrated in

perhaps the key symbolic scene in the novel [that] occurs in the chapter, 'Trainspotting at Leith Central Station', which takes place in a long-defunct train station. There is an interesting juxtaposition of social experiences in this chapter. As the upper and middle classes stream out from the opera having watched Bizet's *Carmen*, Renton and Begbie stand in the hollowed out train station which gestures to the fragmentation of a former network of connection, community and indeed industrial labour. (Kelly 2005, 46)

This juxtaposition illustrates an additional issue that Welsh puts at the centre of his fiction: by setting his novels in the unknown Edinburgh of the working class, Welsh has resolved its under-representation in fiction by making the people visible. Aaron Kelly (2005, 26) links Welsh's achievement to what James Kelman and William McIlvanney have done for the representation of Glasgow's working class. By making this neglected experience of the working class the focus of his fiction, Welsh emphasises their double marginalisation—the feeling they experience as marginalised Scots is doubled by their marginalisation within Edinburgh society:

[…] Edinburgh's working class has conventionally been doubly excluded and marginalised. Firstly, by the social exclusions and economic inequalities of capitalism—the 'tarting up' of the gentrified city centre for bourgeois consumer culture—and secondly, within a nationalist paradigm, by the 'tartaning up' of that same city centre—the concomitant tourist culture of Scotland as a national heritage site. (Kelly 2005, 28)

The focus on the voices of the working class is ultimately more radical in Edinburgh than it has been in Glasgow, a city that has always been characterised by its industrial heritage and socialist and Unionist leanings, captured in the term 'Red Clydeside', a term originally used to describe radical working-class opposition in early 20th-century Glasgow. It is Edinburgh's reputation as a popular tourist destination in particular that has perpetuated the image of the city as picturesque. Other writers have also employed Welsh's strategy of resisting this narrative. One prominent example is Ian Rankin with his Inspector Rebus novels, which intend to reveal a darker side of Edinburgh with the help of textual strategies that Kirsten Sandrock (2011a, 158) argues achieve "the proletarianisation of the city's tourist sites", which will be analysed in detail in chapter seven.

Before analysing Irvine Welsh's novel *Marabou Stork Nightmares*, another example of the portrayal of the disenfranchised underclass should be mentioned in order to demonstrate that the depiction of their disenfranchisment is not limited to urban settings. Alan Warner's first three novels, *Morvern Callar* (1995), *These Demented Lands* (1997) and *The Sopranos* (1998), focus on adolescent girls growing up in the fictive town 'The Port' in Argyll, reminiscent of the small town of Oban. The girls are described as trapped without perspectives for further social advancement. In *Morvern Callar*, the eponymous character attempts to break free from her restricted life in Scotland and escapes to Spain, first with money inherited from her late boyfriend, and again later with the money she makes in a book deal by passing off her boyfriend's novel as her own. Before this, Morvern works in a supermarket and explains why this is the main career choice for young people in the town:

Cause of tallness I had started part-time with the superstore when thirteen, the year it got built. The superstore turn a blind eye; get as much out you as they can. You ruin your chances at school doing every evening and weekend. The manager has you working all hours cash in hand, no insurance, so when fifteen or sixteen you go full-time at the start of that summer and never go back to school. (Warner [1995] 2008, 10)

For Morvern a more luxurious lifestyle only becomes available when different modes of access to money are opened to her, such as through inheritance. Through the character of Morvern's foster father, Red Hanna, Warner shows that it is not only young people who suffer from precarious working conditions. As his nickname suggests, *Red* Hanna is a socialist and supports the unions. He works as a train driver and plans to retire. When Morvern returns from Spain a colleague informs her of Red Hanna's misfortune: "[…] the big white chiefs have got him. Suspended his lump sum and pension on a discipline. […] The devils sent him out a letter on yon Friday saying that he'd taken two lager shandies that last afternoon he was backshift 'fore going out on his final train" (Warner [1995] 2008, 168). Thus, Warner underlines that the traditional working class are at the mercy of a ruthless capitalism personified by the 'big white chiefs'. The choir girls of *The Sopranos* are also characterised as suffering from a lack of ambition. This lack of ambition results from a lack of future prospects, which is blamed on their living conditions in The Port. In the novel, Kylah is a talented musician and part of a band, but rather than exploring a career in the music business her biggest ambition is to work at the records counter of the local Woolworths (Warner 1999, 68). In a later conversation this is explicitly blamed on the limitations of their remote town in Argyll: "But what good is it being talented in this dump? Who's interested in talent here? You don't see Richard Branson out the Barn dishing out the fucking record contracts do ya EH?" (Warner 1999, 256). In contrast to much other Scottish fiction, *The Sopranos* describes a slightly positive ending for at least some of its characters: Kylah raises her ambitions when she plans to move to "a city, get a band thegether there, work in a Woolies" (Warner 1999, 322). These examples from Alan Warner's writing emphasise that growing up as part of the already disenfranchised working class leads to a lack of ambition in young people who are then more likely to settle in menial jobs and compensate their boredom with reckless behaviour, drinking and taking drugs.

In Irvine Welsh's second novel *Marabou Stork Nightmares* (1995) class is the major factor in explaining marginalisation. As outlined in chapter three, the novel depicts the Scottish working class as postcolonial by comparing their oppression to the racial discrimination of black people during Apartheid in South Africa. The novel has not sparked as much critical attention as *Trainspotting*, resulting in far fewer research resources. In addition to this, Welsh has also been criticised for the novel's comparison of the situation of the Scottish working class and that of black people during Apartheid, which has been perceived as an unjust appropriation (for example Kelly 2005, 116). In their paper "Birds of a Feather", Ellen-Raïsa Jackson and Willy Maley (2000, 191) present a postcolonial reading of the novel, arguing that the comparison between the Scottish working class and black people living in South Africa "works by equating inequalities, racial and social". Furthermore, they point out that the novel's interest in adventure stories and Roy's perpetuation of white superiority in South Africa "demonstrates the ambiguity of Scotland's colonial status and the role of Scots in administering the British Empire" (Jackson & Maley 2000, 191).

In *Marabou Stork Nightmares*, Roy's childhood experience is one of constant marginalisation. A causal relationship for this is established in the family's living conditions on their housing estate, Muirhouse, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Roy blames the embarrassment experienced by his family on their living conditions:

I suppose this awareness came from being huddled so close to other households in the ugly rabbit hutch we lived in. It was a systems built, 1960s maisonette blocks of flats, five storeys high, with long landings which were jokingly referred to as 'streets in the sky' but which had no shops or pubs or churches or post offices on them, nothing in fact, except more rabbit hutches. (*MSN* 19)

When describing his summer activity of catching bees in jars, Roy makes another provocative comparison: "We had a concentration camp, a tiny Scottish housing scheme, for bees" (*MSN* 22). According to Aaron Kelly, Roy's family's housing estate is intended to be exemplary of the Scottish working class: "This family breakdown is contextualised in terms of a wider social malaise which is attributed directly to the misguided planning of schemes such as Muirhouse that actually produces the dehumanised antithesis of community […]" (Kelly 2005, 106). In addition to the deprived surroundings of the estate, at a very young age Roy is made aware of his marginalised position when the police sanctions his behaviour: "At nine years old I was charged by the polis for playing football in the street" (*MSN* 21). This kind of unprovoked encounter is repeated when the boys walk into middle- or upper-class neighbourhoods, whose residents then call the police (*MSN* 26), making it clear to Roy and his friends that their sheer presence is regarded as a threat. It is this feeling of being branded by affiliation to a group, in this case the working class (rather than by conflict caused by individual behaviour) that reverses when Roy and his family move to South Africa. Here, again, it is communal power structures that grant whites an intrinsically superior position; the important difference for Roy is that, in South Africa, without any effort of his own, he suddenly finds himself on the side of the power continuum that dominates the rest. He is now in the position to discriminate against others and accepts this unquestioningly. This is evident when his uncle, Gordon, asks him not to become friends with their black housekeeper Valerie: "She's a servant. Always remember that; a servant and a Kaffir. She'll never be anything other than that. They seem friendly, they all do, that's the way with them. But never forget, as a race, they are murderers and thieves. It's in their blood" (*MSN* 64). This prompts Roy to "look at Valerie in a different light" (*MSN* 65) though he had liked her before this conversation with his uncle. In general, Roy is very happy to be in South Africa: "I loved South Africa. Even when we moved into our own place, a few miles away from Gordon's in a poorer area, we still had a big house with a back and front garden" (*MSN* 72). Roy finds himself

in a position of power by default, mirrored in the families' improved living conditions, and he even turns the sexual abuse he is subject to at his uncle's hands into an object of power by threatening to expose him: "I used that power by extorting gifts from Gordon" (*MSN* 72). South African society is a radically reconfigured version of the society Roy left, and it is the difference in the structures of society that offers Roy opportunities that were unavailable for him in Scotland. The lack of discrimination he experiences in comparison to his childhood in Scotland is exemplified by the reaction of his teachers to his Scots accent, which had marked his alleged inferiority in Scotland: "They were nice to me, my accent mattered less to the teachers in South Africa than it had done to those in my native city" (*MSN* 77). It is this treatment and the feeling of empowerment that prompt Roy to be ambitious and focus on securing a place at university, which marks him out as different, particularly in comparison to his father who struggles to retain a permanent job. This is evident when Roy says, "I saw a career path" (*MSN* 77). On returning to Edinburgh Roy vows to escape his preordained path by breaking free of the working class: "What I had gained there was a perverse sense of empowerment; an ego even. I knew I was fuckin special, whatever any of them tried to tell me. I knew I wasn't going to be like the rest of them; my old man, my old lady, Bernard, Tony, Kim, the other kids back in the scheme" (*MSN* 88). Although he is successful in university and obtains a well-paid job (*MSN* 112–114), his involvement with the football casuals and his violent behaviour indicate that he is unable to escape from working-class stereotypes. This is emphasised in Roy's identity crisis after he is accused of rape: "I wasn't Roy Strang. I wasn't a top boy. I wasn't even Dumbo Strang either. I didn't know who the fuck I was and it didn't matter" (*MSN* 204f.). It seems that as much as "Welsh presents Roy's South African experience as one that informs his understanding of the Scottish class system" (Jackson & Maley 2000, 192f.), the appropriation of an imperial identity in Scotland leads to frustration and anger: "Indeed, a major element in the confusion to Roy's identity stems from his inability to reconcile the masculine myth of empowerment and conquest with the deprivations and entrapments of his social environment" (Kelly 2005, 105). This supports Jackson and Maley's main argument that gender is ultimately the central category for understanding the novel. Nevertheless, it is only in combination with discourses of race and class that a discussion of gender can uncover the full potential in reading the novel as postcolonial insofar as it reveals the cultural processes of marginalisation. Jackson and Maley conclude that this reading of the novel as postcolonial is legitimate despite the problems critics have raised with the novel:

Welsh's attempt to connect Black African experience with that of the Scottish working class are not undone by their clumsiness or inappropriateness, but by the intervention of a discourse of sexual difference. […] Likewise the flaws in Welsh's novel do not prevent it from being read as "postcolonial" fiction. Rather, the disruption of a straightforward interaction between race and class by the exclusion of women from this experience points to cruces of complicity in such systems. The fraught matrix of class, race and gender addressed by postcolonial readings offers the possibility of recognising the process which prioritises certain aspects of social experience without discarding the connections made between them. (Jackson & Maley 2000, 195)

Thus, the analysis of *Marabou Stork Nightmares* shows how intricately connected categories such as class and gender are.

#### **5.3 Conclusion: Postcolonial Constructions of Class**

The preceding analysis has emphasised the importance of class, and the working class in particular, for a construction of Scottish identity. Class affiliation is perceived as the major distinguishing feature between the English and the Scottish society. Although statistical data reveals no evidence for this, Scotland is often constructed by the Scots themselves as predominantly working-class, thus stressing the importance of communitarian values and meritocracy.

Working-class fiction in Scotland is closely connected to the urban writing of Glasgow, represented by writers such as William McIlvanney and James Kelman. Kelman's *Kieron Smith, Boy* and Des Dillon's *Itchycooblue* both present narratives of a working-class childhood, engaging in a postcolonial re-writing of stereotypical working-class narratives of hardship and desolation. This is achieved by focusing on the protagonists' imagination and the creative use of language. Kelman goes further by also pointing out the internal marginalisations of the Scottish working class in Scottish society.

While these novels focus on the 1940s and 1970s respectively, a second strand of writing concerned with class engages with the emerging unemployed working class of the late 1980s and of the 1990s. These novels lend themselves to a postcolonial reading, in which they can be regarded as acts of resistance because the policies of the Thatcher government are perceived as a major factor of Scotland's industrial decline and, hence, the rise of unemployment. This topic is particularly present in Irvine Welsh's fiction. His second novel, *Marabou Stork Nightmares*, employs a provocative metaphor, comparing the marginalisation of the Scottish working class to the discrimination of South African blacks during Apartheid. This draws attention to the effects that British policies have had on Scotland and at the same time engages in the negotiation of internal marginalisations within Scotland.

Class affiliation and the familial position of the 'breadwinner' have a strong impact on constructions of masculinity as well as on female identity. Thus, the next chapter will focus on how gender is constructed in contemporary Scottish fiction and will argue that constructions of both masculinity and femininity are deeply influenced by the perception of Scotland as a postcolonial country.

## **6. "From Heroes to Zeroes"?—Gender and National Identity in Scottish Fiction**

The tendency within Scotland itself to construct Scotland as an English colony raises many controversies and leads to the construction of a national identity that is determined by defeat and inferiority. The effects of this are clearly visible in Scottish gender constructions, particularly in constructions of masculinity represented in the contemporary novel. The preceding chapter has demonstrated the importance of class for the construction of Scottish national identity. Class affiliation is predominantly determined by identification with the workplace. As the workplace has traditionally been perceived as a male gendered space, class identity and gender identity are closely interrelated and, thus, jointly influence national identity. This chapter will examine the ways in which gender identity in Scotland is influenced by Scotland's construction as a colony of England. The quotation of the chapter heading, "From Heroes to Zeroes", taken from the title of an article by McMillan (2003), illustrates the development Scottish masculinity underwent in the second half of the 20th century. The image of a colonised, and thus defeated, country counteracts the stereotype image of 'Scotland the Brave': Scotland as the country of noble warriors and patriarchal Highlanders. The following analysis will demonstrate how this perception of a colonised country leads both to a reinforcement and, ultimately, to a questioning of traditional gender stereotypes. After some theoretical considerations, the close connection between national identity and gender will be illustrated in this section using the example of several female Scottish writers. In contrast to this, the focus of interpretation in the following sections will be on masculinity and the extent to which the perception of Scotland as a colonised country has influenced constructions of masculinity. This will be achieved through a detailed look at two novels in particular: Andrew O'Hagan's *Our Fathers* (1999) and Jackie Kay's *Trumpet* (1998).

The prevailing perception of gender norms constitutes a substantial part of any national identity. However, at the same time, gender "intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities" (Butler [1990] 2007, 4). The binary gender system, male–female, can often be translated into a dominant–deviant relationship, and thus becomes of interest in any postcolonial analysis, as such an analysis is necessarily concerned with the relation between the perception of a dominant Self and a deviant Other. Although ideals of gender and, specifically, masculinity vary in different cultural contexts, it is generally agreed that many cultures are underpinned by a notion of hegemonic masculinity: "Hegemonic masculinity is more than an 'ideal'; it is assumptive, it is widely held, and it has the quality of appearing to be 'natural' […]" (Nagel 2005, 400). Robert W. Connell (2000, 30) further emphasises the influence masculinity has on any culture, asserting that "[…] masculinity exists impersonally in culture as a subject position in the process of representation, in the structures of language and other symbol systems". The importance of this individually defined hegemonic masculinity for a culture can also be applied to entities in need of definition, such as the nation. Joane Nagel highlights the close connection between hegemonic masculinity and nationalism:

The task of defining community, of setting boundaries, and of articulating national character, history, and a vision for the future tend to emphasize both unity and 'otherness'. The project of establishing national identity and cultural boundaries tends to foster nationalist ethnocentrism. As a result, nationalism and [male] chauvinism seem to go hand in hand. (Nagel 2005, 401)

Furthermore, as Benedict Anderson ([1983] 2006, 9–36) argues, nationalism has its cultural roots in the religious community and the dynastic realm, both of which are based on the formative patriarchal structures that prevailed in their traditions. As much as Anderson stresses the power of the imagination in the 'invention' of the nation (Anderson [1983] 2006), Stefan Horlacher believes that literature not only functions as a critique of cultural concepts but also has the power to establish new models, for example of gender identity, as it does not depend on ideology or power politics (Horlacher 2006, 118).46

Masculinity has only recently been the focus of critical analysis. Carole Jones (2009a, 55) explains the reason for this with reference to a general trend in cultural studies that masculinity only became visible when it was perceived as deviant or unstable. A deviance from dominant ideas about masculinity is possible when masculinities change. Connell adds that masculinities are exposed to various tensions from within as well as without, and that these tensions may be the source of change (Connell 2000, 13).

Over the past few decades, ideals of masculinity, and more specifically ideals of hegemonic white European masculinity, have changed and generally seem to be in a state of disorientation. This activity also causes a pluralisation of accepted constructions of masculinity: "In becoming visible as a gender, masculinity itself is now a category obviously in flux, and multiple male identities imply a plurality of men's lives and experiences" (Jones 2009a, 14). Connell finds a certain nostalgia in the public discourse, which he calls 'pop psychology', as if looking backwards to 'the good old times' could prompt men to solve their masculinity crisis (Connell 2000, 5). Daniel Lea and Berthold Schoene reject the commonly used terminology of 'men in crisis' when describing changing constructions of masculinity, as for

<sup>46</sup> Horlacher (2006) cites the 'New Woman' as an example when elaborating on the link between literature and culture. The term describes the feminist ideal in the late 19th century whereby, in order to be emancipated, women also had to become 'new' regarding their looks and behaviour. This is a good example of the link between literature and culture because the ideal of what a 'New Woman' had to be like was predominantly coined in fiction. Horlacher thus juxtaposes literature and public discourse (Horlacher 2006, 115‒118), in which juxtaposition literature probably indeed is *less* dependent on ideology and power politics; but restrictions to literature in the form of censorship or the conscious use of literature as propaganda should not be ignored.

them it implies the possibility to return to traditional, hegemonic constructions of masculinity. Additionally, the notion that a post-patriarchal construction of gender is post-crisis makes it appear less desirable. Instead, they prefer "to speak of masculinity as a gender 'in transition'" (Lea & Schoene 2003b, 10f.). Jones (2009a, 22) challenges this view, arguing that 'transition' is not a powerful enough term for the far-reaching changes masculinities have undergone; however, the phrase 'in transition' will be employed in the following discussion in order to avoid the normative dimension that the term 'crisis' entails.

Although the changing nature of masculinities is recognised, the question remains as to why masculinity, and Scottish masculinity in particular, has only recently become a subject of interest within cultural studies. This is all the more notable since feminism has long been established not only in literary studies but also in postcolonial studies, in which "[g]ender has been a central, determining category […]" (Newell 2009, 244) since the 1980s. As Horlacher highlights, literary studies have been and to some extend continue to be determined by patriarchal structures; thus, it is unlikely that the male critic will question the construction of masculinity, as he is more likely to share the same values, making it against his own interests to weaken them by questioning them (Horlacher 2006, 37). Regarding the specific Scottish context, Neil McMillan (2003, 69) argues that masculinity is only now a topic of interest due to the fact that Scottish critics have long denied Scottish men a hegemonic position, since Scottish tradition treats all Scots as marginal. Furthermore, Scottish studies often seem preoccupied with the analysis of nationalism and national identity, which tends to lead to the rejection of feminist discourses, as they seem to be mutually exclusive: a feminist reading questions the male-dominated, patriarchal Scottish national discourse (Carter 1995, 68).Hence, this focus on nationalism also results in the tendency not to question the modes of masculinity.

Scottish 'Men's writing' has only recently been explored on a broader scale. Christopher Whyte's volume *Gendering the Nation*, published in 1995, is one of the first to analyse male as well as female gender constructions in a Scottish context; Whyte concentrates in particular on the link between nationalism and gender construction. Several other studies include Scotland in analyses of British masculinities. In *Writing Men* (2000), Berthold Schoene-Harwood chooses a diachronic approach to highlight the development of masculinities from "Frankenstein to the New Man". Amongst a variety of literature, he analyses three Scottish texts (Ian Bank's *The Wasp Factory*, Alasdair Gray's *1982 Janine* and Irvine Welsh's *Marabou Stork Nightmares*) and also briefly addresses the connection between masculinity and Scotland's postcolonial status (Schoene-Harwood 2000). In Lea and Schoene's (2003a) volume *Posting the Male: Masculinities in Post-war and Contemporary British Literature*, four out of nine contributions focus on masculinities in Scottish literature. These contributions on Scottish literature are not restricted to novels, but also include drama and poetry. Additionally, in 2009 the *Journal of Postcolonial Writing* dedicated an issue to masculinities. In the introduction, Stephanie Newell (2009) writes that, in the postcolonial context, gender always seems to be discussed in connection to a racial perspective. However, in consequence of a necessary racialisation to represent postcolonial masculinity, white, European men should not experience an identity crisis, "[y]et the three essays here that focus on white men all reveal a particular, shared form of gender anxiety that arises among European men precisely as a consequence of their position outside visibility […]" (Newell 2009, 246). Carole Jones takes this the furthest by naming her 2009 study *Disappearing Men*; she examines fiction from 1979 to 1999, which she calls 'devolutionary fiction', and argues that

the heightened consciousness of masculinity and anxious dependence on traditional notions of gender, particularly male, identity at a national level, at a moment of significant national soul-searching, make these texts especially sensitive to the decline in masculine authority in this period. (Jones 2009a, 23)

With an increasing number of publications focusing on the link between masculinity and postcolonialism, a closer look should be taken as to why it is particularly interesting to link postcolonial masculinity and Scottishness. The link between race and gender in the postcolonial context has already been mentioned above. In addition to this it is noteworthy that, in postcolonial theory, barbarism and uncivilised behaviour are almost always constructed as male (Newell 2009, 244). As a consequence, the coloniser is regarded as the norm for masculinity, exerting the power to differentiate arbitrarily the colonised into the categories of 'manly' or 'effeminate' (Connell 2005, 75). In Scotland's case, this causes an essential paradox: from an English perspective, the stereotypical Scottish male has typically been constructed as defeated, uncivilised and, thus, effeminate, whereas an alternative stereotypical depiction of the Scottish man constructs him (at least for the entertainment of tourists) as a strong, virile man in full Highland dress with a kilt and bagpipes. In this attire he also represents a society organised in the patriarchally dominated clans. This mystification of masculinity continues to influence society, since heritage continues to wield considerable power in Scotland (McCrone, Morris & Kiely 1995, 196), and Scottish tradition is perceived to be exclusively male (McGuire 2009, 64). Ian Crichton Smith (2001, 13) writes in his essay "On Gaelic and Gender" that "[t]here is in [his] opinion little doubt that Scotland is for the most part a male dominated country". He then goes on to describe several examples of realms in which men dominate, mentioning education—since in the past female primary teachers were not allowed to marry—religion, the law, and secret societies (Smith 2001, 13). Apart from secret societies, the three parts of society that Ian Crichton Smith refers to are those in which Scotland remained independent: after the 1707 Union of Parliaments, Scotland kept its own educational, religious and legal systems. Consequently, it can be assumed that the 'original' Scotland must have been male before it was influenced by the coloniser. Thus, the feeling of devaluation caused by this political defeat is projected as a devaluation of the Scottish man. Aileen Christianson

(2002) remarks that Scottish identity is based on the aforementioned institutions due in particular to the fact that they remained independent. The fact that these are now constructed as being based on masculinity serves to exclude women (Christianson 2002, 68), validating the perception that a strong, virile masculinity is inherently Scottish.

Furthermore, as previously mentioned, Scottish culture maintains a very strong link between gender identity and national identity, while masculinity in Scotland is often linked to a working-class ideal of men: "Through his involvement with hard, physical work, […] it is not only ideal masculinity but ideal national identity which belongs to the stereotypical Scottish working-class male" (McMillan 2003, 69). According to Carole Jones, this national, male identity is constructed in Scottish culture and significantly negotiated in contemporary literature: "The anxiety and struggle over this masculinised national identity is present with such clarity in the Scottish fiction of this period [1979–1999], the social context providing a lens magnifying the crucial identity issues of a fundamentally changing western social landscape" (Jones 2009a, 17).

In the late 19th century Glasgow gained a particular importance within the United Kingdom, becoming known as the 'Second city of the Empire'. After the industrialisation, Glasgow was leading in heavy industry and ship-building, quickly becoming a trade centre. The image of the traditional Scottish 'hard man' is still linked to Glasgow and the west of Scotland as industrial centres, especially since the publication of McArthur's and Kingsley's novel *No Mean City* in 1935, which described the life of the working class in Glasgow's slums. The term 'Clydesideism', derived from Glasgow's central river, the Clyde, evokes a landscape of heavy industry, industrialisation and, consequently, working-class men. Neil McMillan summarises the quintessential characteristics of this Scottish man as follows: "[…] his involvement with hard, physical work, his interest in sports and betting, his love of drink, his place at the heart of the family and community, and his earthy, Scots speech, […]" (McMillan 2003, 69). In the 1960s and 1970s, when the representation of the 'hard man' was at its peak, iconic novels—for example *Docherty* by William McIlvanney (1975), which describes the life of a young miner fictionalised the concerns of the working class. However, if on the one hand the term Clydesideism seems to describe a Scottish identity believed to be essential, it also represents the decline of this ideal:

[…] almost as soon as it emerged as a meaningful idea, Clydesideism had already been rendered 'mythic' in its association with the loss of a particular kind of 'authentic' Scottish community and way of life, and consequently became no less elegiac and nostalgic than tartanry or kailyard. (Petrie 2004, 18)

Additionally, in these novels the characters themselves reveal this ambiguous message, as Douglas Gifford asserts: "[T]hese Docherties and Willie Roughs are anachronisms and failures […]" (Gifford 1996, 28). Still, the Scottish 'hard man' remains a powerful construction.

Due to the overemphasis of this particular male perspective, the female perspective tended to be ignored in the literature of Clydesideism (Petrie 2004, 34). However, parallel to the decline of traditional industries in Scotland, with its reverberations for changing class and gender roles, the male perspective in fiction has been successfully challenged by a rising number of women writers. These writers are also deeply influenced by the close link between gender and national identity, as Scottish women writers are doubly marginalised, first as Scots and secondly as women. In 1987, Joy Hendry commented on this double marginalisation: "Thus the woman writer must overcome the inferiority feelings stemming from her femininity, and also those stemming from her Scottishness. It's the double knot on the peeny47" (Hendry 1987, 38). Carol Anderson adds to this by highlighting the fact that this double marginalisation causes problems concerning not only womens' visibility but also their own national identity: "If male Scottish authors have had to contend with difficulties generated in part by a problematic relationship to national identity, language and literary tradition, for Scottish women this experience is compounded by gender" (Anderson 1993, 171). This position not only makes it harder for women writers to make their voice heard but also puts pressure on them, inducing feelings of guilt for betraying their Scottishness. Janice Galloway describes this as follows:

Scottish women have their own particular complications with writing and definition, complications which derive from the general problems of being a colonised nation. […] that creeping fear it's somehow indulgent to be more concerned for one's womanness instead of one's Scottishness, one's working class heritage or whatever." (Galloway 1991, 5f.)

Although cultural changes have challenged the male-centred perspective of, for example, Clydesideism, and working-class identity is no longer regarded as the only valid representation of Scotland, the female perspective remains underrepresented (Petrie 2004, 64). During the 1980s and 1990s many Scottish women writers rose to be critically acclaimed and internationally known, amongst others Janice Galloway, A.L. Kennedy, and Kate Atkinson. Jones even calls this increased visibility of women writers a reinvigoration or "new Renaissance" (Jones 2009a, 18). Two comprehensive volumes of research on female writers have placed emphasis on this trend. *A History of Scottish Women's Writing* (1997), edited by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan, provides an overview of the rich tradition of women's writing, starting in the early modern period, and notably includes Gaelic writing. Equally, Aileen Christianson and Alison Lumsden (2000) focus on contemporary Scottish women writers; their volume is divided into two parts, the first focusing on poets and playwrights, the second focusing on prose fiction, emphasising the variety of Scottish women's writing. Although male writers within the last few decades have sometimes represented the female perspective

47 'Peeny' is the Scots word for pinafore.

and addressed the failings of men, they tend to show a reversal of gender roles and power relations rather than constructing new female identities. One such author is James Kelman, who "[…] presents us with a world of gender reversal where the dominant values, traditionally privileged as masculine, are promoted by women" (Jones 2009a, 60). An example of this role reversal is found in Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late*, in which Sammy's girlfriend Helen is the breadwinner. Equally, in 2012 Kelman made a woman his main protagonist in *Mo Said She Was Quirky*, attempting to give a nuanced portrayal of women.48 Moreover, Duncan Petrie regrets that, due to their marginalisation, women writers are often expected to position themselves in regard to gender roles, linking their creativity to gender: "In this way, female cultural expression becomes caught in a version of the Scottish predicament, forever restricted to a narrow and obsessive focus on gender identities and issues" (Petrie 2004, 82). However, he also quotes positive examples, such as A.L. Kennedy, who is "concerned with personal journeys of rediscovery" (Petrie 2004, 71) and whose characters are female and Scottish, neither of which ever completely determines their identity (Petrie 2004, 83).

The role of women writers in creating new gender roles and ideals can hardly be overrated. Christianson and Lumsden maintain that it is women writers in particular who have been successful in pluralising and changing national identity:

[…] their [women writers'] work *cuts across* patriarchal constructions of Scotland to suggest alternative 'imaginations' or constructions of nationhood and their relationship to it than those offered by their male counterparts. Frequently, it is women writers within national cultures who seemingly disrupt homogeneity. (original emphasis; Christianson & Lumsden 2000, 2)

Furthermore, in regard to the female perspective in Scottish literature, another male writer who challenges the traditional gender binary is of interest. In his bestselling novels, such as *Morvern Callar* (1995) and *The Sopranos* (1998), Alan Warner takes a unique perspective, narrating his novels from the viewpoint of its female heroines. This has two interesting implications for Scottish gender constructions. On one hand, Warner has been criticised for an insinuated voyeurism (Jones 2009a, 163), as he describes girls' private dressing and make-up rituals in great detail. Although Jones states that Warner is believed to be a feminist, she still finds it necessary to ask "[…] whether this 'cross-writing' is a mere mask of femininity and ultimately if he is simply a male 'colonist' of female experience" (Jones 2009a, 161). On the other hand, if his representation of the women's point of view is considered feminist, it is even more interesting to note that, at the same time, Warner ignores the male perspective entirely: "[…] Warner literally 'disappears'

<sup>48</sup> In *How Late it Was, How Late* Helen has apparently left Sammy. The fact that the main protagonist in *Mo Said She Was Quirky*, an exile-Scot working in London, is also called Helen might suggest a continuity in characters but at the same time underlines Kelman's changing agenda when focusing on representing the female perspective.

men; even the male author himself is occluded by the extraordinarily realised female characters of these texts" (Jones 2009a, 161). One poignant example can be found in *Morvern Callar* (1995), in which Morvern's dead boyfriend remains nameless throughout the novel.

There seem to be many indications that women writers have successfully overcome their marginalisation and are working towards constructing new gender identities that fit in with a pluralised, modern Scottish identity. In turn, this has influenced the representation of the male perspective. As women gain visibility, the notion of the dominance of men is subsequently threatened, forcing men to deal with feelings of marginalisation. This development becomes all the more conspicuous when seen from a postcolonial viewpoint. The postcolonial construction of Scotland adds another level of marginalisation to men's self-image on top of the already changing gender constructions of the 20th and 21st centuries. This study will focus on the influence that Scottish postcolonialism has on constructions of masculinity rather than on the female perspective, as it seems that men's reactions to this hitherto unknown marginalisation, which has been reinforced by cultural changes, has provoked strong reactions. This struggle over constructed ideals of masculinity and the influence of a postcolonial reading will be paradigmatically analysed in the following with the help of two novels. Following a short overview of traditional Scottish constructions of masculinity and the importance of women writers, Andrew O'Hagan's novel *Our Fathers* (1999) will be employed to demonstrate three different models of Scottish masculinity and the transition that hegemonic Scottish masculinity has undergone. In contrast to this, Jackie Kay's *Trumpet* (1998) will be analysed as an example of a positive response in the contemporary Scottish novel to the instability of gender constructions.

#### **6.1 The Postcolonial Inferiority Complex—Scottish Masculinities in Andrew O'Hagan's** *Our Fathers*

The pluralisation in the depiction of masculinity in Scottish fiction can be traced back to a number of reasons. One of these is the questioning of national identity, which is closely linked to the fact that Scotland started to construct itself as a colony of the English. Nationalism and the call for independence developed relatively late in Scotland when compared with the rest of Europe, and it was only during the 1920s that nationalism became a strong force in culture and politics (Nairn 1981, 95).49 As chapter two has demonstrated, the decline of a shared British identity changed Scotland considerably in the 20th century. The perceptions and attitudes towards Scotland's status within the United Kingdom altered significantly after the failed devolution vote in 1979. Another factor that fuelled the discussion was

<sup>49</sup> The Scottish National Party (SNP) was established in 1928; Hugh MacDiarmid's nationalist poem *A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle* dates from 1926.

the discovery of oil in the Scottish North Sea in the 1980s. The demand for independence culminated in another referendum and, finally, the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1998.

Three major factors influence the construction of postcolonial masculinity in Scotland, all of which are also inextricably interconnected: first, the economic decline of the male-dominated heavy industry; second, the failing of patriarchal structures and the rise of women as breadwinners; and third, the mystification of a better, simpler, more glorious past. All of these aspects can be traced back to a Scottish feeling of inferiority. In their study *The Eclipse of Scottish Culture*, Craig Beveridge and Ronald Turnbull identify a "Scottish inferiority complex" (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 7), as has already been mentioned in chapter two; applying Frantz Fanon's concept of the inferiorisation of colonised people to Scotland, they demonstrate how, by a subtle process of mystification, the colonised are prompted to doubt their own culture and, subsequently, embrace the culture of the coloniser. This has led to the mystification and romanticisation of pre-Union Scotland, in which tartanry50 is regarded as the only valid part of Scottish culture: "The view that popular consciousness is dominated by tartanry, that the populance is sunk in ignorance and irrationality, accords perfectly with the governing image of Scotland as a dark and backwards culture" (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 14).

This process of inferiorisation has complex implications for Scotland's own perception of itself as a nation as well as for the construction of gender within Scotland. Duncan Petrie identifies these effects firstly on the level of class:

While Scottish proletarianism can justifiably be positioned as a progressive cultural response to the dominant values and class power of the British establishment, the elision of class and nation also tends to generate a rather crude and reductive opposition between a Scottish identity that is essentially proletarian, communitarian, demotic, gregarious and virile and an Englishness characterised as bourgeois, self-interested, stuffy, repressed and effete. (Petrie 2004, 19)

As shown above, class and gender are closely linked in Scotland, while the proletarianism mentioned by Petrie can be equalled with masculinity. This process of reversing a felt inferiorism can also be observed in relation to gender, leading to a certain 'over-investment' in masculinity (Petrie 2004, 65): "In reversing the discourse of inferiorism along these lines, the English male becomes feminized in relation to a strong virile idea of Scottishness, grimy at the edges but all the more potent for that" (McMillan 2003, 70). As Schoene-Harwood argues, it is the marginalisation of Scots as defeated and dominated that leads to a reinforcement of masculinity:

Within the imperial framework of English-Scottish relations, the Scottish male is already feminised as a disempowered native (br)other. His condition

50 This is somewhat ironic, since the traditional tartan Highland dress was only invented after the 1707 Union (Trevor-Roper [1983] 2009, 19).

is one of subordinate marginalisation which […] makes it all the more important for him to disassociate himself from the female in order not to compromise his masculinity even further. (Schoene-Harwood 2000, 105f.)

Thus, this perceived marginalisation as a colonised country influences Scottish masculinity. Due to the feeling of inferiority, the Scottish man feels threatened by the English. On a gender level, this leads to the emphasis of the Scottish national identity as male, in opposition to the English who are constructed as feminised. This is also apparent in literature; S.J. Boyd (1994, 99f.) refers to MacDiarmid as an example, who portrayed the English as effeminate in contrast to a macho Scottish masculinity.

In Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting*, the main character Renton devalues the English by calling them not only "arseholes" but "effete arseholes". He then continues by pointing out the inferiority of the Scottish: "We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation" (*TS* 78). This quotation hints at the two sides of Scottish masculinity: on the one hand, the image of Scottish 'hard men' is overemphasised while the English are constructed as feminised, but, on the other hand, a deep insecurity is revealed that there is an imbalance in this construction since Scotland is suppressed by a weak England. In the following, several representations of models of masculinity will be outlined that are found in contemporary Scottish fiction and in various other areas in which the perceived inferiority complex of Scotland becomes visible. This will in turn serve as a basis in order to analyse the effect the aforementioned paradox has on Scottish identity.

The process of inferiorisation and dissociation from everything feminine and/ or English can have different effects on constructions of masculinity. With the help of Andrew O'Hagan's novel *Our Fathers* a model of three representations of men will be presented: the traditional man, the compensatory man, and the man in transition—all of which reflect reactions to the influence of the Scottish postcolonial condition. Of course, this model can only offer a broad categorisation of the prevalent constructions of masculinity that are represented in Scottish literature, and is by no means comprehensive; nor will every fictional representation of Scottish men necessarily fit in any category exclusively. After a short description of the different models, each will be illustrated using examples from the novel, which depicts three generations of men and their difficult relationships with each other, with each generation representing one suggested model of masculinity. Though O'Hagan was included in *Granta*'s The Best Young British Novelists in 2003 while *Our Fathers* was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize, O'Hagan has surprisingly not yet received much attention from academia. The novel in question, which was published in 1999, is set in Glasgow and negotiates the role of patriarchy in Scottish society. The main protagonist, Jamie, returns home to Scotland from Liverpool, as his grandfather is dying. It becomes a journey into his past, revealing the problematic relationships between three generations. Disconnected from his violent father and incapable mother, Jamie grew up with his grandparents. His

grandfather, Hugh Bawn, had been a social reformer, campaigning for the building of 'high rise' houses in order to solve Glasgow's precarious housing situation during the 1950s and 1960s. Jamie faces a complex legacy, returning to Scotland where the fame of his grandfather has been overshadowed after his grandfather's alleged involvement in a bribery affair.

The first construction of masculinity to be found in the novel is that of the traditional man, which is equal to the traditional Scottish 'hard man'. He is the model of the man described above, the working-class man of the steelworks and the Glasgow docks. The traditional man believes in traditional values and, consequently, in the binary gender system. In this construction, Scotland is perceived as a proud and strong country that will eventually regain its old strength. The fact that Scotland is not an independent country is more or less ignored, while the concept of British identity is not endorsed. Rather, this construction of masculinity is characterised by a strong feeling of nostalgia.

In *Our Fathers* this construction of masculinity is represented by Hugh Bawn. A hard-working, honest and visionary man, Hugh is described as "[a] priest of steel decking and concrete" (*OF* 68). Hugh's success and legacy seem to have vanished, as high-rise complexes are no longer desirable in 1990s society and do not keep up with modern standards. In addition to this, Hugh has been accused of having been involved in a bribery affair. This decrease in importance is reflected by his physical condition. When Jamie describes him, he especially notes his powerlessness and loss of authority:

He was like a man without rooms in his former castle. The locks had been changed. The plan was altered. The servants no longer answered his call. He knew the place but the place no longer knew him. He had lost the power and the right to live as he once had lived in that place. (*OF* 79)

In this way, O'Hagan hints at the powerlessness of Hugh's generation of Scottish men. The times have changed but they will not adapt to them. In addition to this, it is noteworthy that it is Hugh's impending death that causes Jamie to come back to Scotland—the traditional Scottish man is literally dying out. Hugh makes his allegiances clear at several points in the novel. Rather stubborn, he does not accept that Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. When he and Jamie visit his club to have a drink, he mocks the Union Jack on the wall: "'You need to get the decorators in here, Davie,' Hugh said. 'Somebody's been drawing obscenities on yer Artex'" (*OF* 140). Hugh obviously does not accept the political realities and seems to be tangled up in the past, clinging to his old ideals. Later, the doorman of the club remembers a talk about the housing schemes Hugh gave at his school many years ago. He remembers that the talk was called 'The Great Era of British Housing', but Hugh insists that he never gave such a talk:

'Never in my life. "The Great"…what did you say?…"The Great Era of British Housing". No. […] The talk was called "A Great Era in Scottish Housing".'

'Give's a fucking break, Hughie. It was a million years ago.' 'Nevertheless,' said Hugh, in his best mockery, 'an important distinction. When it comes to housing, England only followed the great innovations up here. They came at our heels. […].' (*OF* 141f.)

Here, Hugh is confronted with a different view; the doorman Davie thinks that it is no longer necessary to insist on the differentiation between Great Britain and Scotland. However, it also becomes clear that for Hugh British means English. Hugh represents the traditional type of man who identifies himself as Scottish. Deeply influenced by the nationalism of the early 20th century, he denies any shared British identity. Accordingly, he ignores the notion that Scotland could be constructed in any postcolonial, and thus inferior, position.

In contrast to Hugh, his son Robert represents the compensatory model. Due to the construction of Scotland as a defeated and weak country, the compensatory man has to stress his masculinity and disassociate himself from everything effeminate. As illustrated above, the dominant construction of masculinity in Scotland maintains the ideal of a hegemonic, traditional masculinity; the perceived inferiorisation by the coloniser and, hence, the dread of the notion of the inferiority of men that would question and ultimately threaten the hegemonic, binary gender system results in an overcompensation of masculinity and a rejection of everything feminine.

This construction of masculinity is by no means stable: the paradox of this perceived inferiority alongside the ideals of the superiority of men in fact makes it unstable. This instability is revealed in many novels in which compensatory men are shown to be failed or failing men. However, with their split personality, these men fit into the Scottish tradition of the Caledonian Antisyzygy. Berthold Schoene-Harwood sees this reaction to the postcolonial condition of Scotland as the reason for the popularity of the doppelgänger motif in Scottish literature: "The result is a psychic split expressing itself in precarious and highly conflictual assertions of the integrity of a self continuously embattled and destabilised by its own irrepressible alterity" (Schoene-Harwood 2000, 105f.).

This strand of overcompensating masculinity is not only represented as distinctively Scottish but also closely linked to working-class identity. As previously mentioned, gender identity has a strong influence on national identity. Scottish national identity relies on a certain image of working-class masculinity, forcing the Scottish upper classes to identify with the working class in order to reinforce national and gender identity and to be able to oppose the coloniser (McMillan 2003, 70). Thus, a working-class status becomes the default mode for Scottish men.

In *Our Fathers* this type of overcompensating man is represented by Robert. He is characterised as the typical working-class, loud, violent, and heavy-drinking Scot. Even as a child he was not interested in his father's politics: "He hated all talk of buildings and housing; he once said that the only house he'd like to live in was the one that overlooked Celtic Park [football stadium]" (*OF* 117). When a grown-up Jamie visits his father in hospital, Robert starts to become angry and

to shout at him and to the nurse: "Can't even kick a ball. Never could. Hopeless fucking wanker. […] Bastard doesn't know what a drink looks like. Pure wanker. Fucking hopeless cunt of a boy. See he doesn't steal your flowers by the way. The pansy likes flowers, so he does" (*OF* 255). This quotation shows Robert's ideal of masculinity: an interest in sports, physical ability, and a taste for alcohol. For him, Jamie's supposed deviance from these ideals equals eviration.

However, Robert has failed as a father, with his son, Jamie, mainly growing up at his grandparents', and consequently he cannot live up to the hegemonic traditional masculinity he aspires to. Jamie sums up his character somewhat laconically: "My father was an alcoholic. The kind that rages and mourns. He never meant well, and he never did well" (*OF* 6). After Hugh's funeral, Jamie goes to visit his father, who is now a reformed alcoholic and works as a driver in Dumfries. When they talk, Jamie confronts him with the fact that he was never a good father and Robert tries to make excuses, blaming it on his alcohol addiction (*OF* 263f.). Earlier in the novel, Jamie depicts this state of failing and being torn between former pride and current failure as linked to being Scottish:

In my father's anger there was something of the nation. […] His was a country of fearful men: proud in the talking, paltry in the living, and every promise another lie. My father bore all the dread that came with the soil—unable to rise, or rise again, and slow to see power in his own hands. […] Robert's madness was nothing new: he was one of his own kind, bred, with long songs of courage, never to show a courageous hand. […] Their [Our father's] pretend love of freedom: we all learned the family business. We all knew the shame. His Scotland was lashed, betrayed, forgotten. That was our happiness; that was our song. (*OF* 8)

Robert is part of a troubled generation that suffers from Scotland's difficult political status and its torn identity between being Scottish and British. The passage quoted above summarises the contradictory identity of Scottish men in the phrase "proud in the talking, paltry in the living". Here, the paradox of postcolonial Scottish constructions of masculinities is well illustrated. In addition to this, it should be noted that this construction of masculinity, which is so heavily influenced by postcolonialism, is never fixed, "but is caught up in continuous oscillation between the diametrically opposed sites of (post)colonial marginality on the one hand and patriarchal dominance on the other" (Schoene-Harwood 2000, 106). Thus, Scottish masculinity becomes unstable. The reaction to this instability and, consequently, to a questioned Scottish identity is overcompensation and the attempt to find a fixed and stable position in a hegemonic, traditional masculinity.

This type of constructed compensatory masculinity is the dominant character found in contemporary Scottish literature of the devolutionary period since 1979. In *Our Fathers*, the 'hard man' identity is described as a general condition of Scotland. The reassurance and importance of fighting power is illustrated by the following dialogue between Jamie, who has just returned to Glasgow, and some children he meets outside his grandparents' housing complex on Bonfire Night. The children notice that Jamie is not from the area and start talking to him:

'We could beat the English,' mused the tall one. 'At what?' 'At anything we tried. You name it.' 'No you.' 'Me name it?' '*Name* the thing.' 'Wars, like.' 'But we fight on the same side, usually.' 'But if we fought them again we *would* beat them, right?' the boy said. (original emphasis; *OF* 66)

Even after Jamie points out that it is very unlikely that Scotland and England would fight each other, as they are allies and not enemies, the boy still needs the reassurance that Scotland would be superior. Hence, for the boy, Scottish identity is very much based on a constructed masculinity he already seems to have internalised. When talking about dogs, Jamie reinforces the image that Scots aspire to a strong image of masculinity: "They were made to be just like their owners. Angry, barking, with stuff on their teeth. Men in Scotland make dogs be like them: aggression machines. In Berwick you never saw people kick dogs, not like you did in Ayrshire" (*OF* 13f.). The emphasis of the difference between Scotland and England is significant: it is not men in general who are "aggression machines"—only Scottish men.

Aggression as acceptable character trait of Scottish men is portrayed in several other novels. One prominent example is Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* (1993): whereas Renton and most of his friends transcend common gender roles (Heiler 2004, 186), other protagonists represent the stereotypical compensatory man. The archetypal binge-drinking, misogynistic and violent man is represented by the character of Frank Begbie. Begbie makes his first appearance in the chapter "The Glass" (*TS* 75–84) when he and his friends are drinking in a pub. Suddenly, Begbie throws his empty glass over the first-floor balcony and injures another guest. Following this act of unmotivated, random violence, he goes downstairs and seems shocked, pretending to attempt to identify the offender. Begbie is constructed as a "dominant-aggressive father figure" (my translation; Heiler 2004, 161) who constantly criticises the other protagonists for their drug habits and their unemployment. However, Begbie's behaviour is not perceived to be deviant from society's norms and values. Renton's parents think him to be a good example for their son to follow:

On the other hand, Begbie, total fuckin crazy psycho Beggars, is held up as an archetypal model of manhood Ecosse. Yes, there may be poor bastards picking bits ay beer glass oot ay thir faces when Franco goes oan the rampage, but the laddie works hard and plays hard etcetera, etcetera. (*TS* 198)

Duncan Petrie (2004, 93) claims that "Welsh uses Begbie as a graphic manifestation of the Scottish male's myopic capacity for self-destruction, and self-hatred". By constructing Begbie as an "archetypal model of manhood Ecosse", stereotypical ideals of gender are strengthened in the novel. Furthermore, a binary gender system is endorsed, in which the man is dominant. All of his apparent faults can be excused by his dominant position in society. This 'boys will be boys' attitude can only be tolerated if the man's position as agenda-setter in society is recognised. By translating this relationship of power between man and woman to the level of Scotland and England, the same mechanism is visible: Scotland is constructed as the dominant country, which a long and proud tradition has made into what it is today, whereas England is always represented as the deviance by the Scottish.

However, Frank Begbie's 'hard man' image is not invulnerable. There is one example in the novel in which he is described as "strangely subdued and uncomfortable" (*TS* 309), when he happens to meet his drunken father on the street. This can be taken as a hint that the compensatory man is not seen as a satisfactory model for Scottish men, but that the instability and fragility of this type of men is obvious. The Scottish man who overcompensates his insecurity with patriarchal thinking and aggressive behaviour is shown to put on a false front in order to hide the perceived inferiority and conflicts associated with a Scottish identity. Petrie points out that in *Trainspotting* the influence of this certain construction of masculinity is shown as major factor in Scotland's decline: "In addition to the corrosive influence of junkie culture on any meaningful sense of community, the other major cancer at the heart of the world of *Trainspotting* is that old chestnut, Scottish working-class masculinity" (Petrie 2004, 92).

Another writer whose writing is concerned with the construction of masculinity is John Burnside. His novel *The Mercy Boys* (1999) tells the story of four men living in Dundee who meet almost daily at their local pub, the Mercy, to drink. They share a certain despair of their personal situations and conflicted relationships to women. The book climaxes in an eruption of violence when one of the men, Rob, kills his wife and her friend with a hammer in his kitchen (Burnside 1999, 171–173) and another, Sconnie, is murdered by a group of students he meets on one of his random train journeys and who want to try out an ancient South American sacrifice ritual (Burnside 1999, 203–212). The violence seems to be the men's only way out of their lives of misery and bitterness. Another of the men, Junior, remembers his childhood and shows how his father tried to teach him to be a 'hard man', which only caused him to feel embarrassed. The following quotation illustrates how the 'traditional Scottish education' fails to prepare the men for life, leaving them bitter and isolated:

There was a story he knew, that story you hear in bars all over Scotland, about the man who puts his son up on a table and tells him to jump, that he, his father, will catch him. He had always disliked this story; he had always been angry when people told it as if it were a good idea—how the father lets the boy fall and, as the child lies crying on the floor bends over and says, 'Let that be a lesson to you. Trust nobody.' He disliked it so much because it really had happened, to him and to others; his own father, out of bravado and sadism had put him up on a kitchen table and played this very trick, with a couple of his mates from the pub standing by—played it, so he said, for Junior's own good, so he would learn to be hard and make his own way in the world. (Burnside 1999, 40)

This 'hard man' education has failed to prepare Junior for life, and he is unable to live up to the traditional gender role expected of him, consequently withdrawing into depression and inaction until his wife dies and he feels freed (Burnside 1999, 174–177). The pub becomes the men's retreat because they feel there is no other suitable place for them in society, as the home is the sphere of the woman, hinting at an identity crisis that makes men insecure and unstable:

'Look at men,' he was saying. 'I mean. Look at us. The whole world is about men being fucked up. I'm not talking about feminism crap here, or anything like that. I'm talking about us. […]

'They've [the men at the pub] all got homes, and wives and kids, and stuff they own, stuff they're paying for. If there was even a remote chance of going home and feeling they belonged there, they'd be out there quick as anything. But they don't belong there. That's the wife's place, her and the kids. You can't go there unless you play by her rules.'

He snorted.

'Men are supposed to have the power. Have they fuck. What power do I have? What power do any of these boys have? They don't even know who they are, or where they come from.' (Burnside 1999, 243f.)

In contrast to Burnside's characters, at first sight the main character in Alan Bissett's novel *Death of a Ladies' Man* (2009), Charlie Bain, a teacher, seems to be a modern man. He distances himself from the common stereotype of men:

Over the years he'd come to loathe the company of straight men. Straight *Glasgow* Men. It was their relentlessly dull conversations about football and football and football and cars and football—like this stuff mattered? *Still?* To *adults?* He hated the way they talked about women too, in the pub, safely out of earshot, Viking-like about their conquests. Leaning over pints, foot up on the rail at the bottom of the bar, namechecking the hardware—tits, ass, cunt—not a *hint* of psychology, […]. (original emphasis; Bissett 2009, 22f.)

On the surface, it seems as if Charlie despises the stereotypical Scottish man, who is interested in drink and sports and objectifies women. After his divorce, the teacher moves back to his mother's, has an affair with a colleague, and finally makes a pass at a student, which leads to his suspension and, ultimately, as the title suggests, may also lead to his death. Charlie engages in a number of affairs and casusal sexual encounters, and he admits that "[s]ex was the lens through which he […] perceived the world" (Bissett 2009, 8); he then goes on to compare his flirting to "UN Peacekeeping", and rationalises that his behaviour merely follows

"a natural order of events" (Bissett 2009, 8). It becomes clear that Charlie shares the same views as the compensatory man about women, whom he reduces to sex objects. The only difference is that he uses different instruments to achieve his goals: "To be a ladies' man you must be a feminist. You must think like a woman. A straight, male woman. Groomed and fucking *immaculate*" (original emphasis; Bissett 2009, 23). Preceding each chapter, the reader finds short excerpts clearly set apart from the rest of the text in a different font with advice on how to seduce women, probably taken from a self-help book. The tone of these excerpts encourages men to take what they believe to be rightfully theirs, and thus reinforces a gender system that is based on male dominance. Charlie overcompensates his insecurity and is another example of a failing or disintegrating man. His world seems to fall apart bit by bit, which is illustrated in an erratic typeface. The last pages of the novel contain only fragments of conversation, highlighting Charlie's total breakdown after a night of drinking alone in the street. It remains open what will happen to him, though the title of the novel shows that this type of masculinity is ultimately destined not to survive.

Compensatory masculinity is also illustrated in another novel by Andrew O'Hagan. *Be Near Me* (2006) tells the story of Father David who moves to a small Catholic parish in the west of Scotland. In contrast to other novels, the stereotypical compensatory masculinity here is presented as an antithesis. David represents a very different masculinity: he is homosexual, speaks French, and is interested in books, classical music, and expensive food. This apparent deviation is noted in his new parish in Dalgarnock. However, rather than recognise David as a representative of a different type of man, the community explains his deviant gender identity with the fact that he is English, although David was born in Edinburgh. The postman, when talking to the housekeeper, Mrs Poole, verifies David's allegedly divergent identity, using the new rug in the rectory as evidence:

'How's yer English priest getting on then?' 'He's not English,' she said. 'He was born in Edinburgh.' 'Don't kid yerself,' said the postman. 'Yer man's as English as two weeks in Essex. Get a load ae that rug lying there!' 'What are you talking about?' 'That thing under yer feet,' he said. 'They didnae have that in Father McGee's day. That's a pure English rug, that.' (O'Hagan 2006, 12)

The story is narrated by David himself, and it should therefore be considered that this voice might not be reliable. In his narration, the men David meets always reveal themselves to be the compensatory type of man. At a wedding, David talks to the father of the bride, Mr Nolan, who represents the stereotypical Scottish male, with an inclination to violence and a love for alcohol:

'I'm sure you've heard all the great sayings about the Scots, Father Anderton,' said Mrs Nolan. 'I simply ignore them,' I said. 'Well, you shouldnae,' said Mr Nolan, 'because they're all deserved. I'm getting more tight-fisted by the week, […] 'And I love a drink,' he said, disarmingly. […] 'I can honestly say I like a good drink more than I like any of my children.' (O'Hagan 2006, 57)

The difference between David and the community is reinforced because, as a Catholic priest, David represents another minority. He mocks these exploitations of sectarian differences when he shows them to be nothing more than superficial and based on habit and prejudice: "It turned out that Dalgarnock's small community of Catholics—much like their opposites—were enslaved to the denominational impulse: few of them regularly attended Mass, none sent their boys into the priesthood, yet they loudly swelled with sectarian pride" (O'Hagan 2006, 31). Interestingly, in David's perception, Scottish and English discourse is also reversed. In contrast to Jamie in *Our Fathers*, who laments the violence and aggression of Scottish men, David associates his English father with these attributes (O'Hagan 2006, 143), and his artistic mother with Scotland. This fundamentally reversed perception serves as yet another indication of David failing to fit into Scotland.

These various examples examined here demonstrate the dominance of the compensatory construction of masculinity in the contemporary Scottish novel. They also show that compensatory and consequently failing masculinity can take different forms. Subsequently, a construction of masculinity will be considered that attempts to transcend this limiting stereotype.

The third model of masculinity is that of the man in transition. The transitional man rejects hegemonic masculinity and accepts that gender constructions are in flux. The association with femininity is no longer regarded as deviance, and the stereotypical man in transition is aware that gender roles are changing and patriarchy is no longer desirable. Scotland's ambiguous status and history are accepted as given, and it becomes more important to attempt to construct new valid models. This type of man has come to realise that the absence of difference between Scotland and England is regarded as far more disturbing and destabilising than the difference itself. This construction of masculinity is represented by Jamie in *Our Fathers*, whose use of language contains various metaphors concerning change. This imagery is mostly taken from the semantic fields of plants: "And some [parts of each plant] had made new in their dying. Offshoots. Hybrids. Time making changes, again and again. The plants of Scotland had mostly stayed in one place. But some had travelled. And some had changed" (*OF* 153). Jamie impersonates change in a rather unsubtle way: he is working as a consultant for contractors who are demolishing the now unpopular high-rise complexes his grandfather built. His work also parallels a renunciation of the former, and now out-dated, construction of masculinity represented by his grandfather. Hugh does not believe this kind of change to be a positive force. When Jamie is drunk, he is unwillingly drawn into a discussion with Hugh about the nature of change and what it takes to change society for the better. Jamie insists that change is already happening and cannot possibly be stopped, to which Hugh laconically answers, "[o]ur materials are stronger" (*OF* 172), pointing out that, even in a changing society, some old

values and identity constructions will remain unchanged. When comparing his grandfather to himself, Jamie notices similarities:

'He had given me his past. He had given me his tools. I would use them to explain something of my own life, separate now from his, but bound the same, by ideals and plans, and futures we could never know. […] We couldn't complete the world for ourselves. We could only live, and look for small graces, and learn to accept the munificence of change.' (*OF* 146)

As this quotation illustrates, Jamie seems to realise that identity is not something fixed, but that it changes over time, though it continues to require a sense of rootedness. The same is valid for gender identities, which are not essential in any way but determined by traditions and beliefs.

In Jamie's aforementioned conversation with the children outside his grandparents' house, the children ask him about life in England: "'Is it good in England?' he asked. 'Some things are,' I said. 'Not everything.' […] 'It's not that much different from here,' I said. He didn't believe me" (*OF* 66). Here it again becomes clear that, for the boys who have already internalised the mechanism of creating difference to define Scottish identity, it is unsettling or even unbelievable that Scotland and England might not be so different after all. For the compensatory man, this constructed difference cannot be dismantled or questioned, as it is the foundation of his identity. Thus, the postcolonial condition is reinforced. For the modern man, this is no longer necessary: his identity is not built solely on the difference to an allegedly inferior England.

Conspicuously, this type of transitional man is under-represented in contemporary Scottish literature, while the compensatory man is the dominant construction of masculinity found there. The fact that the latter kind of man is almost always shown as failing, breaking down or with an unstable identity hints at the third model as a possible resolution of this situation. In the following, three further aspects will be analysed that influence the Scottish feeling of inferiority and thus reinforce the perception of Scotland as colonised: the mystification of the past, economic decline, and the failing of patriarchal structures. These issues are consequently of importance in the construction of Scottish masculinity, as they contribute to the failing of the compensatory man and act as a catalyst for the transition to a new Scottish gender identity.

The longing for some 'golden past' or 'original' Scotland has a long tradition in Scottish literature. The Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, linked to writers such as Hugh MacDermid, endeavoured to bring Scotland back to past glory and campaigned for independence. The idea that a 'real' and/or 'original' Scotland exists is essentialist to say the least. This essentialism mystifies the country to a significant degree. As Craig Beveridge and Ronald Turnbull point out, mystification can be employed as an instrument of inferiorisation by the coloniser (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 13f.). However, this mystification is also visible the other way around. It is an instrument for Scots themselves to reinforce their identity by relating to a long historical tradition, and can also be used in an attempt to stabilise identity and, with it, masculinity. The compensatory man who is unsure of his gender identity longs for 'the past', in which it seems that men had more power and gender roles were stable.

Although many areas of society in Scotland, such as the Church, law, and the education system, remained as they were even after the Union, the increasing tendency to construct Scotland as postcolonial seems to have increased the perceived influence that England has had on Scotland. This mechanism ensures that Scotland can exist as an allegedly defeated country. Here, again, the discourses are reversed, and the imagined memory of some utopian Scotland that existed before the Union maintains the illusion of a strong Scotland, simultaneously avoiding the need to admit to having been defeated by the English—such an admission would then question Scottish masculinity, which is perceived to be the basis of national identity.

However, mystification not only serves as an instrument for the Scottish to reinforce their pre-colonial identity, but, as mentioned above, is also a tool of inferiorisation. Beveridge and Turnbull take Fanon's concept of inferiorisation and adapt it to the Scottish situation: "Fanon uses the idea to describe those processes in a relationship of national dependence which lead the native to doubt the worth and significance of inherited ways of life and embrace the styles and values of the coloniser" (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 5). This inferiorisation from outside ensures that Scotland is always seen as the mystic and romanticised opposite of England. In Andrew O'Hagan's novel *Be Near Me*, this mystification of Scotland is addressed by Mr Nolan at his daughter's wedding:

He took a long drink from his pint and looked up. 'Middle-class arseholes from England, pardon my French. You think Scotland is a playground for shootin' and fishin'. You think it's all fucken kilts and haggises and crap like that. You think it's folk songs and single malts and Hogmanay and the fucken Isle of Skye. Well, it's nothing like that. And it's no' hairy-arsed warriors wantin' to die for freedom either.'

'Come on, Dominic,' said another man. 'It's no' half as bad.'

'I'm no' sayin' it's bad,' he said. 'I'm sayin' *their view* ae it is bad. We've been listenin' tae it for hunners a years. They think we're a novelty act up here, just a bunch a people no' worthy ae the same kinna respect these people take for granted when it comes tae themselves.' (original emphasis; O'Hagan 2006, 61)

Firstly, the way in which he speaks of middle-class English people makes it clear how, in his view, class and nationality are linked. He then lists all stereotypical folklore items that are connected to Scotland. Furthermore, he correctly identifies that it is not the fact that Scotland is the land of kilts and whisky that he finds disturbing, but the fact that England constructs Scotland essentially as this. This is the typical colonial process of 'othering' that can be witnessed in various colonial contexts and has poignantly been described by Edward Said in his book *Orientalism*, published in 1978. In this specific context England constructs Scotland as an Other in relation to its Self. In this process, Scotland becomes the opposite of England: exotic, idyllic, rural, and plain. This process makes England normative and Scotland the deviance. Furthermore, it degrades Scotland, as, as quoted earlier, "[t] he view that popular consciousness is dominated by tartanry, that the populace is sunk in ignorance and irrationality, accords perfectly with the governing image of Scotland as a dark and backward culture" (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 14). This image of a backward culture that was only able to evolve after the Union, that is, with England's help, is reinforced in historiography, as mentioned earlier, by the depiction of the Union as a watershed in Scotland's development (Beveridge & Turnbull 1989, 29). This depiction and overemphasis of England's influence on Scotland's development clearly adds to the Scottish feeling of inferiority. As shown above, the mystification of Scotland serves two purposes, each of which serves a function for one side: firstly, the inferiorisation of Scotland by the coloniser and, secondly, the glorification of the past as a reassurance of Scottish identity.

The inferiorisation of Scotland is also clearly visible on the economic level. The economic decline of the 1980s and the ensuing structural change hit Scotland extremely hard. The heavy industry in Glasgow and in the west of Scotland particularly suffered from the recession and from new government policies. As mentioned above, this economic development was significantly influenced by the far-reaching policy change initiated by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. The reaction in Scotland was particularly bitter about the changes, as the majority of Scots did not vote for the Conservative Party in the 1979 General Election, whose victory made Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister. This added to the feeling of helplessness and inferiority, as Scotland's vote was unable to influence Westminster's policies significantly while Scotland was forced to live with the ramifications nonetheless. As mentioned earlier, these resentments were reinforced after oil was found off the Scottish North Sea coast, as Scotland wanted the oil tax revenue to stay in Scotland rather than going into Westminster's budget.

The fact that Scotland was now ruled by a Conservative Westminster added to the feeling of being colonised and dominated by the metropolis of London. Scottish men in particular perceived Margaret Thatcher as a threat. The 'Iron Lady' was held responsible for the far-reaching structural change, the rising unemployment, and the decline of the heavy industry, all of which threatened what the Scottish 'hard man' image was built on. As a result, Thatcher was constructed as 'evil' and emasculating (Petrie 2004, 18).

The feeling of hopelessness that Margaret Thatcher's policies caused are described in John Burnside's *The Mercy Boys*. In this novel, Sconnie remembers that, as a boy, his mother would take him to Edinburgh for shopping trips where they would look at all of the things they could not afford:

All of a sudden, the memory was unbearable. Sconnie felt he could hardly contain his anger, that his mother had been made to live like this, that millions of other women, just like her, were sitting in parks with their kids, eating sandwiches, lonely and unhappy in their damp clothes, wandering the streets and looking at things they could never afford to buy, things that other people could have whenever they wanted. He wanted to kill all those people. He wanted to kill the whole world. (Burnside 1999, 201)

Sconnie's childhood memory most likely refers to the 1970s, however, that is before the welfare state started to decline in the 1980s, causing new deprivation; according to him, circumstances had not improved after the introduction of the welfare state. The quotation also illustrates the way in which Sconnie's extensive rage adds to a feeling of inferiority.

However, it is not only Conservative economic policies that destabilised the traditional Scottish masculinity—the working conditions in a globalised world have changed substantially, having far-reaching effects on the European market. Robert W. Connell describes four substructures of gender relations that have been affected by this process and within which masculinities are restructured. The first and most important substructure is the division of labour: "[…] if the world capitalist economy increasingly constructed men as wage earners and thus tended to reshape masculinity by linking gender identity with work, this same process made the new masculinities vulnerable" (Connell 2005, 78). For Britain, this process is seen as the most important influence in the transition of modern masculinities (Connell 2005, 78).

These changes in the workplace have increased since the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War. Carole Jones (2009a, 18) identifies two major developments: "The dismantling of traditional work patterns undermined male dominance in the workplace and widespread unemployment transformed communities and sealed a loss of male status as breadwinner." The economic climate led to many men losing their jobs and, as a result, their authority, as they were no longer able to secure their families' income. Even when the economic situation changed for the better, men neither profited from this nor were they able to regain their former status; the 1990s saw "the cultivation of a 'Silicon Glen' and a significant 'feminisation' of work and the workforce […]" (Jones 2009a, 18). Naturally, this development had wide-reaching implications for Scottish men. The decline of heavy industry in the west of Scotland meant that men were suddenly expected to acquire an entirely new set of skills. Employees were no longer required to be physically strong but to have good communication skills and to be competent in the service sector, skills that have traditionally been seen as feminine and contradict the macho self-image of Scottish men.

This feminisation of work has contributed to the destabilising tendencies in the construction of Scottish masculinity. In combination with the feeling of powerlessness due to the implementation of policies made far away in London that do not represent Scottish interests, this inferiorisation can again be reversed to support a reinforced traditional image of masculinity. The fictive town of Dalgarnock in Andrew O'Hagan's *Be Near Me* is located in Ayrshire in the west of Scotland, a region that was hit hard by the economic changes of the 1980s. At his daughter's wedding, Mr Nolan complains about the changing times to David, the main protagonist:

There used to be plenty of work about here. Good jobs. Coal mining for one, and a big steel-works over the river. That ICI place used to employ thousands, making paint, and, before that, it was Nobel, making explosives. Men worked in those places for forty years and at the end of it the Jobcentre was trying to turn them into Avon ladies. (O'Hagan 2006, 55)

In this passage the emasculation is illustrated quite literally and the feminisation of work is highlighted. This decline is blamed not only on Margaret Thatcher's policies and England, but increasingly also on globalisation, as Mr Nolan explains:

This used to be a good place to rear children. Now, it's only an open-air asylum. People used to have sports days and Highland games and whatever else on the grass. Scottish country dancing. You name it. Now it's all Indian restaurants and Christ knows what else, and no jobs for the locals. (O'Hagan 2006, 56)

Mr Nolan feels threatened by immigrants and cultural diversity. Instead, he reminisces about what he would describe as the 'real' Scotland. Thus, the economic decline in the 1980s and the reverberations of globalisation have contributed significantly to the Scottish feeling of inferiority.

These factors also call the organisation of society into question. The concept of patriarchy in the Scottish tradition of clans has become increasingly obsolete, as men's superior position in the family is strongly connected to their function as the breadwinner. The postcolonial condition of Scotland influences gender identity further, leading to a compensatory construction of masculinity in order to denounce any hint of femininity. Considering this, it is interesting to note that many contemporary novels describe a society in which patriarchy has failed.

The three generations of men in O'Hagan's novel *Our Fathers* each have their own demands on the following generation. Hugh Bawn, the socialist and reformer for the people, cannot deal with his son Robert, who embodies the stereotype of the working-class man and is only interested in alcohol and sports. Jamie, on the other hand, cannot fulfil Robert's demands, as he adheres more to the ideals of his grandfather. This decline of patriarchal society surfaces in many novels. Some of the male protagonists are represented as the 'strong, Scottish male', and yet, simultaneously, their gender is deconstructed and it is made clear that this image is not something inherent but is constructed and can only be maintained superficially. *Our Fathers* shows the failure of patriarchal society most clearly. Neither Hugh nor Robert is able to form a significant relationship with his son, and the only functioning parental relationship is found between Hugh and his mother, Euphemia (*OF* 88–127). This can be read as representative of Scottish society:

O'Hagan gestures towards a crisis in paternalism as characteristic of general elements within Scottish culture. In the drunken melancholia of Robert, Jamie's abusive father, the author locates a national dysfunctionalism […] Though the conclusion sees Jamie partially reconciled with a reformed and sober Robert, the novel's searing critique of failed fatherhood remains a dark shadow on the present. (Patten 2003)

The concept of 'failed fatherhood' is also evident in Jamie's character. Jamie cannot face starting a family when he discovers his girlfriend is pregnant, and he wants her to terminate the pregnancy:

Our pregnancy. We caused it to come to nothing. I caused it. And in our clean lives, our dark sleep, we are thinking about that too. Mothers. Fathers. The dead centre of our trouble. It lay heavy on us. Karen said I was stopping the future. My head was clouded with remorse. (*OF* 168)

Through this experience, Jamie comes to the conclusion that his decision to break the cycle of sons being abandoned by their fathers by refusing to become a father is not a valid option to resolve the conflict. Although Patten (2003) claims that "the novel's searing critique of failed fatherhood remains a dark shadow on the present", the fact that Jamie appears to be transformed after his time in Scotland offers a positive outlook on the future. In his last letter to his girlfriend, Jamie writes: "But that is all over now. I'm coming home" (*OF* 249). This positive ending suggests a reconciliation which is somewhat unusual for the contemporary novel.

In O'Hagan's third novel *Be Near Me*, fatherhood fails quite literally: Father David Anderton does not enjoy caring for his flock. As one reviewer puts it: "[…] he is a man of extremes, a lover of Proust, Chopin, fine wines and French food, who would rather tend the roses in the rectory garden than minister to his foulmouthed, drinksodden flock" (Taylor 2006). He is more interested in his personal pursuits than in his role of serving as a father figure for his religious community. Even on a personal level, he is unable to perform his role adequately. When his housekeeper and good friend Mrs Poole realises that she is dying of cancer, she asks for his support; however, instead of facing the task and helping her prepare for her death, David attempts to reassure her that everything will be fine and even suggests that she should eat more rhubarb (O'Hagan 2006, 116). In his role as priest, David represents another failing man, as he does not live up to the expectations of his parish and his friends. This construction of failed fatherhood can be seen as a destabilising force within society. On another level it seems odd that an institution like the Catholic Church, which is usually perceived as a keeper of traditional gender images, is represented by a man in transition. S.J. Boyd (1994, 103) writes in his anecdotal essay "A Man's a Man: Reflections on Scottish Masculinity" that "[t]he history of Scotland, in life and letters, is the history of a thorough-going patriarchy". One of his arguments in support of this claim is that the Church of Scotland reinforced the status of men when Calvinism abolished the Virgin Mary (Boyd 1994, 103), the most prominent female figure in Christianity. But Carole Jones sees a general trend in the decline of traditional male authority, as

[…] the heightened consciousness of masculinity and anxious dependence on traditional notions of gender, particularly male, identity at a national level, at a moment of significant national soul-searching, makes these texts especially sensitive to the decline in masculine authority in this period. (Jones 2009a, 23)

Although Jones is referring to the devolutionary period between 1979 and 1999, this decline of authority remains visible today, as a novel such as *Be Near Me* demonstrates in its depiction of the failing patriarchy and the decline of masculine authority, not only on an institutional level but also on the personal level.

Mrs Poole's husband Jack can be taken as an example of such failure on the personal level. One day Mrs Poole finds under her mattress a note in her husband's handwriting that says "I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE", which had apparently been there for quite some time (O'Hagan 2006, 73). Jack Poole's utter inability to communicate is another symptom of the failed man. This incapability even prevents Mrs Poole from feeling able to raise a family with him, causing her to give her son away to be cared for by her sister:

I couldn't bear to bring him up with his father the way he is, the drink and everything. […] He doesn't actually know how to be in a family. So that was it. I wasn't having the boy suffer from all that, a father who didn't know how to be a father, a family full of disappointment and blame. So my sister took him. (O'Hagan 2006, 76)

As in *Our Fathers*, the disintegration of former patriarchal structures such as family within society actually prevents the next generation from experiencing the same difficulties. However, there is a major difference between *Be Near Me* and *Our Fathers*: in *Be Near Me* there is no sign of transformation as represented by Jamie in *Our Fathers*.

Another poignant example of patriarchal structures that fall apart throughout the course of *Be Near Me* is found in the character of the father of Mark, one of the teenagers Father David becomes close to. After becoming unemployed, Mark's father seems to become depressed and displays some odd behaviour, such as burying an ironing board in the backyard (O'Hagan 2006, 129). His identity and, indeed, his sanity seem to be closely linked to his ideal of the working man. The problems of the men within the novel also affect the entire family. Mark's father is not a good example to Mark, as he is unable to function as a role model. Following this decline in patriarchal structures, a general breakdown of families can be observed:

[…] the breakdown of the family, particularly in the patriarchal mode, is almost ubiquitous in this writing [of the devolutionary period], and considering this mode traditionally informed the conceptualisation of the nation, this breakdown signals a changing attitude towards Scotland itself. (Jones 2009a, 190)

Parallel to the development of focusing on failing men, a shift from a focus on working-class to unemployed men is also evident in Scottish fiction (McMillan 2003, 73). Unemployment and its consequences often feature in Scottish literature. This is somewhat of a paradox, as the traditional 'hard man' builds his identity around his job. A similar paradox can be found, for example, in James Kelman's novels: Kelman's protagonists are perceived as stereotypical 'hard men' and yet are shown to be vulnerable and emasculated at the same time (Jones 2009a, 23f.).

Despite depicting failing men and men in transition, the contemporary novel seldom offers an alternative model of the Scottish man. Examples of untransformed men can be found in the works of many Scottish writers, such as James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. In Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late* (1994), Sammy is shown as a man in transition who is unsure of his identity. However, this conflict remains unresolved in the end and no alternative is offered. In failing to provide such an alternative, "Kelman exposes the defunct nature of this model [masculinised patriarchy], but leaves it to others to imagine an alternative" (Jones 2009a, 61). Irvine Welsh's novels are another example, particularly *Marabou Stork Nightmares* (1995), as Berthold Schoene-Harwood contends: "Most depressingly, the ending […] fails to introduce a constructive, emancipatory vision of how the vicious circle of violence and violation could be broken. Instead […], Welsh's novel confirms and consolidates its hegemonic power" (Schoene-Harwood 2000, 155f.). In *Marabou Stork Nightmares*, it is the women who can only resolve the conflict with violence. Alan Warner even goes one step further: men do not feature at all in most of his novels, such as in *Morvern Callar* (1995), in which the male protagonist is only present as a dead body. In Warner's novels that do feature men, such as *The Man Who Walks* (2002), which is set in the Highlands, men are not noble warriors but are depicted as "rough, unpredictable and border-line pyschotic" (Petrie 2004, 100).

The only marginally positive example within this selection of Scottish fiction is Jamie in *Our Fathers*, who seems transformed after his time in Scotland and is finally able to face starting a family with his pregnant girlfriend. However, even this ending leaves a bitter aftertaste from a Scottish perspective, as Jamie returns to England rather than staying in Scotland. The lack of examples of alternative concepts of masculinity in Scottish literature is significant in itself, as it shows that the male perspective continues to be dominant. However, the depiction of Scottish men is diversifying and is itself in transition. In contrast to the depiction of failing masculinity, the next section will introduce an innovative perspective on gender in Scottish fiction that argues for the revaluation of gender identity per se.

#### **6.2. New Perspectives on Gender and Hybridity—Jackie Kay's** *Trumpet*

Jackie Kay's award-winning novel *Trumpet* (1998) offers a very different interpretation of Scottish gender configurations and, most importantly, explores the possibility of transcending traditional patriarchal gender constructions in postcolonial cultures. The novel relates the events following the death of the fictional black Scottish trumpet player Joss Moody, who, after his death, is revealed to have been a woman. This story is inspired by the life of the American jazz pianist Billy Tipton, who dressed as a man in order to pursue her career as a musician and was only discovered to have been a woman on her death. The novel begins ten days after Joss Moody's death when his wife Millie Moody is besieged by the media and escapes to the family's holiday home in Scottish Torr. Millie seems to have been the only person who knew of Joss's cross-dressing. Their adopted son, Colman, is still in shock and denial after the recent revelations about his father, and talks to journalist Sophie Stones who plans to ghost-write Joss's biography, expecting this to be her career breakthrough.

Joss's posing as a man is presented as subverting gender stereotypes. In several of Millie's descriptions of Joss, the performative aspect of his behaviour is emphasised: "He has a slow deliberate walk, like he's practised it" (*TR* 15), or "He looks the part" (*TR* 17). However, despite the subversive potential of Joss's behaviour, he can be described as having performed a traditional masculinity while still alive. Joss crossed gender boundaries and yet, for society, this only becomes visible after his death, as, "[…] his life ironically reinforces the gender binary in his conservative appropriation of masculinity" (Jones 2009a, 118f.). The transgression of gender boundaries in combination with the integration into the conventional binary gender system seems to be unsettling, at least for Colman:

My mother got into a double bed every night for the past thirty odd years and slept with my father, a woman. I am not being funny, right, but I think that's completely out of order. It's not because I hate gays or anything like that. If my mother had been a lesbian or my father a gay man, I don't think I would have got all het up about it. (*TR* 66)

The masculinity represented by Joss is "nostalgic for a previously hegemonic male identity" (Jones 2009a, 108), and this nostalgia is reinforced by Joss's strong attachment to Scotland. Joss and Millie's holiday home in the old resort town of Torr is perceived to represent the same old-fashioned gender constructions as Joss, thus strengthening the nostalgia for traditional identity constructions (Jones 2009a, 109). Particularly throughout Millie's narration and in her descriptions of Joss, Scotland is associated with authenticity and stability. In the first chapter Millie reflects on Torr: "Why go back [to London] now, ever? The people are kinder here and, strangely enough, more real" (*TR* 22), and further into the novel the stability and continuity connected with Scotland is emphasised: "The harbour has stayed the same since I was a girl and came up from England on holidays here with my family. The chippie is the same chippie. […] The Family Butcher, B. Savage, has been here since I was a girl. His son runs the shop now. He's also called Bruce" (*TR* 23). Millie experiences Torr as a safe haven after her husband's death. Torr represents a location of stability and routine, in which everyday life cannot be disturbed, even by subversive gender constructions.

Although these aspects of stability are stressed, the general focus of the novel is on hybridity and the fact that identity is fluid rather than a fixed entity. The construction of identity as unfixed and consisting of many different parts is mirrored in the narrative perspective of the novel (Petrie 2004, 83f.). Joss is characterised through the narration of a variety of voices, ranging from his wife and son, friends and band members, to officials like the registrar or the funeral director; this underlines the concept of an identity that is made up of a myriad of different perceptions where none of these perceptions is considered more authentic than any other. The concept that identity is not something innate or hereditary is also stressed in Joss's views about family relations. The fact that Colman is adopted adds another angle to this discussion. However, this does not present itself as a contradiction for Joss, as Colman relates: "My father always told me he and I were related the way it mattered. […] He said you make up your own bloodline, Colman. Make it up and trace it back. Design your own family tree—what's the matter with you? Haven't you got an imagination?" (*TR* 58) The question of Joss's own roots, being born of a black father and a white, Scottish mother, is equally unsubstantial to Joss; answering Colman's questions about his own father, he offers Colman various possible answers, suggesting, for example, that his father may have come from Africa, from America, or may have been a sailor (*TR* 58f.). As a child, this is not a satisfactory answer for Colman: "Which one is true? Doesn't matter a damn, he said. You pick. You pick the one you like best and that one is true" (*TR* 59). There is another instance in the novel in which identity is shown as something that is acquired rather than inherited; Joss composes a song called "Fantasy Africa" (*TR* 34), which is not inspired by a trip to Africa but by Joss's imagination of it: "Joss had built up such a strong imaginary landscape within himself that he said it would affect his music to go to the real Africa" (*TR* 34). This notion of acquired identity can be transferred to the conception of gender identity that is raised in the novel, which follows Judith Butler's concept that gender does not depend on ontological given factors of sex but rather on the performance of gender identity (Butler [1990] 2007, 185). Jones stresses the fact that in the novel these performances do not originate in any kind of inherited tradition: "*Trumpet* primarily explores gender, not sexuality, and the dislocation it represents between body and gender role fragments identity into a series of performative acts that have no origin or authentic foundation" (Jones 2009a, 98).

The idea of identity without "origin or authentic foundation" (Jones 2009a, 98) seems to be far-fetched in a Scottish context, which often draws on its sense of tradition. The concept of hybridity in particular, of uniting two diametrically opposed poles, has a long tradition in Scottish literature, a tradition known as the Caledonian Antisyzygy. In his analysis *Scottish literature: character and influence*, G. Gregory Smith uses this term to describe the contrast between apparent cohesion and actual variety: "[…] the literature is remarkably varied, and […] it becomes, under the stress of foreign influence and native division and reaction, almost a zigzag of contradictions. The antithesis need not, however, disconcert

us" (Smith 1919, 4). At the time of his writing, Smith recognised that Scottish literature was changing under outside influences—and Scotland's postcolonial status today generates even more contradictions. The most striking of these is the contradiction of Scotland's construction of itself as a victim of English colonialism in opposition to the active role it played in the British Empire, as outlined in chapter two. This leads to the negotiation of an identity that oscillates between the poles of Britishness and Scottishness. It is interesting to note that Smith stresses that this apparent opposition is not necessarily negative—in the case of Stevenson's *Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde* (1886), which is usually quoted as quintessential for Caledonian Antisyzygy, this is very much the opposite, as the character is consumed by an inner torment, two struggling sides of a personality where the 'good' side temporarily has to succumb to the 'bad' side. As Claudia Eilers (2007, 153) summarises, "[…] the doppelgängers always represent the dark, shameful and destructive sides of the characters. They represent those aspects of the self which the characters themselves are afraid of, and as their monstrosity also inspires fear in others, this creates a dialectic of fear".

Hybridity also remains an ambivalent term in postcolonial studies. For Homi Bhabha, hybridity is the result of the constant contact between cultures. The cultural difference that emerges is generated in times of crisis and/or conflict, such as in a colonial setting, and Bhabha refutes claims that hybridity results from multiculturalism that aims to integrate minority cultures in a harmonising way (Huddart 2006, 125). Thus, hybridity is not a solely positive term (Huddart 2006, 113).

The hybridity that is described in *Trumpet* corresponds more to Homi Bhabha's concept than to any traditional Scottish notion of hybridity, such as the Caledonian Antisyzygy. Kay does not describe postcolonial Scottish identity as resulting in a strengthening of Scottish nationalism, nor does she give a pessimistic description of failing structures, such as the failing patriarchal structures. Instead, gender identity and, in combination with this, identity more broadly is shown in *Trumpet* as what Bhabha calls in an interview the 'third space': "[F]or me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerge, rather hybridity to me is the 'third space' which enables other positive things to emerge" (Bhabha in Rutherford [1990] 1998, 211). This corresponds to Joss's conception of identity: he has imagined a 'fantasy' Africa, which is more important to his sense of self than any 'original' could be (*TR* 34). Furthermore, his stories about the origin of his father reveal that he is not interested in pinning down his influences. Joss's advice to his son that it "[d]oesn't matter a damn, he said. You pick. You pick the one [version of your grandfather's origin] you like best and that one is true" (*TR* 59) corresponds to Bhabha's concept that it is not the origins of an identity that are important but the hybrid identity that develops in the process. Kay depicts Joss as a split personality and, thus, evokes Scottish literary role models such as Jekyll and Hyde; however, in *Trumpet* the split is constructed as something positive and not as a characteristic of a failed personality (Jones 2009a, 99). Matt McGuire even sees a general trend of the "[…] attempt within Scottish Studies to reconfigure certain notions, such as the Caledonian Antisyzgy [*sic*], transforming them from a disabling to an enabling diagnosis of the Scottish national psyche" (McGuire 2009, 88).

As the preceding section has already illustrated, contemporary authors scarcely offer positive models of modern Scottish gender identity: the failing of patriarchal structures is portrayed in great detail, but no alternatives are presented. Thus, according to Tomás Monterrey (2000, 170), "[t]ragic, violent or sour denouements often result from the impossibility of coherently developing a consistent patriarchal behaviour in the peculiar Scottish political context". However, Kay demonstrates that "the peculiar Scottish political context" can be transcended and a positive ending is possible when it is based on unusual masculinities (Monterrey 2000, 170). Although Joss subscribes to a traditional masculinity that is closely connected to Scottishness, at the same time the novel questions the stability of gender identity and offers hybridity as a new model.

According to Claudia Eilers, Kay has written "[…] one of the most positive endings of all contemporary Scottish novels" (Eilers 2007, 155) and Kay's popularity in Scotland seems to suggest an endorsement of her views. Two other examples of gender constructions from Scottish authors that suggest a positive outlook will be presented in the following. While these do not go as far as Kay by presenting the turning of traditions and hybridity as solutions for transcending postcolonialism, they still offer positive imaginings of future gender identities.

Celebrated in the wave of New Scottish Writing started by *Trainspotting* in 1993, Laura Hird's first novel *Born Free* was published in 1999. The novel focuses on a family of four from Edinburgh and describes the dysfunctional relationships between the mother, Angie, the father, Vic, and their two teenagers, Joni and Jake. The novel presents all family members' voices in alternating order (Joni, Vic, Jake, Angie), a pattern which is only interrupted at the end of the novel, which closes with an episode narrated by Vic. All of the family members have their own individual problems, and scatology and sexuality feature prominently. Joni is desperate to lose her virginity, Jake is bullied at school, while Angie starts drinking again and cheats on Vic with her boss. Their relationships towards each other are characterised to various extents by distrust, despair, and, sometimes, plain hatred. The novel ends in a highly ambiguous way: after her lover, Raymond, embezzles a large sum of money from the bookmaker where he and Angie work together, and disappears, Angie comes to an agreement with her daughter—Angie will not tell on Joni for stealing housekeeping money and, in return, Joni will persuade her father to let her mother stay and live with them (Hird 1999, 266). Desperate and frightened that she will end up on the street, Angie calls a marriage counselling service. However, she seems to have ulterior motives, saying to herself, "[i]t's not as if I'll have to tell them the absolute truth. It's more like a damage-limitation exercise. Making Vic out to be the bastard can only put me in better stead if we do get divorced" (Hird 1999, 262). Even Vic does not seem to believe that their marriage still has a chance, and yet he decides to stay in it nevertheless: "As I'd chickened out of evicting her again on the way up to the hospital, though, I'm just playing along with it. Besides, if those two [Angie and Joni] have joined forces, I don't stand a chance" (Hird 1999, 268). During their appointment at the counselling service, he is genuinely surprised that the counsellor suggests therapy: "'Really? You honestly think we can get this sorted?' I ask, sounding more surprised than I'd intended" (Hird 1999, 272). The ending of the novel suggests the start of a long process, which may eventually result in the resolution of the conflict, most importantly Vic and Angie's reconciliation, and, ultimately, the preservation of the family as a whole. This is highlighted by the fact that the novel ends on Good Friday, 1998, on which the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement was signed, which Vic and Angie see in the news (Hird 1999, 273). The novel presents a positive outlook into the future, as the family structure seems to be worth saving and, above all, is not characterised as patriarchal.51

In A.L. Kennedy's first novel *Looking for the Possible Dance* the main protagonist is a woman, but her life revolves around men. As she was raised by a single father, their relationship is very close, and yet, at the same time, Margaret's father feels inadequate in his unusual gender role:

Margaret worried her daddy, by being so strange when he was just a man and wasn't sure what he should do about it. Women he hardly knew would give him advice in shops and on street corners which made him sure he was failing as a father: his faults must be so obvious. (Kennedy [1993] 2005, 84)

This perceived failing prompts him to ask Margaret not to waste her life as he did (Kennedy [1993] 2005, 5), simultaneously putting pressure on her to make amends for his mistakes. Margaret constantly has to reassure her father of her love: in what she calls 'their wee catechism' (Kennedy [1993] 2005, 13), she always repeats that she loves her father twice, feeling that her fragile father figure needs this reassurance. However, it is not only her father who needs reassurance of his gender role, as Margaret also depends on men to stabilise her identity:

At one time, she had told her father everything that happened to her. She had taken it all home to him and made it entirely real, sometimes for the first time. And now, for the first time, Margaret realised she had begun to do the same with Colin. Without him, she had less reality. (Kennedy [1993] 2005, 226)

<sup>51</sup> The fact that Jack leaves for a holiday with his best friend's family (Hird 1999, 256f.) could be seen as a limitation to the positive ending of the novel, but the significance of this should not be overestimated, as the relationships between Angie and Vic and between Angie and Joni, respectively, are described as the most problematic.

This is further underlined when Margaret reflects on a society that constructs genders as complementary, giving her the feeling that she needs the 'other half ' to refer to and remain certain of her own gender and identity:

She was a single person when people were always expected in pairs, like eyebrows or like gloves. That was how it seemed to her. She was a single woman when a woman should never be single, but looking for a man, or for the right man, or marrying a man, or living with a man, or thinking about living with or marrying a man, or leading several men a merry dance, or seducing a man, or deserting a man, or trying to understand, reform, divorce, encourage, murder, castrate or like a man. Margaret was single. In the mirror every morning, she looked single. (Kennedy [1993] 2005, 53f.)

The fact that Margaret's reliance on men has not led to a satisfying life reveals the instability of these gender constructions. Only after trusting in her own decisions, which is additionally emphasised by her departure from Scotland, is Margaret able to consolidate a stable identity. Significantly, Margaret is only able to make her own decisions, taking the final step into adulthood, once the men in her life are unable to assist her, allowing her the space she needs for this development: her father dies, Colin becomes dependent on care after being violently assaulted and, to emphasise the picture of 'unable' men, during her train journey Margaret meets James, a disabled man who can only communicate by writing (Summers-Bremner 2004, 131). The train journey offers her the opportunity to reflect on her life in a suspended state of movement, without distractions and the need to relate herself to others (Kennedy [1993] 2005, 250). The journey and her physical distance from Scotland cause Margaret to develop a sense of self as well as of home. Immediately after arriving in London, she calls Colin back in Scotland to let him know that she will return. Although the ending remains open regarding the question of whether Margaret means returning to Scotland only or returning to her relationship with Colin, in contrast to other contemporary Scottish fiction Margaret comes to a decision independently and sees her future in Scotland rather than remaining in London.

#### **6.3 Conclusion: Postcolonial Gender Constructions**

The preceding analysis has outlined the effects that the construction of Scotland as a postcolonial country has on Scottish gender constructions. Women are doubly marginalised in literature: firstly as Scottish, and secondly as women. Contemporary women writers, such as A.L. Kennedy and Janice Galloway, have gained international recognition by focusing on the female Scottish experience. There are several factors that influence the construction of Scottish masculinity; men have lost their hegemonic position due to a number of factors, such as the emancipation of women and the changing economic world. The traditional 'hard man' is no longer able to assert himself, becomes unstable and, consequently, fails. The feeling of the inferiority of Scotland in relation to England, which is perceived as the coloniser, adds to the feeling of inadequacy. However, this only strengthens the desire for a clearly defined, traditional masculinity, resulting in compensatory behaviour. The contemporary Scottish novel also focuses on these compensatory men, who react to this development with a reinforcement and overemphasis of masculinity, while also pointing out that they are failing men. Furthermore, a different strategy is to depict men as failing or disappearing without offering credible alternatives. Jackie Kay is an exception to this development as she shows hybridity as an enabling force and reinterprets Scottish traditions such as the Caledonian Antisyzygy into a positive possibility of development.

## **7. "Nobody Imagines Living Here"—Space and Place in Scottish Fiction**

In Alasdair Gray's iconic novel *Lanark*, first published in 1981, protagonist Duncan Thaw reflects on his friend's question as to why the beauty of Glasgow as a city is so seldom recognised:

'Because nobody imagines living here,' […] Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he's already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn't been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively. […] Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music-hall song and a few bad novels. That's all we've given to the world outside. It's all we've given to ourselves.' (Gray [1981] 2007, 243)

The inability of the city's own inhabitants to claim the space of the city via their imagination can be interpreted as a symptom of the 'Celtic Cringe', the inferiority complex described, for example, by Beveridge and Turnbull (1989)—Gray's comments imply a feeling of inferiority when contrasting Glasgow with cities like Paris, London and New York. The quantity as well as the quality of writing from and about Glasgow has changed substantially since the 1980s. Originally associated with sentimental Kailyard novels, as well as the sensationalist thrillers in the wake of Alexander McArthur's and H. Kingsley Long's *No Mean City* ([1935] 1984), the depiction of the city had long been caught between those two stereotypes. *Lanark* sparked a new wave of literary negotiations of Glasgow. Edited by Berthold Schoene (2007a), *The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature* even contains a chapter on the Glasgow novel in the section "Genres", underlining the importance the latter has achieved.

The increased importance of the urban novel reflects the living reality of the majority of people in an urbanised Scotland; however, somewhat paradoxically, it is the landscape of the Highlands that is most often regarded as typical for Scotland. Certainly, the tourist industry has contributed to the establishment of a unique and predominantly rural landscape as a symbol for the nation. Furthermore, as pointed out above, in the 19th century the Highlands became representative of Scotland as a whole because their distinct culture, shaped by tartanry and Celtic and Gaelic heritage, facilitated a clear differentiation between Scottish and English or British identity (Nairn 2000, 247–251). However, despite this importance of the Highlands for the national imagination, urban locations are the preferred settings in much contemporary Scottish fiction. This may have reasons comparable to those that prompt the reservation of contemporary Scottish fiction towards historical fiction. Cairns Craig argues that Scottish narration is "out of history" (Craig 1996) since Walter Scott's widely successful novels have contributed to the fact that the historical novel in Scotland has gained an image of being romanticising and sentimental. The same is true of Highland settings. An event that had a considerable impact on the perception of the Highlands was the visit of George IV to Scotland in 1822, which Walter Scott was in charge of organising. This visit also promoted the idea of the Highlands as representative of the whole of Scotland:

Before the royal visit, few Lowlanders would have contemplated wearing tartan clothing, a potent symbol of the stark division between Highland and Lowland culture. Scott's festival, which invited Lowlanders to dress as Highlanders and Highlanders to dress as Scott believed Highlanders should, changed this. (Zuelow 2006, 34)

Kilts and tartan thus became representative of a Scotland that was believed to be traditional and authentic, although Hugh Trevor-Roper ([1983] 2009) demonstrated that this was essentially an invented tradition. One of the rare examples of a contemporary 'Highland novel' is Alan Warner's *The Man Who Walks* (2002), which presents a radically different picture of the picturesque Highlands, particularly of the people living in the Highlands.

This chapter will analyse both the Highlands and the city as culturally charged places that inform a postcolonial reading of the contemporary Scottish novel. Since the spatial turn, the importance of space in literature has been increasingly recognised: the spatial turn is based on, amongst other works, Henri Lefebvre's *The Production of Space* (1974), which differentiates between abstract and social space, as well as Michel de Certeau's *The Practice of Everyday Life* (1984), which analyses how places, particularly the city, are produced and appropriated; and is closely related to the developments of a postmodern world (Tally 2013, 3, 38–42). In his comprehensive monograph *Spatiality*, Robert T. Tally points out the interconnectedness of spatial studies and literature: "[…] literature also functions as a form of mapping, offering its readers descriptions of places, situating them in a kind of imaginary space, and providing points of reference by which they can orient themselves and understand the world in which they live" (Tally 2013, 2). In the late 20th and early 21st centuries this world is characterised by a high degree of movement and mobility. Globalisation and the new technologies have led to what David Harvey describes as "time-space compression" (in Tally 2013, 15). Erica Carter and her colleagues have defined place as "space to which meaning has been ascribed" (Carter, Donald & Squires 1993, xii); thus, places can represent structures of power or authority, as Michel Foucault ([1975] 1995) has shown in *Discipline and Punish*, originally published in 1975. This is particularly important in the context of colonialism, which is characterised by an occupation or expansion of space. Tally (2013, 13f.) points out that "the geopolitical organization and disruptions in the postwar era called attention to the distinctively political essence of geography, as the forces of decolonization, as well as those of neocolonization, made clear that the spaces of the map were not uncontested".

The inscription of meaning to particular places is an important function of literature, the process of which Edward Said ([1978] 2003, 55) has described as "space acquir[ing] emotional and even rational sense by a kind of poetic process". The representation of place and space that is found in cultural production is crucial, as it allows producers and recipients to negotiate their own positionality within this system (Harvey 1990, 205). Fredric Jameson has described this process in literature as "cognitive mapping": places can become representative, for example, of a nation, and, at the same time, literature has the potential to challenge and change these representations:

Jameson's notion offers a model of a literary cartography which moves beyond the existentialist project and becomes a means by which a writer can supersede the individual's sense of place or placelessness by projecting a supra-individual image of the world-system itself. With an aesthetic of cognitive mapping, Jameson arrives at a conception for understanding the world and our place in the world, but he also provides a tool by which the world may be changed or other worlds imagined. (Tally 2013, 47f.)

It is this potential to change the inscriptions of power of places that lends itself to a postcolonial reading. The appropriation of space and the challenging of stereotypical descriptions become strategies of writing back available to the colonised. Thus, by challenging colonial preconceptions, literature can symbolically redraw the map as, for example, Kevin MacNeil does by depicting the map of Scotland upside down in *The Stornoway Way* (*SW* 13). Tally asserts that space is also influenced by the tradition of writing in which it is described: "[…] [J]ust as literature may be a means of mapping the places represented in a given literary work, the places themselves are deeply imbued with a literary history that has transformed and determined how those places will be 'read' or mapped" (Tally 2013, 80). D.H. Lawrence described this as the "spirit of place" (in Tally 2013, 81). This spirit, constructed by the writing and re-writing of space in literature, is particularly important in Scotland because it constitutes a vital part of the nation's identity: "Landscape, as it is constructed in literary texts and in visual art, has been the privileged discursive space wherein the Scottish national 'imagined community' has been constituted since at least the eighteenth century" (Sassi 2011, 120).

The Scottish landscape is often perceived as being characterised by a binary relationship between rural Highlands and urban Lowlands. The geographical characteristics of Scotland are partly responsible for this, as the north is dominated by mountains and, thus, land that is harder to live on and cultivate. The major urban centres, particularly the largest cities, such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, are thus located in the south of the country. As David McCrone highlights, this binary reduction is of considerable significance:

We might see Scotland as dominated by two cultural landscapes: one, that it is a 'people-less place', bereft of population, imagined as rural empty space (most obviously the 'cleared' lands in the Highlands, although population densities were always low); the other, a place of teeming towns, densely populated and dominated by tenements; in George Blake's words, Scotland appears 'overweight with cities'. Both, of course, are cultural fabrications, but meaningful ones. (McCrone 2012, 675f.)

In terms of literary criticism of contemporary Scottish fiction, the analysis of space and place has not yet been extensive. The only comprehensive volumes that present research on all aspects of space and place in Scottish fiction are Glenda Norquay's *Space and Place* (1997) and Derrick McClure, Karoline Szatek-Tudor and Rosa E. Penna's *What Countrey's This? And Whither Are We Gone?* (2010). In contrast, the analysis of the Scottish city in fiction, particularly with regard to Glasgow, is manifold. Moira Burgess's *Imagine a City* (1998) comprehensively investigates the different images of Glasgow in Scottish fiction. Other contributions include, for example, those of Morgan (1993), Bissett (2007) and Rodríguez González (2008b). Equally, Ian Rankin's Edinburgh, which provides the setting for his Inspector Rebus novels, has been extensively investigated (see, for example, Ward 2010; Sandrock 2011b; Plain 2013).

The analyses of this chapter will scrutinise the Highlands, and the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh as representative of the Lowlands, in order to point out their potential for a postcolonial reading. First, the focus will be on the re-writing of the Highlands in Alan Warner's novel *The Man Who Walks*. Warner's fictional characters can be described as the antipode to stereotypical depictions of Highlanders. The eponymous Man Who Walks and his unnamed nephew traverse the landscape in pursuit of each other, simultaneously deconstructing the Highlands as a mythical landscape. With the help of Deleuze's theory of the nomad, the analysis will show how the novel engages in a deterritorialisation of the Highlands and at the same time re-maps them in a postcolonial move. However, as the ending of the novel demonstrates, the mystification and commodification of the Highlands cannot be escaped. The investigation of the novel will be supplemented by a reading of Ruaridh Nicoll's novel *White Male Heart* (2001), which criticises the stereotypes of the Highlanders as noble warriors by revealing the problematic exaggeration of such role models. Both novels function as postcolonial because they re-write stereotypical conceptions of space and place in Scotland and, furthermore, deconstruct a sentimentalised, mythical image of the Highlands. As mentioned in chapter six in the discussion of postcolonial gender construction, mystification can function as a form of inferiorisation, as for example Frantz Fanon describes it.

The second section in this chapter will focus on depictions of the city. A genre very closely associated with a realist style of writing as well as urban settings is the crime novel. Thus, the focus on the depiction of the city in contemporary Scottish fiction will be on crime fiction, which is one of Scotland's most successful exports. Writers such as Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, or Val McDermid have had enormous commercial success. Scottish crime fiction has been marketed with the help of the tag of 'Tartan Noir', placing its literature both in a distinctive Scottish tradition and in the rather dark and nihilistic style of hard-boiled writing. As this type of fiction is most often composed in a strictly realist mode of writing, its construction of space and place is important to its credibility. To begin with,

this chapter will ascertain whether Scottish crime writing as a genre can be read as postcolonial. In a further step, Denise Mina's depiction of Glasgow will be analysed using the example of her novel *Garnethill*. Mina's amateur detectives are faced with antipathetic state institutions and authorities that differ substantially from the inhabitants of Glasgow. The strong focus on the institutional abuse of power undermines the formal constituency of the state, in this case the United Kingdom, and distinguishes this from the culture of Glasgow as a city, which is seen more favourably, thus lending itself to a postcolonial reading. In contrast to Glasgow, Edinburgh has always been perceived as a very British city. Shaped by its architectural grandeur, tourist landmarks and cultural diversity, the city has developed an image as pretty and idyllic. In his crime fiction, Ian Rankin deconstructs this image by revealing the dark underside of Edinburgh. His novel *Set in Darkness*, which was published in 2000 and is the eleventh novel featuring the iconic Inspector Rebus, is concerned with murders occurring at the construction site of the new Parliament building. Thus, the novel not only takes up the recent developments of Scottish devolution but also underlines this by spatially locating the novel at the centre of both Edinburgh and the new political establishment. As it deconstructs Edinburgh's status as a tourist hotspot and reveals the depths of the city as well as stressing the city's grounding in history, Ian Rankin's novel can be read as postcolonial.

#### **7.1 Re-writing Highland Myths—Alan Warner's** *The Man Who Walks*

As a cultural landscape the Highlands52 have a complicated and at times paradoxical history. The Highlands and Islands share the name of Gàidhealtachd in Scottish Gaelic, which literally means 'place of the Gaels' and differentiates these parts of Scotland from the more anglicised parts of the Scots- and English-speaking Lowlands. On the one hand, the Highlands have become shorthand for Scotland and, thus, "have come to be burdened with this synecdochic quality via motifs such as the bagpipes, the kilt, red hair and so on. In respect of representations in popular culture, there is often no straightforward differentiation between Scotland and its North-West region" (K. Macdonald 2010, 139). Berthold Schoene calls this appropriation of the Highlands and their Celtic culture "a process of national myth-making and spurious self-authentication" (Schoene 1997, 370). However, on the other hand, it has often been pointed out that this alleged homogeneity of Scotland is nothing but a construction and that there is a pronounced difference between the Highlands and the Lowlands. Instead of creating

<sup>52</sup> In the following, the term 'Highlands' will be used instead of 'Highlands and Islands' to determine the symbolically charged cultural landscape that is perceived in opposition to Lowland Scotland, thus designating the territory that lies north of the Highland divide. Geographically, this territory consists of the Highlands, namely the mainland area north of the Grampian Mountains, as well as Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

a unified British identity, the Act of Union in 1707 relegated the Highlands to an even more marginalised position, as the Lowlanders proved to be easier integrate into the Union:

[…] the 1707 Union arguably exacerbated tensions and disparities between southern Britain and the Gaelic-speaking Highlands. […] While Lowland Scots capitalized on the commercial, military, and political opportunities for assimilation and unification with England that empire-building offered, Highlanders remained geographically and ideologically on the peripheries of a newly united Britain, derided by Lowlanders and English alike as backwards savages and Jacobite rebels. (Shields 2005, 920)

In fiction, this double marginalisation is, for example, evident in the portrayal of the Gothic, which in contemporary fiction that does not originate in Scotland has evolved to encompass an array of tropes and motifs, but which within Scottish fiction is predominantly placed in the Highlands since these are able to function as Other in comparison to both the Scottish Lowlands and Britain in general (K. Macdonald 2011, 47).

Berthold Schoene highlights that this paradox has led to a facilitation of English hegemony. He observes that the wish to present Scotland as a united nation stems from a postcolonial identity crisis experienced by the Lowlanders (Schoene 1997, 362). At the same time, Schoene claims that it is this unity that facilitates the English domination of Scotland as fundamentally Other:

Assembled and appropriated under English pressure by the Scottish Lowlanders from—and at the expense of—Highland culture, [Scottishness] reflects the imperial centre's desire to eradicate inconvenient differences amongst its others by collapsing them into one. A distinctively different, yet in itself homogeneous other is far easier to control than someone of many different, potentially subversive faces, or someone whose culture displays more similarities than dissimilarities with one's own. The very moment the Lowlanders donned the Highland kilt and thus allowed Scottishness to become unmistakable, the English colonisation of Scotland—its re-'fashioning' into some kind of easily identifiable, slightly quaint tribal (br)other in the north—was complete. (Schoene 1997, 363)

Thus, by reducing Scotland to a number of exotic stereotypes and by focusing on strengthening the differences instead of the similarities regarding England in an attempt to construct an 'authentic' national identity, the Scottish postcolonial identity crisis paradoxically only facilitates the influence of English oppression: "As a national image and self-image it encourages a discourse of essentialist differentiation between England and *one* Scotland, which considerably facilitates England's hegemony as the normative referent of cultural identification in Britain" (Schoene 1997, 370). Thus, the novels analysed in this chapter can be termed postcolonial in so far as their strategy is to question the homogeneous construction of the Highlands as a cultural landscape.

Due to the paradox of the position of the Highlands as synecdoche for Scotland on the one hand and internal Other of the Lowlands on the other, the stereotypes associated with them are widely varied. The common denominator of all these stereotypes, though, is the tendency to naturalise, exoticise or mystify the Highlands, thus underscoring their inferior position. These contradictory associations emerged after the Union in 1707:

Throughout the eighteenth century, anti-Jacobite propaganda portrayed Highlanders as thieving, belligerent, uncouth, and even cannibalistic savages governed by blind allegiance to a lawless chieftain. In contrast, James Macpherson's infamous *Poems of Ossian*, published between 1760 and 1763, depicted Highlanders as noble savages. (Shields 2005, 922)

Kirsty A. Macdonald has asserted that these clichés and stereotypes have persisted, remaining ever-present in popular culture, not only in fiction but also in film and television. However, at the same time "such representations have often been contemporaneously hybridised and interrogated" in contemporary Scottish fiction (K. Macdonald 2010, 136). The same variety of representation is visible in fiction that was published in the chosen time frame of this analysis. In this fiction the Highlands take on several different functions. In the context of a postcolonial reading, such novels that re-write the stereotypical constructions of the Highlands will be analysed in detail in the following. However, novels that have perpetuated the image of the Highlands as a more 'authentic' and mythical place are also found in contemporary Scottish fiction. For example, Iain Bank's novel *The Steep Approach to Garbadale* (2007) uses the location of a family estate in Sutherland to create a closed environment in which the characters can interact; at the same time, it is the remote setting that allows the main character, Alban McGill, in particular to reflect on his life, a reflection allegedly facilitated by his closeness to nature. Another common construction of the Highlands uses their remoteness to portray them as a healing place, as a conscious (albeit temporary) renunciation of civilisation:

[…] [R]ecent Scottish fiction has displayed a more conventional concern with the Highlands and Islands as a recuperative space enjoyed briefly by damaged central protagonists before they return to their "real" lives in the Lowlands. A temporary retreat north allows for reflection, seclusion and self-analysis. Examples include A.L. Kennedy's *So I Am Glad* [1995], where the troubled Jennifer spends time in the West Highlands, Andrew Greig's […] *In Another Light* [2004], and Zoë Strachan's *Negative Space* [2002], in which all […] central protagonists find refuge in Orkney. (K. Macdonald 2010, 146)

In his 2001 novel *White Male Heart,* Ruaridh Nicoll employs both constructions of the Highlands: on the one hand he shows the Highlands as determined by their nature and dominated by male violence; on the other hand, his dark and sarcastic humour as well as the juxtaposition of his two main characters, Aaron and Hugh, allows him to critically engage with these clichés. The novel contains several instances of stereotypical, almost pastoral descriptions of nature:

The two boys lay submerged in the deep, woody aroma that rose from the heather in the late-summer warmth. […] Aaron nudged him and he looked across at the steep hill that rose away to their right, sheering on its forward side into a ragged cliff, then above, where an eagle circled. Hugh watched it for a time, losing himself in the azure beyond. (Nicoll [2001] 2002, 41)

*White Male Heart* describes the coming of age of the two boys, whose relationship becomes strained when Hugh falls in love with Rebecca, who has fled to the Highlands to escape her complicated life in London. Subsequently, Aaron feels increasingly neglected, gradually descending deeper into violence and aggression as a result. Aaron's hatred is directed at everyone who seemingly threatens his way of life and, thus, Aaron is hostile towards Rebecca. The situation escalates when Aaron plans to set traps in order to injure tourists: "We're talking about tourists here, Hugh, clogging up our roads, changing the place. Walkers as well. Jesus, Hugh, I shouldn't have to explain this to you. We've talked about this. They are … They are …' and here Aaron thought for a moment '… not us'" (Nicoll [2001] 2002, 285). His suspicion of tourists underlines the vulnerability of the construction of Aaron's own identity, which is unable to negotiate any difference, relying instead on isolation in order to ensure its stability. The importance of the Highlands as a place that consolidates this particular identity is identified by Hugh, who in the end also succumbs to violence and is then forced to flee the Highlands, making him an exile rather than an emigrant:

As he walked, Hugh felt the countryside coming alive around him, felt deep down its constant renewal, and at once he saw Aaron and himself a part of it. This was their country, the place they understood like no other. Here they could exist, it would look after them, absorbing their actions as part of the greater nature, Aaron's cruelty no different from so much else. He remembered the eagle looking down on them as they stalked the year before and realized that they fitted into the tableau it had seen spread out below. They were men now, and this was their home. (Nicoll [2001] 2002, 337)

Ultimately, the landscape is constructed as essential for the boys' transition into manhood. Despite its sometimes ironic and sarcastic tone, in passages like this the novel reiterates the naturalisation of the Highlands, ascribing a kind of authenticity or bond that connects the land to its inhabitants.

The examples quoted above are prominent examples of a genre of writing that, however, continues to represent a minority discourse, and Christopher Ward has thus criticised the fact that the writers used as examples in Cairn Craig's *The Modern Scottish Novel* "are each very much associated with one particular place— Glasgow and the west coast for Gray, Kelman, Galloway and Kennedy, Edinburgh for Welsh" (Ward 2010, 8) and that the Highland perspective is missing from a study that is concerned with analysing texts that represent the nation as a whole (Ward 2010, 8). The majority of contemporary Scottish authors choose urban settings, in which their characters negotiate their identity. A further counter-example to this, however, is the writing of Alan Warner, who was named one of the twenty most promising young British novelists by the magazine *Granta* in 2003. Warner's novels are all located in the Highlands and are predominantly set in a town called 'The Port', reminiscent of Oban. Despite the particularity of the Highland setting, Warner has argued in an interview that he constructed the places that feature in his novels as universal: "I wanted to create a similar world, where a reader with no familiarity could enter the repeating geographic worlds of my novels. I suppose I tried to universalize things: The Port, The Power Station, etc." (Wilson 2008, 172). Alan Warner has been noted for his innovative approach to fiction. Particularly striking but also somewhat controversial is the fact that, in his first novels, he writes convincingly from the point of view of adolescent girls (March 2002, 67–71).53 His fourth novel *The Man Who Walks* (2002) is the first that features a male narrator. Furthermore, the novel differs from its predecessors in so far as it presents a more radical different view of the landscape of the Highlands. Cristie L. March describes this tendency as already present in the first novels:

Through Morvern [from *Morvern Callar*], Warner not only builds and razes gender constructs, but also provides the reader with a traveller who explores the new configuration of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. While the landscapes through which Morvern travels, particularly in *These Demented Lands*, echo the literary tradition that glorifies and rusticates the Highlands as a receptacle for traditional Scottish culture, they also present to the reader a 'weirding' of the landscape as socio-cultural and technological change infiltrate the environment. (March 2002, 72)

In *The Man Who Walks* the Highlands are no longer "a receptacle for traditional Scottish culture", but are shown to be a menacing landscape inhabited by dubious characters, undermining every cliché of the Highlands as idyllic and romantic. The novel describes the pursuit by an unnamed character, only referred to as "the Nephew", of his mentally ill uncle, the eponymous Man Who Walks. The uncle is believed to have stolen a large sum of money from a pub and is allegedly on the run. The ending reveals that the Man Who Walks has been kidnapped and the Nephew has been misled into searching him because the real thieves plan to frame the two of them for the theft. During the pursuit of his uncle through the Highlands, the Nephew meets a number of obscure characters. The narrative is at times incoherent, containing interludes that describe the Man Who Walks before continuing with the story of the Nephew. Additionally, the Nephew finds a bag of typewriter

<sup>53</sup> Of course, Warner is not the first writer to do this. Another prominent example in Scottish fiction is the female character Chris Guthrie, the main protagonist in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's trilogy *A Scots Quair* (1932–1934).

ribbons on which his uncle has recorded his autobiography, and the transcripts of these are included as fragments within the novel. The research literature on the novel is limited; Kirsty Macdonald has classified the text as a Gothic novel:

[…] *The Man Who Walks*, which is precisely set within a restricted geographic region—approximately 100 miles across the west and mid Highlands […] is Warner's first Gothic novel; Gothic in that it is chiefly concerned with distortions of history, although it also features other familiar tropes and images […] such as male doubles, the abject, various entrapments, crumbling mansions with subterranean passageways, family secrets, and sexual transgressions. (K. Macdonald 2011, 41)

Berthold Schoene focuses on movement in the novel when he links it to "the great spatially explorative *itinarratives* of High Modernism, such as *Ulysses* and *Mrs Dalloway*, […] seem[ing] even more intimately related to the post-war American road romances of Jack Kerouac and his contemporaries" (Schoene 2006, 98).

The focus on the two men furthers Warner's post-feminist agenda by depicting the characters as anti-heroes who "are irreparably emasculated men, homeless wanderers in what looks like a shambolic epic of national abjection" (Schoene 2006, 95). Although the Highlander is conventionally associated with familial bonds and patriarchal authority within the clan system (Shields 2005, 924), this is actively undermined in the novel, as "[…] the two central characters' dysfunctional uncle/nephew relationship, their sexual ambivalence, and their fatherlessness render them queer outcasts to discourses of patriarchal linearity and legitimacy" (Schoene 2007d, 255). The uncle is described as a madman, and in one scene he is shown to be carrying two plastic bags filled with water, one containing a dead salmon. He has a glass eye and uses the socket behind it as storage for, for example, his cannabis (*MWW* 89). His trait as a walker is considerably undermined by his inability to navigate ascents or descents when he is drunk:

He has to make these huge detours, outlandish detours you might call them; miles and miles over the country he roams. When that Uncle of mine is pissed he has to go only in the direction that's flat in front of him, then if he comes to a slope he has to turn back, so when he gets pissed he gets trapped, in one place, for days, and has to sober up a night to escape. (*MWW* 232)

The character of the uncle, in combination with the description of the Nephew's journey—which is characterised by deceit and sexual deviance, and which Berthold Schoene compares to *Trainspotting*—undermines the cliché of the Highland man as warrior:

[…] [M]anifold gratuitous interludes of Irvine Welshian sexual seediness and lavatorial decadence further exacerbate the impression that this is a land inhabited not by dignified warriors embroiled in a battle for independence, but the castrated shadows of their culturally alienated and debilitated descendants who have quite literally lost the plot. (Schoene 2006, 96)

Through this negative depiction of the inhabitants of the Highlands, Warner actively undermines clichéd representations that Other the Highlands by ascribing them a mythical or 'natural' characteristic. This postcolonial re-writing of stereotypes is achieved by extending the re-writing not only to the characters but also to the landscape they inhabit: "Tides rushing madly to and fro all the livelong day between rock shores beneath the mountains, their flanks still brown despite summer, as if built out of rusted steel plates from dead ship" (*MWW* 16). This image is not described as being the result of a post-industrial landscape but rather as being a natural state that men have not been able to cultivate: "Man has never been able to sufficiently impress himself on this land, men can only turn on one another under these heartless mountains, useless as beauty" (*MWW* 17). This subverts the idea of a deep and 'authentic' relationship that the Highlanders share with their land. However, as Kirsty Macdonald observes, this is a trope throughout the book that also links the land with the inhabitants described in the novel:

This is neither the redeeming, empowering landscape of previous pastoral portrayals nor the sublime, awe-inspiring terrain of Scott's fiction. It is a violent and menacing place. The post-industrial simile evoking the rusting hulks of ships is foreshadowed by the opening image of what Warner calls 'ghost bags', the torn remains of plastic bags ensnared on barbed wire fences that litter rural Scotland […]. This is a most fitting environment for its damaged local residents, who seem to consist mainly of alcoholics, drugaddicts, sexual perverts, and anachronistic members of a forgotten aristocracy. (K. Macdonald 2011, 41)

By using chapter titles that allude to Scotland's history, such as "Highland Clearance" (*MWW* 3), as well as to problematic misrepresentations or appropriations, such as "Queen Victoria's Highland Journal" (*MWW* 125), the novel emphasises an awareness of the varied history of the Highlands as site for identification; this commodification of Scottish history culminates in a film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's *Kidnapped* being shot on the battlefield at Culloden (*MWW* 157f.). After the revelation that the Man Who Walks was kidnapped by the Foreman and his gang while the Nephew was intentionally misled on his futile search, the thieves injure the Nephew badly and leave him to die. However, the Nephew succeeds in crawling on and finds himself in the middle of the battlefield surrounded by dummies dressed in tartan to represent the dead Scottish soldiers of *Kidnapped* (*MWW* 275–278). The transformation of Culloden into a film set thus "anatomises the ultimate Highland cliché" (K. Macdonald 2011, 43). This is underlined by the fact that the Nephew meets the location scout of the film and takes it upon him to guide him around the connected landmarks *(MWW* 155–175), thus revealing the ignorance of the film crew.

During the progression of the novel, the Man Who Walks is described as a nomad who traverses boundaries and is not concerned with conventions. Robert Tally describes the nomad thus, drawing on Gilles Deleuze's theories:

[…] Deleuze distinguishes between *nomads*, who are understood as such because of their border crossings or re-crossings, but also because of their conceptual demolition of the boundary lines themselves, and the *state* and "state philosophy," which are defined in terms of sedentary ordering, spatial measurement, the segmenting of the rank and file, and a conceptual gridding that attempts to assign stable places. In their occupation of space, their deconstruction of boundaries, and movement across surfaces, Deleuze's nomads continually map and remap, altering spaces even as they traverse them. They are in Deleuze's language, forces of deterritorialization, unsettling to a greater or lesser extent the metric ordering of space that is subject to the power of the state. (original emphasis; Tally 2013, 136)

The contrast between the Man Who Walks and official state authority is underlined by the Nephew's observation that his uncle "might not be able to rise or move down through Ordnance Survey map's gracious contour lines that curl up on these lands and bundle in corners like oil in a puddle" (*MWW* 19). Thus, official maps that were designed to enable people to find their way are of no consequence to the uncle. Furthermore, the ending undermines the significance of the walking and general movement of the characters:

The narrative spuriously assumes the form of a quest, pilgrimage or detective enquiry, but consciously crafted meaning or authorial design of any kind transpire only intermittently. As readers, we are led to believe that the ramblings of the eponymous character guide the movement of the narrative, only eventually to be told that he has in fact been motionless all the time, his pursuing nephew purposely conned by his uncle's kidnappers into embarking on 'some wild goose chase'. (Schoene 2006, 103)

However, at the same time, the fact that the Nephew does not remain immobile after having his kneecaps injured by the Foreman and his accomplices points towards the advent of a 'new' Scotland, represented by the Nephew: "[His] final experiential involvement in the disclosure of contemporary Scotland's acute misrepresentation, and his subsequent defiant mobility against the odds, render him a kind of newly born hero and apt 'symbol of his nation' […]" (Schoene 2006, 108). Thus, the novel advocates the possibility to negotiate identity even in a landscape that is fraught with (mis)representations, and engages actively in counteracting a clichéd homogenisation of the Highlands as Other.

#### **7.2 Genre Fiction in the City—Denise Mina and Ian Rankin**

The image of the Scotland found in tourist brochures, which is deconstructed in the contemporary Highland novel, continues to persevere today—this image has persisted despite the fact that in reality, as Richard Rodger (2012, 456) points out, "[b]y 1911, Scots were a more urbanized nation than any other in the world, except for England […]". Of the two major Scottish cities, Glasgow has the largest population, while the second most populated city, Edinburgh, is also the capital of Scotland.54 Robert Tally (2013, 89) has pointed out that "[t]he experience of the individual in the large city forms a key point of reference for modern literature […]", and the same is certainly true for the Scottish novel, in spite of the power of its rural image. Therefore, this section will turn to the representation of Glasgow and Edinburgh, not only the largest Scottish cities but also those that boast a rich and vibrant tradition of literary representation. Before analysing Denise Mina's and Ian Rankin's novels with regard to their postcolonial negotiation of space, the detective novel, particularly the hard-boiled tradition, will be scrutinised. In Scotland, detective fiction is one of the most popular and widely read genres. It will be argued that the Scottish detective novel can be read as an act of resistance, thus positioning the genre as postcolonial. As this line of argumentation has certain limitations, these will also be addressed.

In his 1944 essay "The Simple Art of Murder", Raymond Chandler divided detective fiction into the binary categories of the classical English and the hardboiled North American crime novel. Of course, these categories never apply exclusively to every piece of crime writing, but, as Gill Plain (2008, 6) points out, "the fact remains that a rural, almost pastoral, fiction is associated with England and an urban, dysfunctional literature with North America". The classical English crime novel is linked to the so-called 'Golden Age', the period of time between the two World Wars that saw the publication of detective fiction by writers such as Agatha Christie. Stephen Knight lists several characteristics of the Golden Age crime novel, such as the fact that, amongst other things, protagonists are exclusively from upper-middle-class backgrounds, and the victim is a person who possesses great wealth or power, which makes it credible for them to have enemies. Typically, a number of suspects are presented whom the police detective is able to narrow down to one or two using logic (Knight 2004, 85–89).55 On the other hand, the hard-boiled crime novel in the American tradition often focuses on a private investigator who is not part of police institutions or on a 'tough guy' who investigates cases due to various motivations. Similarly to classical English detective fiction, the crime most often investigated is murder, but in hard-boiled detective fiction the plot is more focused on exploring the psychological processes and motivations of the crime and is not limited in terms of class. As Knight observes, the hard-boiled crime novel "will also suddenly reveal the violence, malice and mutual hatred that can lurk in the modern metropolis" (Knight 2004, 94), thereby also highlighting that the urban settings are typical of this genre.

<sup>54</sup> Rodger (2012, 455) completes this list of Scottish cities with Aberdeen, Dundee (awarded city status in 1899), Inverness (in 2001), Stirling (in 2002) and Perth (in 2012).

<sup>55</sup> The other characteristics are as follows: the crime novel is coherent and in the form of a cluepuzzle; the crime is a murder that took place in a confined space; humour and romance do not feature in the crime novel; and the clue-puzzle is presented in a form that enables the reader to solve it even before the detective does (Knight 2004, 85–89).

Considering these two broad definitions, the Scottish crime novel is more affiliated to the hard-boiled tradition. The term 'Tartan Noir' has become an umbrella term to describe modern detective fiction in Scotland. William McIlvanney's novel *Laidlaw*, published in 1977, is often quoted as the first example of Tartan Noir, and Rankin cites this as the major inspiration for his Inspector Rebus (Plain 2003a, 130). Although both Laidlaw and Rebus are members of the police force, they resemble more the private investigators of the American hard-boiled novel. Rebus remains an outsider at the police station, preferring to investigate on his own. He uses unconventional and sometimes even illegal methods that often lead him into trouble with his colleagues and superiors. Also, his ambiguous relationship with the criminal, Cafferty, is not typical of a respectable police officer's conduct. Furthermore, Rebus's personal life puts him in the tradition of the hardened, lonesome, heavy-drinking men of the hard-boiled novel: Rebus used to be in the military, where he trained for a secret elite programme, which ultimately caused him to have a nervous breakdown and led to his resignation. He is divorced, and is continually struggling with crises in his personal life that he attempts to resolve by drinking.

Gill Plain points out that, since its birth, one of the functions of hard-boiled fiction has been resistance: "Its roots are multiple […] but at least in part it emerged as a reaction against Englishness, or at least Englishness as epitomized by the classical 'Golden Age' crime novel" (Plain 2003b, 57). Therefore, crime fiction provides the possibility for Scottish authors to express their resistance to the dominant English literary tradition. Considering that the Golden Age novel was often set in the specific milieu of the upper classes, it seems almost impossible for Scottish writers to follow in this tradition. In this way, the association of Scottishness with the working class explains the Scottish resistance to and rejection of crime fiction that follows the English tradition. Plain chooses Laidlaw and Rebus as examples, claiming "[they] act as assertions of a specifically Scottish working-class urban masculinity against an Englishness still perceived as soft, rural and middle-class" (Plain 2003b, 58). Additionally, the rise of the Scottish crime novel in the late 1970s and the 1980s in particular can be read as a reaction to the political situation at the time: "The alienated figure of the detective was a trope well suited to the articulation of opposition to Thatcherism, and from these polemic roots crime fiction developed into an ideal formula for investigating the state of Scotland" (Plain 2007, 132).

The label 'Tartan Noir', which has often been criticised for being a marketing label in order to ensure easy access to the substantial American crime fiction market, also raises the question as to why crime novels are most often summed up in terms of their writers' nationality. Of course, marketing reasons should not be underestimated, but it also has to be considered that the crime novel describes a system of law and order that is specifically connected to particular states and governance. The very definition of a crime may vary from country to country in the way that police procedures and jurisdiction do vary, making crime fiction "a commentary on the law of the land" (Plain 2008, 6). Furthermore, the conventions of the genre dictate that the crime novel tend to be composed in the mode of realism—this unwritten consensus between writers and readers makes the social and cultural comments that writers convey with their crime novels all the more credible.

In her essay "Concepts of Corruption" Gill Plain pursues the question of whether Scottish crime writing has changed since Scottish devolution and identifies three trends in the post-devolution crime novel: firstly, there seem to be tendencies of continuity. Rebus is a good example of this: although towards the end of the series Rankin shows the world to be more complex, using a pluralisation of perspectives by introducing the character of Siobhan, who reveals Rebus to be an out-dated model of a policeman, Rebus does not adapt his methods to these new realities. Secondly, there is a "social or geographical shift away from urban Scotland" (Plain 2007, 135), and thirdly there is a generic shift "to a more optimistic model",56 which is more in the tradition of the classical English crime novel (Plain 2007, 135). However, the following analysis will demonstrate that even after devolution Scottish crime fiction contains the postcolonial elements of resistance and re-writing. The analysis of crime writing as a genre shows how literature can function as resistance to dominant traditions. However, in the case of Scottish crime writing it should not be underestimated that in the 20th and 21st centuries the hard-boiled style of writing is certainly dominant in the global marketplace, and that the reason for many writers to choose this genre may owe more to marketability and monetary prospects than to a conscious choice for voicing resistance.

In addition to crime fiction, the city, particularly Glasgow as the largest city in Scotland, has been an attractive setting for fiction in general. Alan Bissett has commented on the special position that Glasgow has within Scotland:

Given the nature of Glasgow's strategic importance to the British Empire, its sectarian divide, former industrial might and subsequent affiliation with socialist politics, the city has an identity quite distinct from other urban centres in Britain, or Scotland, and a literary tradition very much of its own. (Bissett 2007, 59)

This could lead to the question of whether fiction specifically set in Glasgow has the potential to represent the Scottish nation as a whole. Mary McGlynn has also pointed out that Glasgow is "in many ways the New York City of Scotland" (McGlynn 2002, 75) because it differs from the rest of the country, but at the same time observes that "in the Scottish imaginary, [Glasgow] is explicitly working class" (McGlynn 2002, 75). As chapter five has shown, it is this image

<sup>56</sup> An example for this is the novels by Alexander McCall Smith, who became famous with his series starting with *The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency* in 1998, which focuses on private detective Precious Ramotswe and is set in Botswana. His main character has been compared to Miss Marple, but has also been criticised because "her activities as a charming native with a comic name indicate the series is basically a patronising recuperation of empire" (Knight 2004, 200).

of working-class affiliation that Scots tend to use to distinguish themselves from England, which is allegedly dominated by the upper classes. Thus, it is Glasgow's image as working-class in particular that at the same time makes it appear representative of an egalitarian, socialist Scotland. Once labelled the second city of the Empire, Glasgow's influence as an industrial centre has been consolidated by its heavy industry and ship-building docks. This image of an industrial city led to the emergence of the cliché of the working-class 'hard man' as typically Glaswegian. The impact of McArthur and Kingsley Long's account of the Gorbals, the deprived slums of the city, in their novel *No Mean City* has turned the book's title into a shorthand for violence and villainy in a deprived urban setting.

The importance of the city for contemporary Scottish fiction was established in the 1970s and 1980s, when the reinvigoration of the Scottish novel predominantly emerged from Glasgow. This is particularly prominent in the works of Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, who show "a commitment to the creative re-imagination of urban Scotland, recasting the city of Glasgow as a modern metropolis rather than continuing to reproduce the limited and limiting 'no mean city' stereotype of urban deprivation and violence" (Petrie 2004, 39). There are two factors that have influenced this development. The first of these is the Glasgow Group, a writers' group founded by Philip Hobsbaum in the early 1970s whose members included, for example, James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead and Alasdair Gray (Burgess 1998, 232) and who promoted "a general perception of Glasgow as a city of writers" (Burgess 1998, 232). Their influence is evident, for example, in James Kelman's encouragement of Janice Galloway to write her first novel *The Trick is to Keep Breathing*, published in 1989 (Burgess 1998, 311). The second sea change occurred with the publication of Alasdair Gray's radically innovative novel *Lanark* in 1981. According to Moira Burgess (1998, 247), *Lanark* "marks a new beginning in Glasgow fiction".

The 1980s were an important decade for Glasgow because they were characterised by major attempts to restructure the city. In contrast to the urban redevelopments of the 1960s, which included, for instance, the erection of high rise complexes to improve living conditions, the new measures were perceived as more negative: "The make-over of the eighties, the Thatcher decade, was different. It had the air, as sniffed by Glasgow people, of being imposed from outside, inspired by ideals remote from Glasgow concerns" (Burgess 1998, 261). These measures, which became known by the term 'New Glasgow', included the re-branding of the city as a centre of culture, culminating in Glasgow becoming the European City of Culture in 1990 and the 'Glasgow's Miles Better' campaign to improve the image of the city, as well as an attempt to attract new consumers by building shopping malls and high-priced apartments (Burgess 1998, 262). The re-positioning as a city of culture also helped to increase the visibility of Glasgow's writers. The substantial number of writers in Glasgow has not decreased in the new millennium and Alan Bissett (2007, 59) has called the period from 2004 to 2005 a "high tide in the history of Glasgow literature", listing authors as diverse as Des Dillon, Laura

Marney, Alison Miller, Ewan Morrisson, A.L. Kennedy, Suhayl Saadi and Louise Welsh.

With its history of violence and deprivation connected to the stereotype of the 'hard man', Glasgow lends itself to crime fiction as the location for deviance and murder—however, Denise Mina represents a woman's take on the crime novel. According to Thomas A. Christie, this is not unusual, since "[…] many of the most prominent authors to emerge in the supposedly male-inclined field of Scottish crime writing over the past thirty years have, in fact, been female" (Christie 2013, 163). Mina's bestselling novel *Garnethill*, published in 1998, is the first book of a trilogy, followed by *Exile* (2000) and *Resolution* (2001). These books are not crime novels in the classical sense, because the main character is not a member of the police force or a private detective but is instead "[…] a type of 'everywoman' character which remains relatively uncommon within Tartan Noir (if not crime writing generally)" (Christie 2013, 165). The main character in all three volumes is Maureen O'Donnell, a survivor of sexual assault, who has been a patient in a psychiatric hospital. In *Garnethill* she starts a secret relationship with her former psychiatrist, Douglas, whom she finds murdered in her apartment one day. She then begins to investigate the case, as she starts to doubt her own recollection of the events. While investigating, Maureen uncovers several cases of systematic sexual abuse in the local psychiatric hospital where she herself stayed for some time, and suspects that she will be the next target of the unknown killer. Mina is able to show a women's perspective on institutions and raises questions about the social condition of Scotland. However, the exclusive focus on violence against women has been seen critically by some: "The repeated theme of violent male-instigated sexual abuse at all levels of society—within families, amongst partners, and as a result of professional misconduct—lends *Garnethill* a distinct suggestion of misandry which is difficult to ignore" (Christie 2013, 170f.). The aspect that makes the novels productive for a postcolonial reading is the way in which Mina depicts abuse as originating from an institutional level. With a focus on *Garnethill*, the following analysis will show how Mina establishes a causal relationship between deprivation caused by misguided social policies and the crime and abuse this deprivation then leads to in a society that has lost its sense of community. Thus, the institutions of the state are blamed for the declining state of Scottish society; this lends itself to a postcolonial reading, since in Scotland British state structures and Scottish national identity are considered to be different. The failed social structures are illustrated by the description of 'failed' places in the city, emphasising the interconnectedness of power and space.

Christie draws attention to the fact that the concern with the social condition of Scotland is central to Mina's writing, which can be witnessed throughout her works: "Although her concerns are acutely contemporary, at times she specifically indicates a kind of necrotising malaise which has resulted from long-term social decline, lamenting Scotland's misspent promise and a tragically squandered potential […]" (Christie 2013, 168). It is not an acute crisis that has caused the contemporary conditions of deprivation, and Mina exposes the hopelessness caused by the duration of these conditions as the main factor for the brutalisation that is depicted in her novels. This is illustrated at several points in *Garnethill*, for example when Maureen meditates on emigration: "She thought about the ships passing down the river many years ago, taking emigrants to America, whole families of Scots lost to their own people for ever. Lost to drizzling rain and a fifty-year recession, to endemic domestic violence and armies of drunk men shouting about football" (*G* 224). This futility of a life in Scotland, where families are better off emigrating, is underlined by the description of parts of the city literally losing their foundations and disappearing due to medieval mines that have started to erode the very structure of the city: "The city surveyors had always known there was an ancient mine there; they thought is was safe but the medieval miners had left weaker struts in it than they had supposed. Maryhill was falling into a fivehundred-year-old hole" (*G* 166). The area affected is described as "the poor end of the Maryhill Road" (*G* 166), making it the working class that suffers from this phenomenon.

The erosion of working-class values and solidarity is exemplified by Maureen's family. As a child, Maureen was abused by her father, and, when confronted, her mother denies all knowledge of this, accusing Maureen of lying. This twofold abuse by her parents leads to the enduring collapse of the family unit. A further rift between Maureen and her family is evident in Maureen's relationship to her sisters:

Maureen cannot bond with her sisters, Marie and Una, in the face of this dysfunctional family life. Marie flees to London and Thatcherite materialism, and Una clings to the fantasy of a caring and maternal mother even as she, too, strives for the economic rewards symbolized by the company car […]. (Winston 2008, 73)

Marie's transformation into "one of Mrs Thatcher's starry-eyed children" (*G* 25) in particular is described as not only a development but also a fundamental difference to Maureen:

It took a while for [the family] to realize that Marie was deep down different. They didn't talk about it. They could talk about Winnie's [her mother] alcoholism, about Maureen's mental health problems, and to a lesser extent about Liam [her brother] dealing drugs, but they couldn't talk about Marie being a Thatcherite. There was nothing kind to be said about that. (*G* 25f.)

This insistence that being a Thatcherite cannot be forgiven highlights the opposition to the alleged hegemonic English values of consumerism and individualism personified by Margaret Thatcher. Furthermore, as has been demonstrated in chapter five concerning the depiction of class, Mina emphasises the importance of working-class values, which in extension can be read as representative of Scottish values.

When discussing the crime fiction of Denise Mina, Ian Rankin and Paul Johnston, Peter Clandfield asserts that the social malaise of Scottish cities is often exemplified by the places that the characters inhabit:

[…] Scottish crime fiction is particularly distinctive in its exploration of some of the physical structures of Scottish misfortune: dysfunctional housing schemes and other flawed attempts at material redevelopment and improvement. […] [Mina, Rankin and Johnson] set individual crimes and particular problems of law and order against ongoing systemic iniquities that see ordinary people made vulnerable by faulty urban planning; flawed social and political dispensations; and the indifferent, ineffectual, or ideologically blinkered authorities responsible. (Clandfield 2008, 79f.)

Thus, the responsibility of the individual is relativised by an emphasis on the structures that are imposed on them by misguided policies. In *Exile*, Maureen visits a run-down housing estate to interview a man who is believed to have beaten his wife but who convinces Maureen of his innocence:

From deep inside the house came the noise of something falling heavily on to a solid floor and a child began to wail. […] The living room was bare, the grimy hardboard floor dotted with offcuts of carpet. The wallpaper had been ripped off, leaving papery patches on the grey plaster, and in place of a sofa stood a plastic child's stool and a worn brown armchair. The house was a testament to long-term poverty. (Mina [2000] 2001, 61)

These descriptions of the depravity of personal space illustrate the effects that misguided social policies have on the individual. Thus, the city consists of places that reveal the failing of institutions. In this way, Mina engages in an act of literary cartography: "There is an almost simultaneous figurative and literal aspect of literary cartography, and the writer engaged in such a project need not always be self-consciously mapping. Sometimes the very act of telling a story is also a process of producing a map" (Tally 2013, 46).

According to Gill Plain, Mina's trilogy describes a

[…] mundane contemporary dystopia in its depiction of poverty and social deprivation. Hers is a world in which those systems central to a healthy body politic—the law, medicine, and social services—have broken down or been withdrawn, leaving the individual to negotiate a corrupt society as best they can. (Plain 2007, 133)

Robert T. Winston analyses this breakdown of institutions with the help of the idea of the state's responsibility, particularly of the caring professions and the 'duty to care':

Mina extends her use of the duty-to-care trope beyond the caring professions to evaluate other state agencies that ought to care but in fact have neither the time nor the inclination to do so. That is, she builds on this term to articulate standards of social responsibility, the obligations of society and its agencies to safeguard the well-being of its citizens. (Winston 2008, 66)

The extension of the duty to care to society in general emphasises the total failure of this society—the illustration of this is not only evident in the abuse that is carried out at the hands of the police and the medical profession, but seems to extend to any kind of authority. The murder victim's mother, Carol Brady, is a Member of the European Parliament who abuses her credibility and position of power to start a media campaign against Maureen, whom she considers guilty of the murder of her son. This behaviour makes her "the least sympathetic of all the adjuncts of bureaucracy to appear in the novel" (Christie 2013, 175). The implication of indifferent and abusive state institutions could lead to the strengthening of familial and personal relationships; however, as Winston points out, Mina does not offer this as a solution, as "[i]n the bleak physical and psychological landscape of *Garnethill*, however, families not only fail in their duty to care but are often sources of the worst sort of abuse" (Winston 2008, 70). Thus, it is not only the official institutional structures that are corrupted, but also the characters' private lives. This paints an exceptionally bleak picture of the formal structures of the state, in this case the British state. By setting the novel in Glasgow, which has long been known for its working-class heritage and socialist leanings, the contrast between individuals and state structures is particularly pronounced:

Mina often alludes to the country's breakdown of communitarian values over the decades, and the estrangement which has sundered the working class and the state, ultimately leading to the cultural rudderlessness and casual brutality which is so keenly illustrated throughout *Garnethill*. (Christie 2013, 173)

By emphasising her essential difference to Marie, her 'Thatcherite' sister, Maureen inscribes herself firmly in the tradition of the 'Red Clydeside'. Thus, the criticism of state institutions can be read as a critique of the British state, the values of which compete with those of the Scottish nation. The fact that Maureen leaves Scotland and settles in St Petersburg at the end of *Resolution*, the last book in the series (Mina [2001] 2002, 460f.), underlines the bleak outlook that Mina presents, as, in spite of Maureen's attempts to negotiate a happy life in Glasgow, she sees no alternative other than emigration.

As Scotland's capital and administrative centre, Edinburgh is often perceived as the opposite to Glasgow, the city of the working class. The remainder of this subchapter will analyse the ways in which the depiction of Edinburgh in the crime fiction of Ian Rankin undermines an exoticised image of Edinburgh as a tourist hotspot.

By far the most popular writer of Scottish crime fiction is Ian Rankin. His Inspector Rebus series, which is set in Edinburgh, originally spanned seventeen novels, with Rebus retiring in *Exit Music* (2007). Five years later, however, Rebus returned from retirement to work as part of a cold case unit in *Standing in Another*  *Man's Grave* (2012). To date the series is comprised of several short stories, a novella and twenty novels in total. Rankin has won several awards for his writing, and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2002 for his services to literature. He began his career as a writer with the first Inspector Rebus novel *Knots and Crosses* in 1987 but had to wait until the eighth Rebus novel *Black and Blue* in 1997 for his breakthrough.57 Rankin's decision to write crime novels was a highly conscious one, particularly since it seemed to be a lucrative genre. However, he also felt that the crime novel enabled him to address bigger questions: "[…] I thought there is no reason why you cannot write serious crime novels that take on big subjects or deal with Scotland. I am sure I can say things about modern Scotland in the crime novel just as easily as I could in the literary genre" (Plain 2003a, 130). Rankin also sees a significant advantage to making his main character a policeman who subsequently has unlimited access to virtually all parts of the city (Sloma 2012, 71).

It is not only Rankin and his novels that take Edinburgh as their predominant setting. The city has a rich literary history and provides the setting for many popular Scottish novels, ranging from novels such as James Hogg's *The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner* (1824) to Muriel Spark's *The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie* (1961). Though 20th-century Scottish urban literature has predominantly been associated with Glasgow, the location of Irvine Welsh's novels in the housing estates in the suburbs and the periphery of Edinburgh had a major effect, changing the image of the city in literature. Aaron Kelly (2005, 26) asserts that "[o]ne of the major achievements of Welsh's work has been its redress of the absence of working-class Edinburgh from literary representation, just as William McIlvanney and James Kelman had done for the Glaswegian and West Coast working class in Scotland". The duality of Edinburgh is present in *Trainspotting* in particular, in which Leith is set in contrast to the touristic area of Edinburgh, represented by its shopping mile, Princes Street. Lewis MacLeod calls the novel

[…] a tale of two cities, Leith and Edinburgh, just as it is a tale of two constituencies, the Thatcher-era haves, and the Thatcher-era have-nots. Repeatedly, Welsh imagines this relationship through Edinburgh's tourist industry, problematizing the competing claims of Edinburgh's wealthy residents, Edinburgh's wealthy tourists, and Leith's marginalized population. (MacLeod 2008, 90)

Though this duality of Edinburgh is also of importance in relation to the Inspector Rebus novels, Welsh's focus is more on the representation of the working class, as is mirrored in the mode of movement of the characters, whose city is "[…] traversed on foot and by bus and taxi rather than (as in Ian Rankin's Rebus novels) private car" (Morace 2007a, 40). This metaphor of the lack of mobility is further

<sup>57</sup> In a foreword to a new edition of the Rebus series, Rankin writes that, in retrospect, Rebus was initially portrayed as far too cultured and sophisticated to be a credible Scottish police inspector (Rankin [1987] 2005, x), and that over the first seven novels he fine-tuned his character, finally leading to the series' success.

underlined, as mentioned earlier, by the derelict Leith train station that is "representative of the distressed state of the parts of the city in which the novel is mainly set" (Morace 2007a, 41). Other writers, such as Alexander McCall Smith, present a rather different Edinburgh in their novels. McCall Smith's Scotland Street series, for instance, which begins with the novel *44 Scotland Street* (2005), focuses on the more well-off inhabitants who live at the eponymous address, mixed with students sharing a flat but excluding working-class inhabitants. The difference between Mc-Call Smith's representation of the city and, for example, the writing of Ian Rankin becomes clear in the following comparison made by Gill Plain:

They [McCall Smith and Rankin] are the Jekyll and Hyde of modern Scotland—one celebrating the respectable facade of a knowable world, the other exposing what lies beneath the conformities of Calvinist repression—and their combined success is a manifestation of the bifurcated subjectivity that still resides at the heart of the Scottish 'state'. (Plain 2007, 140)

A novel that interweaves plot with important places of Edinburgh that have the potential to represent Scottish nationhood is *Set in Darkness*, which was published in 2000 and is the eleventh Rebus novel. Rebus becomes a liaison officer for the new Parliament building in Holyrood, where a murder victim is found on the building site, soon followed by the murder of a prospective Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP). This novel has been chosen for analysis because it negotiates the question of what the devolved Scotland should look like. For Rebus, the novel also marks a turning point or new beginning because 'Big Ger' Cafferty is finally released from prison. Cafferty is Edinburgh's leading crime boss and is shown as Rebus's antagonist throughout the series. Although Rebus's investigations led to his imprisonment in the first place, the two maintain a difficult relationship, with Rebus sometimes turning to Cafferty for help with his investigations. The relationship always remains highly ambiguous, and Rebus is often criticised for this. Both Rebus and Cafferty are often constructed as 'others', where Cafferty personifies Rebus's dark or evil side. His return at this vital point in Scottish history also underlines the fact that the 'new' Scotland will not be able to shed its complex past.

Opening at the site of the Scottish Parliament next to Queensberry House, the novel emphasises the symbolic power of place through Rebus's musings that his ambitious colleague DI Lintford's prospective future position of power will be amplified by the symbolic position of his office: "Room 279 in the Big House. The Big House: Police HQ on Fettes Avenue; 279: the Chief Constable's office" (*SD* 4). After this unambiguous reminder that a position of authority is also mirrored in an assigned place, the following reflections project this on a larger scale when Rebus listens to the description of the guide detailing Queensberry House Security, to which Rebus has been assigned:

Gilfillan was letting his tour group know how important Canongate had been at one time in the city's history. In doing so, he was pointing towards the near future. The brewery next door to Queensberry House was due for demolition the following spring. The parliament building itself would be built on the cleared site, directly across the road from Holyrood House, the Queen's Edinburgh's residence. On the other side of Holyrood Road, facing Queensberry House, work was progressing on Dynamic Earth, a natural history theme park. Next to it, a new HQ for the city's daily newspaper was at present a giant monkey-puzzle of steel girders. And across the road from that, another site was being cleared in preparation for the construction of a hotel and 'prestige apartment block'. Rebus was standing in the midst of one of the biggest building sites in Edinburgh's history. (*SD* 4)

Apart from giving a detailed physical description of the setting, this passage underlines several important concerns within the novel. By opening the novel in medias res with the tour of the construction sites at Queensberry House, Rankin underlines the importance that these places will have for the novel. The fact that this is "one of the biggest building sites in Edinburgh's history" also signals the unprecedented scale of this project. At the same time, it signals that the period of time in which the novel is set is also characterised by major constructions and changes that will affect Edinburgh. Since the city has a representative function for Scotland as its capital, it may be assumed that these changes will reverberate through the nation as a whole. The passage also highlights that the importance of culturally charged space can change over time when the guide hints at the former importance of the location. The description of the future neighbourhood of the Scottish Parliament is far from solely descriptive, commenting on several symbolically charged places. The fact that the new Parliament building will be opposite the Queen's Edinburgh residence underlines that the Scottish Parliament as a symbol of a newly gained devolution will still be faced with a powerful symbol of the British state. Furthermore, the surrounding area signals the changes occurring in Edinburgh's society on a more general scale: history is commodified in a theme park; the new headquarters of a newspaper subtly comments on the connection between politics and the media that might at times be too close; and the new hotel, reminding the reader of the city's important touristic industry, and the luxury apartments comment on the gentrification of Edinburgh, which is contrasted with the demolition of the brewery that can be read as a signifier of working-class culture.

The importance of Edinburgh's changing history is further underlined by the fact that the novel deals with several murders that are all linked to important dates connected to Scotland's struggle with England. The first of these is mentioned during the tour when the guide re-tells the story of the murder and subsequent consumption of a young servant by the son of the Duke of Queensberry—the latter of whom was the Secretary of State and, thus, "the Architect of the [1707] Act of Union" (*SD* 9)—in the night after the signing of the Act (*SD* 8f.). A few instances later, a body is discovered buried in one of the kitchen cellars of Queensberry House. The investigation will later reveal that this murder took place at the time of and is connected to the failed devolution referendum in March 1979. Later, the body of Roddy Grieve, who had intended to stand for election in the new Scottish Parliament, is discovered on the construction site, thus including the successful devolution referendum of 1997 in this linear trajectory. Christopher Ward points out that this construction of events allows the reader to predict future developments:

The novel is entirely located in Edinburgh, but the national import of the matter at hand is hard to overlook, especially when Rankin begins to parallel and integrate current events with grislier episodes of Edinburgh's history, allowing the reader to extrapolate from here the eventual fate of a parliament built on such foundations. (Ward 2010, 13)

Edinburgh, and by extension Scotland, is thus described as a place that is characterised by its manifold history, and the resurfacing of this history of the conflicted relationship with England at this very important moment of the nation underlines the inevitability of this past's influence on Scotland's future. This presence of a hidden past that penetrates the present is articulated at various instances in the novel. On two occasions in the novel the police forces have to work through substantial archives of files and personal documents in order to advance the investigation, earning the two main officers working on this task the nickname "Time Team" (*SD*  285). This implies that some parts of the past are indeed available and only need to be scrutinised with the right question in mind in order to draw conclusions for the present. By exposing the past of the city, the novel is also critical of the changes that consequently become visible. Another common theme that extends beyond this particular instalment of the Inspector Rebus series is the critique of the invisibility and increased disappearance of the working class in Edinburgh due to gentrification. Rebus reflects on this when he witnesses the demolition of tenement buildings that will be replaced by upmarket apartments in the vicinity of the new Parliament building:

It was as if a pathologist had gone to work, exposing the body's secrets. These had been people's homes: doors they'd painted and repainted; wallpaper carefully chosen. […] what fascinated Rebus were the layers. Paint hidden by paint, wallpaper by wallpaper. A striped confection could be peeled to reveal hints of pale pink peony roses, and beneath that layer yet another, red-coated horsemen. (*SD* 280)

In this example the personal history of the displacement of the traditional tenement inhabitants, who will be replaced by more affluent tenants, is subtly enhanced by the description of the wallpaper displaying red-coated horsemen; these allude to the political struggles in the wake of the Act of Union and the Jacobite Rebellion, during which the British forces were, due to their garments, known as the 'Redcoats'.58

<sup>58</sup> However, the power of the metaphor has to be limited, since the pale pink peony rose does not have any symbolic meaning in relation to history and it is the white rose instead that is associated with

It is not only the different layers of history present in Edinburgh but also the often alluded to ambiguity of the city that attracts Ian Rankin to it as the location of his novels. The alleged idyll of the city makes the crimes that Inspector Rebus uncovers all the more sinister in contrast. This sentiment is echoed throughout the series, for instance in Rankin's first Rebus novel *Knots & Crosses*, in which this view of the city is expressed by a librarian: "'But here, in Edinburgh. It's unthinkable.' Mass murderers belonged to the smokey back streets of the South and the Midlands, not to Scotland's picture-postcard city" (Rankin [1987] 2005, 101). Kirsten Sandrock has stated that Rankin's strategy is "to produce a counterhegemonic narrative of Edinburgh", a "proletarianisation of the city's tourist sites" (Sandrock 2011a, 158). Furthermore, she points out that Rankin presents the duality that results from establishing this counter-narrative "not as an intrinsic character trait but rather as a socioeconomically determined condition. […] Rankin uses the city of Edinburgh for his exploration of cultural ambiguities. He construes the city as a 'microcosm' for Scotland's duality […]" (Sandrock 2011a, 155). Thus, by establishing a counter-narrative that shows the city to be more than a mere attractive tourist hotspot, Rankin draws attention to the limitations of an exoticised image that denies Edinburgh the complexity of a postmodern city.

At the same time, Rankin shows Edinburgh to be a divided city, an image that also continues throughout the series:

[Rankin's Rebus novels] are marked by the representation of extreme social, cultural and architectural oppositions that are said to shape the city of Edinburgh and its people. It is this notion of a divided city that allows Rankin to develop his authenticity theme throughout the Rebus series and to create the belief in a hidden reality that can be discovered when looking beneath the surface of the city. (Sandrock 2011b, 83)

In the tradition of the Caledonian Antizysygy, the depiction of the city as split between opposites also ties in with the Scot's split allegiance between a British and a Scottish identity. This division is also visible in Edinburgh's architecture, which is characterised by the split between the Old Town and the New Town: the Old Town consists of the medieval town centre, whereas the New Town, designed by James Craig and whose construction started in 1767, is characterised by Georgian architecture (Coghill 2014, Chapter 11). The influence of the Union in 1707 cannot only be gleaned from the inspiration of the popular English Georgian style of architecture but is also present in the street names: the central parallel streets are called Thistle Street to the north and Rose Street in the south, employing the national flowers of Scotland and England respectively. These streets are framed by

Scotland: although the thistle is the emblematic flower of Scotland, the white rose is also of importance and is alleged to have been a symbol for the Jacobite Rebellion. Furthermore, in 2015, the newly elected MPs of the SNP have recently drawn attention to the flower by wearing white roses in Parliament; however, First Minister Alex Salmond claims that the rose was chosen as a tribute to Hugh MacDiarmid and his poem "The Little White Rose of Scotland" (*The Scotsman* 2015).

Queen Street, George Street and Princes Street, whose names pay tribute to the royal family. On Princes Street, the prominent Scott Monument, which commemorates Sir Walter Scott, is found, its history a reminder of the British identity that the city had in the 19th century.59 In his novels, Rankin presents Rebus as acutely aware of the divisions of the city:

They headed for the New Town. Divided city, Rebus was thinking. Divided between the Old Town to the south and the New Town to the north. And divided again between the east end (Hibs FC) and west (Hearts). A city which seemed defined by its past as much as by its present, and only now, with the parliament coming, looking towards the future. (*SD* 198)

According to this statement, a future for Edinburgh is only imaginable in a devolved Scotland. According to Kirstin Sandrock, this is mirrored in the architecture, though at the same time Rankin reveals further contradictions:

For Rebus, the pre-Union buildings Holyrood House and Queensberry House attest to the historic legitimacy of Scotland's parliamentary independence whereas the newly built theme park, the newspaper headquarters, and the exclusive apartment building represent the ongoing influences of capitalism and class on Scottish politics that he finds disturbing. (Sandrock 2011a, 163)

The influence of capitalism is shown to overshadow national sentiments in the investigation of the body dating back to 1979 found in Queensberry House. When interviewed, a contractor who worked on renovations there at that time airs the following sentiment about the failed devolution referendum of 1979, to the surprise of officers Wylie and Hood: "[…] '[W]e won the vote but lost the war.' 'A temporary setback,' Wylie felt bound to add. He glared at her. 'If you can call twenty years temporary. We had dreams … […] Just think what it would have meant: inward investment, new homes and businesses'" (*SD* 136f.). Towards the end of the novel it is revealed that this failed speculation in the area around Carlton Hill, where the Parliament building was supposed to have been built in 1979, was the reason for the murder (*SD* 319). By including this storyline, Rankin complicates the apparently straightforward view on the legitimacy of Scottish devolution by showing Scottish society to be corrupt, second-guessing pure nationalist sentiments as the sole reason for the wish for independence.

Despite these attempts to paint a more nuanced picture of Scottish society, there are also various allusions in the novel that underline the importance of the struggle for Scottish independence: the notorious family of Roddy Grieve, the

<sup>59</sup> Walter Scott as a bestselling author in the 19th century proved to be an immense influence on his native town of Edinburgh: "Both in 1840 on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone and in 1846 on the occasion of the inauguration of the finished monument, enormous crowds gathered along the hillsides and housetops overlooking the site […] The ceremony in 1840 was closed off with the band's playing of 'Rule Britannia', thereby clearly placing the event within a broader framework than that of Scotland" (Rigney 2012, 173).

contemporary murder victim, is nicknamed 'the Clan', thus gaining a degree of representational status for Scotland; they also share their last name with, but are not related to, the influential figure of the nationalist movement, Christopher Murray Grieve, who later published his poetry under the name of Hugh MacDiarmid (*SD* 52). The murder that Siobhan Clarke investigates in one of the subplots focuses on a homeless man who commits suicide and is then found to have had substantial funds in his bank account; this man of contradictions is called Christopher Mackie, which name is also reminiscent of a combination of MacDiarmid's original name and of his pen name (*SD* 89). Furthermore, Rebus quotes from one of MacDiarmid's poems (*SD* 11). Eleanor Bell reads the presence of MacDiarmid as a reminder of the struggle for independence:

MacDiarmid is therefore a spectral figure throughout this text, another reminder of previous struggles for Scottish national and cultural identity, in juxtaposition with the new. Whereas in some ways he is represented as an anachronistic figure […,] the presence of one of Scotland's most influential thinkers and poets nonetheless acts as a self-conscious reminder of the enduring need to interrogate the state of the nation in current times. (Bell 2008, 60)

The revelation of the various antagonisms that are unavoidably part of the city—of the beautified tourist city versus depraved areas such as Leith; the conflicted history of Scottish independence exemplified by the murder cases; the disappearance of the working-class presence in favour of increased gentrification—is mirrored in the description of the city as being divided between Britishness (represented by the New Town) and Scottishness (represented by the Old Town). This metaphor can also be extended further:

By juxtaposing past and present in such a way, and in so specific a geographical context, Rankin effectively turns Rebus's investigation of a murder at the site of the Scottish Parliament into a dual investigation of not just the crime at hand but the city of Edinburgh itself, using the hard-boiled form to interrogate corruption at the highest levels, to question the very foundations upon which the city is built and, as above, to illustrate the impact of history on Edinburgh's capacity to change. (Ward 2010, 63)

This lack of ability to change is further illustrated by the return of Cafferty, who manages to secure his release from prison by pretending to suffer from cancer. Though Rebus discovers this, he has no physical proof of the deception. The last sentence of the novel is accordingly melancholic and pessimistic: "[…] Cafferty just laughed. He was back, and in charge of *his* Edinburgh, and that was all that mattered …" (original emphasis; *SD* 414).

While the novel provides a description of Edinburgh and an analysis of its culturally charged places, at the same time, it illustrates issues at the heart of Scottish nationality in general. The fact that Edinburgh is only capable of providing one possible construction of Scottish national identity is illustrated by the comparison to Glasgow, which is considered as representing a different facet of Scottish identity:

This [Edinburgh] was the city of Deacon Brodie, where bridled passions were given free play only at night. The city of John Knox, his rectitude stern and indomitable. You might need half a million pounds to buy one of the better houses, yet outward show was frowned upon; a city of Saabs and Volvos rather than Bentleys and Ferraris. Glaswegians—who considered themselves more passionate, more Celtic—thought Edinburgh staid and conventional to the point of prissiness. (*SD* 231)

However, it is this idea of being perceived as less Celtic than Glasgow that makes Ian Rankin's reflections on Scottish identity all the more powerful—Edinburgh's identity crisis goes deeper because it is perceived to be less Celtic.

Though Rebus has become synonymous with Edinburgh, on several occasions his investigations force him to travel outside of the city. Other writers have also used travelling as the motivation or the structuring principle of their works in order to explore different concepts of Scottish national identity. Sometimes it is even the departure or return to Scotland that reveals conflicted constructions of identity. Thus, after the analysis of the Highlands and of the city as representational spaces of the Scottish nation, this last section will be concerned with the analysis of travelling, examining novels that focus on movement, either within Scotland or as the crossing of borders.

#### **7.3 Change of Scenery—Travelling and Border Crossing in Scottish Fiction**

As previously noted, Robert Tally links narratives to maps (Tally 2013, 46), and this map-making thus not only is used in a delimited space but can also attempt to explore the territory of the nation in its entirety. This movement awards the traveller the position of an especially attentive observer, enabling them to comment on the nation: "The traveller, whether forced into exile or willingly engaged in tourism, cannot help but be more aware of the distinctiveness of a given place, and of the remarkable differences between places" (Tally 2013, 13). Thus, in a nation such as Scotland that perceives its own situation as vulnerable and unstable because it is a 'stateless nation', travelling is a useful strategy to negotiate national identity. Indeed, Duncan Petrie has pointed out that travelling is a common motif in contemporary Scottish fiction: "One recurring narrative strategy involves the central protagonists travelling from Scotland to England (or vice versa), a journey in which the physical and symbolic crossing of the border is paralleled by a psychological, intellectual or moral transformation" (Petrie 2004, 189). Furthermore, travelling is an important trope in Scottish fiction, as the nation is deeply marked by its significant number of emigrants and general mobility (Devine 2011). This

is also visible in the considerable amount of criticism that focuses on emigrated Scots (see, for example, Bueltmann, Hinson & Morton 2013; Calder 2014).

When reading the Scottish novel as postcolonial, travelling offers writers many possibilities to comment on the state of the nation. Several strategies used by writers will be introduced here. First, novels will be analysed that use a journey through Scotland in order to negotiate its identity. Subsequently, several novels will be scrutinised that use a journey as a structuring principle and, thus, as possibility to create distance from Scotland in order to negotiate identity from an apparently objective position. These journeys often also function as an opportunity to delineate Scotland from the perspective of other places. Similarly, the journey back to Scotland allows the negotiation of the past and/or unresolved conflicts and, in many cases, aids the consolidation of personal identity. Thereafter, the following analysis will also focus on journeys that represent a departure from Scotland motivated by the feeling that it is no longer seen as a viable place to live in.

Ian Rankin's breakthrough novel *Black and Blue* from 1997 considerably extends Inspector Rebus's 'beat' beyond Edinburgh. In this novel Inspector Rebus investigates murders by a killer nicknamed 'Johnny Bible', while at the same time Rebus himself is under scrutiny from the police and the media for a possible act of misconduct. His search for the murderer leads Rebus all over Scotland, first of all to Glasgow, Edinburgh's rival city, then to Aberdeen, a city made rich by the oil industry, and finally to a Shetland oil rig in the middle of the Scottish North Sea. It is not only the various locations that are described but also the act of travelling: "[…] [T]here was the glory of the drive itself. Rebus stuck as far as possible to the coast route, and wondered at the mind-set of a nation who would design a golf course along a clifftop" (Rankin [1997] 2006, 164). Thus, the extension of setting gives Rebus more opportunity to reflect on the nation, which has led Gill Plain (2002, 27) to term *Black and Blue* a "state of the nation novel". Travelling and in particular roads as 'arteries' that cross the country have also been the main motif in *Standing in Another Man's Grave* (2012), the first Rebus novel after his initial retirement. There, Rebus's investigation focuses on the A9 motorway,60 Scotland's main north–south connection. Rankin has called the novel "a roadmovie in prose" (Rankin 2015), thus underscoring the importance of movement for the novel. The journey allows Rankin to investigate the state of the nation, as "[…] a mapping of fictional worlds can clearly lead to an investigation of real-life ones, and this, it seems, is one of his primary motivations for developing the Rebus detective series" (Bell 2008, 55).

<sup>60</sup> The A9 also provides the setting for Michel Faber's novel *Under the Skin* (2000), in which the motorway gives the alien protagonists ample opportunity to pick up hitchhikers who are consequently processed into meat to be consumed on the aliens' home planet. The focus is here again on the remoteness and inaccessibility of the Highlands that allow such operations to be carried out unnoticed.

In contrast to these examples, Scottish contemporary fiction often features journeys that entail literal border crossing, thus facilitating a comparison between 'home' and 'abroad', while the distance can help to consolidate identity. Often a journey is made to London, which represents an opposite in terms of not only scale but also financial, economic and political hegemony as Britain's capital. In *Trainspotting*, the characters travel to London on several occasions, and it is the feeling of returning that transforms places such as Edinburgh Castle from symbols of their difference to ones of identification, and strengthens Renton's feeling of being home:

They say you have to live in a place to know it, but you have to come fresh tae it tae really see it. Ah remember walkin along Princes Street wi Spud, we both hate walkin along that hideous street, deadened by tourists and shoppers, the twin curses ay modern capitalism. Ah looked up the castle and thought, it's just another building tae us. It registers in oor heids just like the British Home Stores or Virgin Records. We were heading tae these places oan a shoplifting spree. But when ye come back oot ay Waverley Station eftir bein away fir a bit, ye think: Hi, this isnae bad. (*TS* 228)

In A.L. Kennedy's *Looking for the Possible Dance* the train journey from Scotland to London is the main structural frame of the narration. During this journey the main protagonist, Margaret, reflects on her past life and makes a decision on how her future should be. The journey on the train allows her to experience the difference between Scotland and England as highly pronounced:

The carriage windows seem to have run out of countryside and Margaret watches one dull town smirr into another. When they pass into sun the graffiti she sees by the track is unfamiliar, definitely English now. A foreign country opens ahead and then closes behind her and she can imagine the white light on the lines, pushing all the way to London on her behalf. (Kennedy [1993] 2005, 190)

Travelling is constructed as a tentative state that is situated outside space as inbetween, thus facilitating the negotiation of identity: "Hence, the literal and symbolic association of 'border-crossing' gains currency as a means of indicating a willingness to embark on personal, cultural, sexual, racial, social and political journeys of discovery and re-definition" (Holdsworth 2003, 26). This desire to escape from one's everyday life and, thus, also from Scotland "to stop having to think, or talk of Scotland at all, is […] prevalent" in much Scottish fiction (Boddy 1996, 366). However, in *Looking for the Possible Dance* the journey is "only a temporary respite from Real Life" (Boddy 1996, 366), which is even more pronounced given it is a holiday. There are several novels in which the borders that are crossed are outside of Great Britain, making the movement even more pronounced by leaving Britain as an insular space. In *Foreign Parts* by Janice Galloway, the friends Cassie and Rhonda spend their holidays together in France. Comparably to Margaret,

Cassie finds herself suspended in a time of crisis and it is only at the end of the journey that she is able to plan for her future life in Scotland. Horst Prillinger points out the parallelism of both novels:

Thematically, I find that *Foreign Parts* and *Looking For the Possible Dance* are basically variations of the same theme: the escape from the usual surroundings and the journey towards the self, enacted through an actual journey the protagonists of these novels undertake. On the journey both protagonists recapitulate their past, and at the end of each novel they come to some sort of conclusion. (Prillinger 2000, 125)

This is taken a step further by Candia McWilliam's novel *Debatable Land* (1994). On a sailing trip through the South Pacific, protagonist Alec reflects on his childhood in Edinburgh, thus establishing a new sense of his heritage. Before he realises this for himself, this notion is mirrored in another character: "He had met an old Englishman at one of the many milk bars on Tonga, who said, 'I've not been home for fifty-six years and I've travelled all among these islands of Tonga, but I have more idea of England, which is a foreign country to me, than I do of here'" (McWilliam 1994, 188). Kasia Boddy points out that this continues a tradition in Scottish writing when "[l]ike Stevenson, [McWilliam's] characters find 'Scotland at the back end of the Pacific'" (Boddy 1996, 367).

Instead of travelling away from Scotland, another recurring motif in contemporary Scottish fiction is the return to Scotland. In *The Steep Approach to Garbadale* by Iain Banks the main protagonist returns to Scotland after having spent a considerable amount of time abroad, travelling all over the globe. In John Burnside's *Living Nowhere* the main protagonist, Francis, a Scot who has grown up in England, returns to his home town after travelling through Europe. In both novels, returning home leads to the negotiation of a hidden past or a repressed trauma that can only be resolved by the return. In Andrew O'Hagan's novel *Our Fathers* the main narrative trajectory is the journey of the main character, Jamie, from his home in Liverpool back to Glasgow where his grandfather is dying. Thus, the return journey forces him to deal with his legacy. In order to illustrate that, despite the physical distance, Scotland as a nation and culture continues to exert an influence on Jamie, O'Hagan uses the metaphor of the limpet: "As shown in Fig. 35, limpets browse in a rough circle around their homes, travelling at most three feet from this and usually very much less, and are able by this sense of direction to regain their home when it is necessary" (*OF* 3). This inability to move more than "three feet" away is illustrated by Jamie. When he first moves to England with his family as a boy, they settle in Berwick—the town, on the border to Scotland, is famous for having changed allegiance between England and Scotland several times in the past, thus illustrating that location alone does not inherently equal national allegiance. Additionally, the fact that Jamie later settles in Liverpool, in the north rather than the south of England, signals his reluctance to leave Scotland behind. For Jamie, the journey to Scotland also means a journey into his past; for instance, he reunites with his parents who have become estranged to him since his difficult childhood. However, at the same time, Jamie's time in Scotland also subverts his preconceptions, as he notices that the difference between Scotland and England may not be as pronounced as he had previously thought (*OF* 66).

Thus, the negotiation of a stable identity in Scotland is often facilitated either by travelling abroad temporarily or by returning to Scotland. However, in some cases, contemporary Scottish fiction depicts a journey away from Scotland as the only viable option. This self-chosen 'exile' continues an established tradition of emigration and can be read either as a succumbing to Scotland's limitations that can only be transcended elsewhere or as the realisation that the perception of Scotland as dominated by outside forces makes the negotiation of a stable identity impossible. Renton's escape to Amsterdam at the end of *Trainspotting* and Sammy's intention to travel south in *How Late it Was, How Late* are two prominent examples for the latter. Renton ensures that he cannot return by betraying his friends, whose wrath he does not want to face. At the same time, this forces him to negotiate a new identity that is not based on Scotland: "He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. There, he could not be anything other than he was. Now, free from them all, for good, he could be what he wanted to be" (*TS* 344). This conclusion to the novel not only symbolises Renton's renunciation of Scotland as important for constructing his identity but also signals his desire for a post-national framework: "In giving up the nation, however, Renton acquires access to the global, or, at the very least, to the pan-European, a construct so reviled by the English—especially Thatcher and Major, the Tory leaders who destroyed communities such as Leith" (Farred 2004, 224).

The motivation of economic limitations and hardships is an important trope in Scottish emigration fiction, particularly concerning emigration from the Highlands (Harper 1996, 21). This is also the motivation of the Strang family members in Irvine Welsh's *Marabou Stork Nightmares* when leaving Scotland for South Africa. Though they are marginalised in Scotland, in South Africa they are able to live a more luxurious life (*MSN* 72). Similarly, the eponymous heroine of Alan Warner's *Morvern Callar* decides to leave behind her life in the Highlands and escapes to Spain as soon as she inherits sufficient funds from her dead boyfriend. For Morvern, the extended holiday in Spain provides her with the opportunity to explore her identity, which before was restricted by the small village community she was living in: "She ignores the possibility for future investments of the inheritance that will insure a limited but comfortable income and instead uses it to fulfil desires she never thought possible to attain" (March 2002, 77). Significantly, both the Strang family and Morvern are forced to return home to Scotland, where they experience the limitations they hoped to escape all the more intensely.

In summary, the various types of journeys that protagonists in contemporary Scottish fiction undertake all function as a motivation to negotiate their national identity. The narratives that describe a border-crossing allow the characters to experience Scotland from a distance and at the same time allow for comparisons.

Thus, these journeys can function as postcolonial investigations of difference, facilitating the reflection of Scotland's view of itself as postcolonial.

#### **7.4 Conclusion: Postcolonial Spaces**

Space and place are important markers of identity in Scottish fiction. The Highlands in particular are often framed as the quintessential Scottish landscape. Contemporary Scottish fiction that is set in the Highlands engages with these clichés and stereotypes through narratives that function as postcolonial re-writing. Alan Warner's *The Man Who Walks* achieves this by depicting the pointless journey of deviant and demented characters in an inhospitable environment. At the same time, Warner criticises the commodification of the Highlands, showing the battlefield at Culloden turned into a film set. In addition to the re-writing of exoticising clichés about the Highlands, the novel also engages in a move of postcolonial opposition by underscoring the heterogeneity of Scotland.

As a genre inextricably connected to an urban setting, the Scottish crime novel also engages with Scottish national identity. The genre of Tartan Noir can—albeit only to a certain extent—be interpreted as postcolonial, as it is modelled on the American hard-boiled tradition of the crime novel, thus representing an opposition to the English tradition. Both Glasgow and Edinburgh are well-represented in Scottish crime writing. Denise Mina's *Garnethill* trilogy is set in Glasgow, focusing on the institutional abuse of power. Thus, it is the official state institutions that fail to care, and, consequently, it is the British state as a structure that is revealed to be insufficient for dealing with Scotland's social problems. With regard to Edinburgh, Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels also engage in a postcolonial re-writing by revealing the dark side of Edinburgh, which is generally perceived as tourist gem.

Furthermore, the postcolonial condition of the Scottish nation is explored in contemporary Scottish fiction with the help of a variety of journeys. These journeys allow the protagonists to reflect on their identity and to compare Scotland from an outsider's perspective. A further strand of writing pessimistically describes leaving Scotland as the only viable option in order to enable the characters to negotiate a stable sense of identity.

In contrast to the negotiation of Scottish identity from the outside when comparing it to the experience of other cultures, there has also been an increase in contemporary Scotland fiction of novels written from the point of view of immigrants living in Scotland, who negotiate Scottishness from an internal position. Thus, the influence of the category of race for Scottish identity will be explored in the following chapter.

## **8. "Black Scottish Writing"—A New Heritage?**

The previous analysis has emphasised that the Scotland of the 21st century can still be described as being in a process of negotiating national identity. Following devolution in 1997, the existence of a multitude of Scotlands has been recognised. Furthermore, an increasingly self-confident Scottish identity allows for a more international perspective. Globalisation, transculturalism and cosmopolitanism have widened the frame of reference for identity constructions, and a new generation of writers comes from a mixed-raced background, while the voices of immigrant writers enrich contemporary literature. Most notable, poet and writer Jackie Kay has had a significant impact on the Scottish literary scene not least due to the fact that she is extremely outspoken about her problematic feelings of belonging and her experiences of discrimination in Scotland. Other writers, such as Suhayl Saadi, testify to the Asian presence in Scotland. Saadi's novels and short stories often reveal characters who experience an identity crisis and feel trapped between their parents' Asian heritage and their own feeling of Scottishness. In contrast to this, Leila Aboulela's novel *The Translator* (1999) offers religious faith as a common denominator, rather than ethnicity or nationality. Her Sudanese protagonist spends some time in Scotland but identifies more with her religious belonging as a Muslim than with any national framework.

In his essay on "Scotland and Hybridity", Cairns Craig (2004) discusses the suitability of the central postcolonial term of 'hybridity': applied to Scotland as a nation, the concept seems unsuitable, since

[h]ybridity represents an underlying threat to Scottish culture because any compromise of the purity of its "Celtic" origins in the regnum Scottorum undermines its refusal to accept English suzerainty. At the same time, Scottish development since the Wars of Independence, focused on the Lowlands and on the *Inglis* language, increasingly marginalised and devalued the very culture—Gaelic—on which the nation's independence was based. (original emphasis; Craig 2004, 231)

Thus, subscribing to the idea of Scotland as a hybrid nation was perceived as endangering Scotland's potential of insisting on its difference towards England. The fact that in the Victorian era the difference between the Lowlands and the Highlands was constructed to be one of a racial nature complicates matters further.61 Furthermore, as Colin Kidd points out, race has long been a complicated matter in Scotland, as well as in much of the rest of the world, in the 19th century:

Although race was of considerable importance in nineteenth-century Scottish thought, its meaning was somewhat ambiguous and unstable. Race had

<sup>61</sup> This racial construct of difference was, for example, advocated by the Scottish physician Robert Knox in his book *The Races of Men* (1850): "To me the Caledonian Celt of Scotland appears a race as distinct from the Lowland Saxon of the same country, as any two races can possibly be: as negro from American; Hottentot from Caffre; Esquimaux from Saxon" (Knox 1850, 14f.).

multiple, imprecise and overlapping definitions. In some cases race was used as a convenient synonym for nationality; but, more commonly, it referred to a broader category of ethnicity, sometimes to physical types, sometimes to linguistic communities, or to groups which were defined both by physical characteristics and a common speech. (Kidd 2003, 877)

Today, as has been established in chapter five, the English are not constructed as Other due to the fact that they belong to a different ethnicity or race; instead, they are regarded as collectively middle- and upper-class.62 Accordingly, one could argue that, similarly to Scottish women writers, black Scottish writers experience a double marginalisation: by being Scottish they are already part of a marginalised nation, and within this predominantly white community they are marginalised again on the basis of the colour of their skin.

The following will analyse whether race and racism play an important role in contemporary Scottish fiction. Race seems to function as a diversification of Scottish identities, which is only possible once a postcolonial Scotland has developed a nuanced and manifold identity, and no longer has to insist on its homogeneity, the latter of which facilitates the discrimination of others. A novel such as *The Translator* questions whether differences between the various parts of Britain, in this case Scotland and England, have been overemphasised due to the political agenda of a Scotland claiming independence, which relies on a contrast between the two countries; this idea is also marginally visible in other Scottish writing.63

This chapter will first analyse the commonly used term 'Black British', as well as questions as to whether the terminology should be adapted to the Scottish context, and whether it is feasible to speak of a Black Scottish identity. After introducing Scottish authors whose work addresses questions of race in one way or another, two novels will be scrutinised in detail. Suhayl Saadi's debut *Psychoraag* (2004) focuses on the Asian community, particularly on Pakistanis living in Glasgow. Saadi's main protagonist, Zaf, suffers from an identity crisis and is torn between the Asian roots of his parents and his Scottish identity. The novel *The Translator* (1999) by Sudanese author Leila Aboulela will be the second focus. Aboulela's novel takes place partly in Aberdeen and partly in Khartoum. Here, Aboulela often differentiates between her homes in Sudan and Britain or Europe in general rather than comparing her native country with Scotland specifically. The novel offers religious faith as a possible means to the transcendence of categories of race and nation,

<sup>62</sup> Irvine Welsh insists that this is true for the British literary establishment in general: "Indeed, in resisting accounts of new multi-cultural Britain, Welsh maintains that class—and not sexuality or ethnicity—is still the main barrier to entry into the literary canon: 'It's more to do with class than ethnicity. They tend to accept ethnic writers as long as they're middle class. Hanif Kureishi is writing about middle-class suburban Asians, not Bradford or East London homeboys. Whereas, Caryl Philips is writing about the legacy of slavery, but it's acceptable because he went to Oxford'" (Kelly 2005, 5).

<sup>63</sup> See, for example, Andrew O'Hagan's *Our Fathers* (*OF* 66), in which the absence of difference is described as more unsettling than the difference.

suggesting that the imagined communities are now communities of faith. This has implications for Scottish constructions of postcoloniality and may hint at a possible transcendence of these constructions.

#### **8.1 How Scottish is 'Black British'?**

The commonly used term 'Black British' implies a shared black experience throughout Britain. In the 20th and 21st centuries, as Tom Nairn (2000) and Linda Colley [1992] (1996) have pointed out, the feeling of a shared British identity has increasingly been eroded. Thus, the term 'Black British' is often used as a synonym for 'Black English' while at the same time allegedly highlighting the former's inclusivity. However, the use of the term 'British' hints at the subversive power of the term, as it transcends the category of 'English' literature and, thus, has similarities with Scottish literature: "There is a credible argument that black British writing has, like Scottish writing, always been 'devolved' to some degree from English/British literature" (G. Macdonald 2010, 84). Most writing included in the category Black British originates in London due to the significant proportion of immigrants, particularly those from the Caribbean, who arrived in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called 'Windrush Generation'.64 Apart from the fact that the majority of these immigrants settled in London, the term 'black' also seems to be strongly interconnected with urbanism:

Throughout Britain in general, census records today indicate that ethnic minority groups are always heavily concentrated in the urban centres, with nearly half of the total population in London alone. […] New millennium Britain has today developed an urban depiction propagated throughout the media that is hardly ever devoid of some type of Black cultural input. Arguably there has been a symbiosis of terminology where the inner city and 'Black' have become synonymous. (Kelleher 2005, 241)

This is a further reason as to why the connection between Black British and Scotland is not always the first that comes to mind, as Scotland is predominantly perceived as a rural country, with the exception of urban Glasgow. Graeme Macdonald makes a clear statement about Scotland in the 1950s: "In a time characterised by significant immigrant arrival to Britain, a black and/or Asian presence in Scottish culture seems at best marginal, at worst invisible" (G. Macdonald 2010, 80). This has not changed fundamentally, and, thus, it is possible that the experience entailed in the term 'Black British' differs considerably from any 'Black Scottish' experience.

<sup>64</sup> Britain was in need of labour after World War II, and promoted immigration from its former colonies, particularly from the West Indies; the first of these migrant workers arrived on a ship called the SS *Empire Windrush* in 1948.

The term 'Black British' should also be challenged because it often conflates all non-white ethnicities under the term 'black'. Dawes (2005, 259) highlights that "[i]n Britain, however, Black is more likely to equate with 'non-white'". Indeed, in Scotland Asians have a greater presence than Caribbean or African Blacks. In his study, *Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation* (2004), Mark Stein analyses Black British novels, dedicating the better part of his first chapter to the question as to whether 'Black British' is the appropriate term for his study. Stein points out the limitations and problems that the category, or indeed any categorisation, contains: "Grouping texts together as black texts, or women's writing, as post-colonial, or gay, is an act in history—an intervention—that conditions the significance and the meaning that texts will attain in a reading" (Stein 2004, 9). In agreement with Dawes, he states that the political definition of black is 'people of colour' and includes people from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia (Stein 2004, 8). Nevertheless, in terms of cultural studies, Stein argues for the use of such a broad term as 'Black British literature', presupposing the knowledge of its "strategic inaccuracy" (Stein 2004, 14), as it should never be misunderstood to suggest homogeneity. Stein also refers to the debate between Fred D'Aguiar and David Dabydeen as to whether literature should, or even can, be labelled as 'black'—according to D'Aguiar, this only reinforces racist categories (in Stein 2004, 10–12). Stein achieves the synthesis of their opposing views with reference to Stuart Hall: "Although the designation *black British* refers to a heterogeneous group, the members of this group, according to Hall, share the experiences of marginalization, experiences which induce a process of 'diasporization'" (original emphasis; Stein 2004, 11).

Furthermore, apart from the problematic connotations associated with both the terms 'black' and 'British', their combination entails a further potential for tension. Stein (2004, 8) identifies this tension as "a reciprocal one in that 'blackness' redefines 'Britishness' and 'Britishness' redefines 'blackness'". Due to the considerable number of immigrants who arrived with the purpose of working in the UK, their stay seemed to be temporary at first sight. However, this changed with the birth of second-generation immigrants, as has the focus of the term 'Black British': "While the insistence on 'black British-ness' was initially provocative in that it meant 'we're here to stay', the term is now provocative in a different way: it is about redefining where one is staying, about claiming one's space, and about reshaping that space" (Stein 2004, 17). Moreover, most Black British writing is not concerned with creating an ambiguous identity, instead aiming to confirm the writers as blacks in Britain or, more precisely, in England: "They [black writers] did not band together for the purpose of internationalising England, but instead to assert their Englishness, their demands for equal and just treatment as English citizens despite their skin colours" (Arana 2005, 232).

The conclusion of the debate outlined above is dissatisfying. The term 'Black British' is insufficient and problematic in several ways. However, unfortunately, there are no valid alternatives. Terms such as 'New Literatures in English', 'Immigrant Literature' or 'New Ethnic Writing' all have similar underlying limitations. This study will thus continue to use the term 'Black British', as it is the most commonly used expression. In order to determine whether 'Black Scottish' is a feasible category for analysis, the following will highlight the Black presence in Britain and, more specifically, in Scotland.

In Britain, Blacks have been present since at least the third century AD, particularly as soldiers in the Roman army, for example in the troops guarding Hadrian's Wall (Fryer 1984, 1). Black people have lived in Scotland since the 16th century, although Michael Niblett points out that it was only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that they could be considered "significant groupings of African, Caribbean, and African-American peoples […]" (Niblett 2007, 431f.): a significant proportion of those Black people in the late 18th and early 19th centuries came to Scotland as students, as they were not allowed to study in Oxford or Cambridge since these universities only gave access to members of the Church of England (Niblett 2007, 432).

In the 17th and 18th centuries, however, Blacks who entered Scotland were predominantly slaves from the British colonies taken there by their British 'masters'. Glasgow was one of several slave ports, though in comparison to other ports in Britain it remained of minor importance (Fryer 1984, 50). The arrival of slaves from the colonies put British law in a predicament, raising the question as to whether the laws of the colonies should also apply in Britain. Depending on the viewpoint, this had implications for whether slaves were considered property and remained in ownership, or, in a different interpretation of the law, whether slaves became free as soon as they touched British soil or after they had been baptised in Britain (Fryer 1984, 113–115). In England this question prompted several court cases, the most prominent of which being the Somerset case, which ended with the ruling by Mansfield that in England a master could not force slaves to leave the country (Fryer 1984, 125). This was an important ruling, since it was a common strategy to kidnap slaves in England in order to take them back to the colonies to work or to be sold (Fryer 1984, 119). Nevertheless, this ruling did not give a clear indication as to whether slavery as a whole was legal in England. This was different in Scotland—as Scotland had kept its own legal system after the Union of Parliaments in 1707, the English legislation did not apply there. Scotland had its own pioneer legal case in 1778 with the Knight v. Wedderburn case. John Wedderburn had brought Joseph Knight, a teenage boy, from Jamaica to Scotland, and, after several years, Knight wanted to leave his employment, arguing that he was a free man. Wedderburn contested this and insisted on Knight's service to him. The issue was ultimately resolved in court (Cairns 2007, 245): in contrast to the English courts, in Scotland it was clearly ruled that slavery was not possible in Scotland (Fryer 1984, 126). Thus, from that moment onwards any Blacks brought to Scotland as slaves from the colonies became free men when entering the country.

The fact that the Scottish courts came to such a clear ruling shows, according to Michael Niblett, that more people sympathised with or supported abolition and anti-slavery activists in Scotland than in the rest of Britain (Niblett 2007, 432). This interpretation is prevalent today, as it corresponds with the construction of Scotland as a multicultural and open-minded country that has allegedly always been defined by heterogeneity and tolerance.

In the 20th century, the mass immigration of black workers, particularly from the Caribbean, started in the 1950s. The aforementioned 'Windrush Generation' located predominantly to London and the industrial centres in the north of England; recent census data for Scotland accordingly suggests that people who identify their ethnic group as non-white are still a minority. Nevertheless, the most recent Scottish census, in 2011, diversified the possible answers in terms of ethnic groups a person can belong to. In 2001, the main categories were 'white'; 'mixed'; 'Asian, Asian Scottish or Asian British'; 'Black, Black Scottish or Black British'; and 'other'. From this the relevance of differentiating between Asians and 'other' Black immigrants is already evident. The 2011 census divided the category 'Black' further into 'African' and 'Caribbean or Black'; also, the 'other ethnic group' category contained a subcategory labelled 'Arab, Arab Scottish or Arab British' for the first time (National Records of Scotland 2015). This shows a general awareness of the heterogeneity that the term 'black' implies. The number of people who identify themselves as 'white' in Scotland has dropped in ten years from 98% in 2001 to 96% in 2011. Of this 96%, 84% describe their ethnic group as 'Scottish'. These figures again highlight that other ethnic groups make up only a marginal part of Scotland's population. The largest non-white group is comprised of those who identify themselves as 'Asian, Asian Scottish or Asian British' (2.7%), followed by the category 'African' (0.6%). Those who identify themselves as 'Arab, Arab Scottish or Arab British' (0.2%), or 'Caribbean or Black' (0.1%) make up approximately 16,000 people within the whole of Scotland (National Records of Scotland 2015). Niblett (2007, 433) asserts that "[a]lthough the number of Blacks in Scotland remains relatively low compared with England" the latest census results nevertheless suggest a trend towards internationalisation and a multicultural society, and

[…] the black presence continues to exert an influence upon culture. Indeed, the question of a black Scots identity has become an issue within discussions over the construction of a 'post-colonial' Scottish identity following devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. (Niblett 2007, 433)

Thus, as Niblett argues, the discussion of race is highly relevant to the general analysis of postcolonial identities in Scottish fiction. By constructing itself as postcolonial, Scotland also allows a diversification of identities that are subsumed under the label 'Scottish'. This fact underlines that the Black Scottish experience seems to differ sufficiently from a Black English experience that it warrants the validity of 'Black Scottish' as a category for analysis.

In contemporary Scottish fiction several examples of novels dealing with questions of race and racism can be found. Before turning to the two chosen novels for a detailed analysis, some of these examples will be presented. Furthermore, it should be noted that there is also a strong presence of Black Scots in

other genres, such as poetry, the most prominent examples of which are Jackie Kay and Maud Sulter.

As analysed in chapter six in regard to gender constructions and national identity, writers such as Jackie Kay have already demonstrated that the image of Scotland as a hybrid or split character can be reinterpreted as a positive trait of the Scottish character.65 Cairns Craig agrees with this:

Instead of being a weakness, the division of Scotland's literary heritage between a variety of languages and cultural traditions becomes a strength, and interaction between Scotland's languages and dialects produces […] creative speech […] The celebration of Scotland's hybridity, of Scotland's *Bakhtinianism*, became, in the 1980s and 1990s, Scottish criticism's version of Bhabha's reversal of the valuation of the hybrid. (Craig 2004, 234)

This celebration may also explain the immense success story of Jackie Kay. Besides having been awarded numerous literary awards, she received the MBE status in 2006. Her work draws significantly from her own experience as a black woman in Scotland. Kay's mother was Scottish while her father came from Nigeria, and she was adopted by white Scottish parents, growing up with an adopted black brother. This has influenced her writing, and, drawing from her own mixed-race heritage, Kay's work focuses on negotiating an identity that is both distinctively black and distinctively Scottish: "[…] Kay is constantly making and re-making that black Scottish identity, creating a black Scottish tradition, a space for herself " (Jones 2004, 200). Although many of her characters are black, the conflicts that arise that are concerned with the issue of race are often downplayed in her fiction66 (Williams 2005, 48). In her novel *Trumpet*, in which the plot focuses on black, cross-dressing jazz musician Joss Moody, race is negotiated only marginally. With the figure of Joss's father, Kay evokes a lasting presence of blacks in Scotland:

He [Joss's father] functions as a reference to the constant black presence in Scotland since the early 1500s. Through his father, Kay does not link Joss with the wave of immigration of people into Britain, especially from the Caribbean, that took place in the 1950s, which actually had little impact on Scotland. She is pointing to an earlier colonial relationship, an Empire in which Scots were overly active. […] These are two examples of transatlantic movement, and

<sup>65</sup> However, not all critics agree on this, as the following quote illustrates: "The cosmopolitan promise of liberal multiculturalism is exposed as idealist in these novels. […] A cosmopolitan mode is a luxury denied to characters in alienated states of political and economic insecurity. 'Hybridity'—an emancipatory form much extolled by cosmo-theorists—is *not* presented here as the most progressive mode required to confront or transcend retrogressive social attitudes" (G. Macdonald 2010, 97). Of course, Graeme Macdonald here refers to the novels chosen in his essay, but Jackie Kay's *Trumpet* offers not only a highly acclaimed but also a strongly convincing counter-example of this viewpoint, which should not have been ignored at the time of Macdonald's writing in 2010.

<sup>66</sup> This is in significant contrast to her poetry, which is often explicitly concerned with negotiating a Black Scottish identity.

therefore influence, that went both ways, from the margins of Empire back to the centre, and not just from the centre of Empire outwards. (Jones 2004, 199)

After Joss's death, his son Colman discovers a letter from his father in which the latter eventually relates the true story of his own father's immigration to Scotland. Thus, at the end of the novel, Colman can function as a "custodian of Scotland's hybrid heritage" (Clandfield 2002, 19). Through her poetry and fiction, Jackie Kay demonstrates that Scotland has a hybrid identity and, not least, she highlights that the concept of Britishness is itself inherently connected to a hybrid identity: "[…] Kay's Scots voice functions both as a reminder that Scotland is a multi-racial territory despite its comparatively small share of Britain's non-white population and as a sign of the hybridity that is part of Britishness itself " (Clandfield 2002, 4).

Jackie Kay's writing was published from the 1990s onwards. In terms of this temporal dimension, Black Scottish writing differs from Black British/English writing. Mark Stein states that the writers of the second generation, those born in the UK whose parents immigrated there, are mostly represented in Black British writing from the 1970s and 1980s, whereas in the 1990s, it is third-generation writers who are adding to the literary tradition (Stein 2004, 5). In Scotland however, Black writers, such as Jackie Kay and Suhayl Saadi, are writers of the second generation, although their work was mostly published from the 1990s onwards.

Racism remains an ever-present topic in the Scottish contemporary novel. *Trainspotting* can be cited as one paradigmatic example in which the characters use racist terms, such as 'Paki' or 'wog', without being reprimanded. In addition to this, other Scottish novels also use vulgarity, which often entails pejorative remarks about foreigners. John Burnside's novel *Living Nowhere*, published in 2003, describes the racism and hostility that Jan Ruckert, the son of Latvian immigrants, has to endure in a small English mining town. This outsider status is mirrored in the family of Jan's friend, Francis, who moved there from Scotland. The shared experience of 'diasporisation' can be theorised as a shared feeling of Otherness. Thus, novels such as *Living Nowhere* underline that Otherness can also include racism and xenophobia towards white people, where Latvians and Scots are equally discriminated against.

Apart from the examples above, black people do not feature often in contemporary Scottish fiction. In the following, some exceptions to this rule will be presented. Luke Sutherland's debut *Jelly Roll* (1998) is one of the rare examples of a text written by a black author. In the novel, a jazz band consisting of five middle-aged men embarks on a Highland tour. To replace the mentally unstable band member Malc, Paddy suggests the saxophonist, Liam, his brother-in-law. Liam was born in Ireland and his skin colour is black—not only during their gigs, but also within the band, Liam's blackness causes considerable conflict. The story is narrated predominantly by the character Roddy Burns, whose name is reminiscent of the 'national poet' Robert Burns. After Liam has practised with the band for the first time, the ensuing discussion of the band members illustrates various attitudes to racism; a point that is often repeated is the alleged discrepancy of Liam being Irish *and* black. Roddy says, "I didn't tell any of them [the other band members] that Liam was black, not because it didn't cross my mind but because it made about as much sense as telling them he had arms and legs" (Sutherland 1998, 33). After the band members meet Liam, they accuse Roddy of not having told them about Liam's skin colour intentionally by saying that he was Irish. After Roddy then accuses his fellow band members of racism, Duckie in return accuses Roddy of positive racism:

Ye want the guy in the band because he is black. […] Ye'd love this guy tae get intae the band cos it'd be the ultimate pose fir you ya shallow cunt. He'd be the ultimate fashion accessory fir ye, every cunt thinkin yir some fuckin deep cosmopolitan bastart when yir just a doss cunt like the rest ay us. (Sutherland 1998, 103)

During their tour of the Highlands, the band members often encounter racism and hostility, and they begin to understand that this is everyday life for Liam. This also leads to the discussion as to whether this kind of verbal abuse is worth fighting against—Liam usually restrains from commenting, as, in his point of view, talking back and resistance would only reinforce "all sorts of myths and legends" (Sutherland 1998, 285). The underlying tension finally escalates into violence during a performance in Inverness after some people in the audience keep shouting, "*You black bastard*" (original emphasis; Sutherland 1998, 243–252). What the novel achieves through the seemingly endless discussions between the band members is the illustration of racist preconceptions and opinions. Furthermore, the novel also shows the ignorance of the severity of these problems, as, before meeting Liam, the other band members would not have been able to imagine the difficulties he faces.

Another notable example of the black presence in contemporary Scottish fiction is James Robertson's 2004 novel, *Joseph Knight*. The protagonists of this historical novel are loosely based on those of the famous Knight v. Wedderburn court case. The events begin with the Battle of Culloden, the culmination of the Jacobite Rebellion in 1746—the defeat of the Jacobites prompts James Wedderburn and his brothers to escape to exile to Jamaica, where they start sugar plantations in order to rebuild their lost wealth. The plot switches back and forth between Jamaica and Scotland in 1802, where Wedderburn's daughter becomes interested in Joseph Knight after her father has hired a private investigator to locate him. Robertson's version of this story narrates the majority of it from the point of view of Wedderburn or other white Scots rather than from Knight's subaltern perspective. Only the last chapters are told from Knight's perspective and offer a kind of closure, as Knight has successfully made his life in Scotland as a free man. Nevertheless, Robertson is keen to point out parallels between the black slaves and the Scottish colliers, and it is in fact the colliers who collect money to support Knight's court case. Several passages in the book highlight the parallels:

The Scottish colliers and salters, even now, were little better than slaves themselves, bound for life to the owner of the land on which they lived and worked—although they at least earned wages and had certain privileges in exchange for their perpetual serfdom and dismal labours underground. (Robertson 2003, 186)

Not only the parallel between the colliers and slaves is emphasised but also the parallel between the slaves and the working class as a whole, as Ann, the housemaid of the Wedderburns, who marries Joseph Knight, explains:

The story was that he had been plucked from ignorance and savagery from Sir John […] If Joseph had been plucked from anything, it was not from ignorance but from his home, not from savagery but from his family. She understood this because the gentry used the same kind of terms to describe people like her. (Robertson 2003, 212)

By outlining these connections, Robertson also points to the interconnection between class and race, which is important in the Scottish context. In addition to the fact that the novel changes between many different narrative viewpoints and thus succeeds in illustrating different points of view, the plot is given further authority by the appearance of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, highlighting the realism of the novel. However, the novel strives to illustrate that the support for abolition was present through all levels of Scottish society. This point is made repeatedly, for instance in a conversation of Knight's lawyer with an 'oaf' in a pub: "Of course we'll fecht for the freedom o the Negroes, sir. We're Scotsmen. It's in oor banes" (Robertson 2003, 250).

A further example of a novel in which the topic of racism plays a crucial role is Moira McPartlin's *The Incomers* (2012).67 This novel is set in Scotland in the 1960s and relates the difficulties experienced by Ellie Amadi, a black woman, and her infant child, Nat, after moving to Scotland with her Scottish husband. The novel has an underlying pedagogical tone, the intention of which seems to be to prompt discussions about the treatment of 'incomers'. This is also reinforced by the schematic representation of the characters and the stereotypical depiction of Scottish prejudices. All of these examples suggest a growing interest in the treatment of race in the Scottish novel and, indeed, in Scottish society; the following sections will therefore provide a more detailed analysis of two contemporary novels that represent paradigmatic experiences in Black Scottish writing. Suhayl Saadi's novel *Psychoraag* focuses on the identity crisis of Asian immigrants, whereas Leila Aboulela presents an Arab perspective in *The Translator*.

The scarcity of primary texts that are concerned with the issue of racism is paralleled by a limited volume of critical commentary that addresses the topic. The majority of volumes focus on Black British writing and seldom contain Scottish examples (see, for example, Sesay 2005; Stein 2004). Blackness in combination with Scottishness is most often discussed in regard to Jackie Kay's writing (see, for example, Jones 2004; Pinto 2010), while Graeme Macdonald (2010) examines

<sup>67</sup> The title is reminiscent of John Burrowes's novel *Incomers*, published in 1987, which focuses on Asian immigrants in Glasgow (Burgess 1998, 264).

the depiction of race in devolutionary fiction. Equally, Suhayl Saadi has also published critical work in addition to his literary writing (see, for example, Saadi 2006; Saadi 2010; Saadi 2012). A comprehensive overview of the Arabic novels in English, including those written by Leila Aboulela, is presented in Nouri Gana's (2013) compilation of essays; for British Asian writers the equivalent is found in Sara Upstone's (2010) volume.

#### **8.2 Identity Crises of Asian Immigrants in Suhayl Saadi's** *Psychoraag*

Having published several short stories as well as a play, Suhayl Saadi published his first novel *Psychoraag* in 2004. The novel is divided into six sections, each one of which recounts an hour and is narrated by Zaf, the host of a community Asian radio station broadcasting from a community centre located in an old church. Zaf has taken over the 'graveyard shift' and has to do his "Junnune show" from midnight until 6 am. In addition, his show will also be the last transmission from Radio Chandni, as their broadcasting licence has not been renewed. The novel is mainly written as a stream of consciousness, switching between Zaf 's inner thoughts and his announcements on the radio. Between these passages, the story is told of Zaf 's father, Jamil, who fled to Scotland from Pakistan with his second wife Rashida; these sections are narrated by a third-person narrator, focalised through Zaf.

A central topic of the novel is the question of hybridity and mixed identity, which is first and foremost symbolised by Zaf 's girlfriends. His ex-girlfriend, Zilla, was, like Zaf, Pakistani, whereas his current girlfriend, Babs, is a white Scottish woman: "She wis a good fielder, her broad white feet were planted firmly on the well-cropped grass as though she had been seeded in that earth—she knew where she was at. Her limbs, her complexion were proportioned to suit the Scottish vista […]" (*PS* 68). Zilla's blackness is emphasised just as much as Babs's whiteness: "She wis tall and wis like a tree charred black by lightnin. Long, wavy hair, dark eyes, lips like the blades of a scimitar" (*PS* 90). Zaf seems to be torn between the different parts of his heritage, and compares himself to samples in music: "He liked samples, felt comfortable with them. He was a sample of Pakistan, thrown at random into Scotland, into its myths. And, in Lahore, he had felt like a sample of Glasgow in the ancient City of the Conquerors" (*PS* 227). This in-betweenness and 'sampling' of one culture in order to enrich the other is enacted further into the novel by Zilla; after becoming a drug addict, she works as a prostitute, and, when Zaf describes her (probably imagined) visit to the studio, he is deeply confused by her eyes, as she is wearing blue contact lenses: according to her, the customers like this, as the 'unnatural' eye colour makes Zilla seem even more exotic (*PS* 289).

Although Zaf himself is living a multicultural reality, he sometimes voices a rather pessimistic view about the possibility of living together peacefully. This also emphasises his acute identity crisis, as he even seems to be unsure whether it is desirable to integrate his Asian and his Scottish identity:

The music pulsed on, ADF beaming out their message of hope and unity, of rainbow community, but Zaf wondered whether it wis all just a big hoodwink? A superficial take on an impossibly deep structure, seven-eights of which wis unpalatable? Too much of all that lovey-dovey stuff depended on there being some kind of level playin field to start with. (*PS* 27)

Rather than seeing a hybrid identity as an alternative, Zaf seems to be more drawn towards consolidating a Scottish identity. However, in terms of his use of language, Zaf demonstrates a high level of hybridity:

[…] the second-generation Scottish-Asians Zaf associates with have appropriated urban Scots to make their presence felt in both the culture and the language. The characters of *Psychoraag* speak Glaswegian imbued with Punjabi, Farsi and Urdu words and rhythms; in fact, most of the narrative is conducted in this polyglot code governed by the laws and mores of at least three different cultural backgrounds, deconstructing and re-engendering both communal and individual identities wherever these differences meet. (Innes 2007, 308)

The novel is supplemented by an extensive, ten-page glossary that contains not only Farsi, Punjabi and Urdu words, but also Scots and French expressions. Saadi intended for all languages and dialects to be on a par but the publisher insisted on italicising the Asian expressions (Ashley 2011, 138). The unusual narrative voice is a conscious attempt by Saadi to voice his opinion on the interconnectedness of cultures: "Part of my project is to allow the reader to awaken to the perpetual and core nature of the influences of cultures which usually are considered Other in so-called Western thought, and the manner in which such profound concepts underpin our society and literature" (Saadi 2006, 125).

Despite the seemingly positive intentions of the author, his main protagonist remains sceptical of the benefits of a hybrid identity. Zaf recognises that ethnic identity is constructed, and that the Asian community radio station is part of this construction: "All the bits, past and future, that daily jostled and sang the state of Asianness into being, that reconstructed something that wasn't real from something that wis" (*PS* 22). Furthermore, he perceives his identity as fluid and unstable, as "[w]hen Zaf had gone to Pakistan, things had seemed unutterably vague as though the pollution and the clouds of dust and the bastard heat had jumbled all the reference points" (*PS* 57). In Glasgow, on the other hand, he is irritated by the number of invisible lines that are drawn between the different parts of the city (*PS* 114). Zaf often voices contradictory statements about his identity, on one hand wishing to embrace a stable, hybrid identity, and on the other hand aspiring to adapt to 'whiteness'. This is illustrated by the fact that "[…] Zaf wanted to be like a lizard and to be able to slip from one skin to another, whenever it suited him—to go from pub to club to mosque to

whore and not even sweat in between. To be like a white man" (*PS* 45). He feels that his blackness makes him stand out and that, paradoxically, only being white would enable him to change, and to adapt to situations accordingly.

The reason for this problematic construction of identity is found, according to Zaf, in his standing as second-generation immigrant. For his parents, the first generation to emigrate from Pakistan to Scotland, the feelings towards Pakistan differ considerably from those of their children, who were born in Scotland: "The earth of Pakistan was like flesh. To leave would be to relinquish a limb" (*PS* 122). Zaf recognises the difference between the generations and, at the same time, wishes to escape being identified with as seemingly homogeneous a group as that of immigrants. The radio station manager, Harry, whose mother is Scottish, is cited as an example of the importance of the difference between first- and second-generation immigrants:

Harry's family had drizzled into Glasgow from a small village that lay to the east of Amritsar, some thirty-odd years earlier, when he had been around five years, and so he wis, technically, first generation but, psychologically, he belonged to the ones beyond. Anyway, Zaf hated those kinds of boundaries—hated bein defined by his status of bein other—felt trapped by that whole thing. (*PS* 4)

Zaf notices the fact that it takes several generations to change preconceptions and stereotypes when he goes out with his white girlfriend Babs. He compares Glasgow to London and the USA, where a mixed couple would not be striking, and concludes that, "[i]n some respects, Glasgow wis livin in some kind of Dark Age. Change in this country would occur painfully slowly […] and would happen only after another generation […] reached maturity" (*PS* 249).

One possible way to transcend the hybridity that is perceived as problematic is offered by Zaf in his choosing different frameworks of identity that are not bound to race, nation or religion: "It wis because music defined him. His identity lay not in a flag or in a particular concretisation of a transcendent Supreme Being but in a chord, a bar, a vocal reaching beyond itself. A harmony wheelin out there, beyond the beyond" (*PS* 210f.). Without a doubt, music plays a central role in the novel. This is further stressed by the extensive appendix, which, besides the glossary, contains Zaf 's playlist of the radio show as well as a discography of the songs played. Both the glossary and the discography are not subdivided into further categories but assign the same standing to different languages and cultures. According to Kirstin Innes, this highlights Zaf 's hybrid identity: "[i]n conjunction, these two appendices draw the reader's attention back to Zaf 's intrinsic cultural multifacedness and hybridity rather than consolidating his identity as irremediably split between Scottish and Asian, his present life and his communal heritage" (Innes 2007, 308).

The split personality corresponds to a Scottish tradition of literary characters. Moreover, Zaf also questions what makes a person Scottish, doubting that such a definition is at all desirable. Still, he describes a certain resistance to change as typically Scottish: "The marches, the peripheries, might shift and shine in the face of an Indian moon but, always, the centre would hold. It wis an unspoken precondition of being Scottish" (*PS* 194).68 However, he also mocks the establishment of a 'Commonwealth tartan' that everyone could wear and that thus supports the notion of transcending an essentialist concept of Scottish identity (*PS* 109). For Zaf, the frame of reference is not nationality but skin colour:

For a long time, he had wished that he wis white. The aspiration of all good Asians, finally, wis to be as pale as possible. To marry white, to generate white and to strive incessantly for depigmentation. It wasn't that he wanted to become a true Scot or a real Englishman—whatever the hell those things were—but, rather, that he had aimed at some elusive quality of white-ness which probably had never really existed but which was all the more prized because of that. (*PS* 135)

John A. Stotesbury highlights that the negotiation of Scottishness is crucial not only to the novel but to Saadi's writing in general: "Central […] is Saadi's contestation of what it is that truly constitutes 'Scottishness'. I would argue […] that his writing is important for its redefinition of the relationship between Scottishness and the Empire, between the local past and the historical whole" (Stotesbury 2010, 103). The fact that Zaf works for a radio station, a medium very much condensed into the human voice, the signals of which are transmitted invisibly, emphasises the difficulty of claiming space in Scotland:

The concept of a threatened minority pirate radio station69 conveys the main thrust of *Psychoraag's* political objectives: the cultural vitality of this voice is compromised by its representative vulnerability. This is compounded by a pervasive temporal and spatial anxiety: Zaf wonders if his 'illegitimate' voice will 'last out' and if he will ever be properly accommodated in Scotland. […] The point here seems devolutionary: Scots Asian concerns are challenged by an uncertain constituency. (G. Macdonald 2010, 91)

Saadi supports the search of the members of the Asian community to consolidate their Scots Asian identity by pointing out the parallels and coherencies between the two cultures, comparing, for instance, Rome and Dhaka: "Rome before the Fall. Last Night in Dhaka" (*PS* 240) or Mumbai and Glasgow: "The glossy trails ae Glasgae—it's almost like Bombay, oh soarry, Mum-bai […]" (*PS* 369). Furthermore, Zaf points out that countries are always heterogeneous, and that concepts such as ethnicity or nationality are invalid:

<sup>68</sup> This quotation also hints at a violent and chaotic past, as "the centre would hold" alludes to W.B. Yeats's 1919 poem "The Second Coming", from which Chinua Achebe's postcolonial novel *Things Fall Apart* also takes its title.

<sup>69</sup> Macdonald makes a minor mistake here, as Radio Chandni is not a pirate station; rather, they are forced to end their broadcasts because their licence has not been renewed.

Every one of these places had many different languages, most of which were mutually unintelligible. So what? Even people who talked the same bloody language couldn't agree on the slightest thing […] Of course, it wis all rubbish, this stuff, this ascribin of characteristics to a whole group of people based on their tribe or their religion or the *mulk* from which they had journeyed. (original emphasis; *PS* 23)

This might also be the reason that Zaf uses the past tense when he states, "[f]or a long time, he had wished that he wis white" (*PS* 135). The emphasis on similarities between different cultures is Saadi's explicit intention as a writer, as he describes in one of his essays: "My approach, like the man with X-ray eyes, would be to try to see connections, whether historical, historiographical, literary or societal, or (more likely) a mixture of these, for such factors also exist in mutuality" (Saadi 2006, 130).

Although Saadi likes to point out the similarities between cultures, the novel depicts a marked difference between the Asian experience in Scotland and the Asian experience in England. Zaf 's father, Jamil, saw the small number of Asian immigrants in Scotland as an advantage, as, in the eyes of the Asian community, he shamed himself when he eloped with a married woman: "Of course, the reason he had clambered up the arc of the world, all the way to the land of rain and whiskey, was because, up there, there were almost no Asians" (*PS* 155). This description of Scotland, beginning with 'of course' as if it were self-evident, evokes the idea of a remote and isolated place, which could almost be read as a place for redemption. His reason for moving to Scotland is clearly stated later, as he sought "[…] to escape from the clutches of memory and judgement" (*PS* 205). However, Saadi has asserted in an interview that the fact that fewer people migrated to Scotland bears its challenges:

Most of the people who migrated to Glasgow and Bradford, to provincial Britain and not to London or Birmingham, came from very poor rural backgrounds; they were illiterate and came from one or two areas, […] and their migration was a chain migration, whole families moved from there. As a consequence of that, they didn't have to reorientate their minds, they could exist here in some ways in a hermetically sealed vacuum at some level internally, whereas in London that's impossible. (Battista 2006, 121)70

Thus, the immigrant experience in Scotland seems to differ considerably from the experience of those immigrants who stay in London.

This Otherness of the experience of Scottish immigrants can be paralleled with the experience of other minority groups. Similarly to the example of women

<sup>70</sup> This view may be open to challenges, as it could also be argued that it is in fact the large number of immigrants in cities such as London that enables the infrastructure and commodities to be established that allow immigrants to stay completely within their community without integrating themselves into the British community.

writers, as was demonstrated above, immigrants in Scotland are also faced with a double marginalisation. This is illustrated by an illuminating moment in the novel, in which Jamil is warned about what to expect in Scotland:

People in London had warned Jamil that Scotland had never been properly civilised, that he would get there and find himself surrounded by savages clad only in sporrans and brightly patterned woollen skirts. Either that or he would instantly be attacked by lupine, unintelligible gangsters sporting darkened eyes and long silver blades. Beads, crosses and tea would do no good, they insisted, since the natives were irretrievably hard Calvinists who believed only in damnation. (*PS* 206)

This quotation reveals the paradoxical relationship of the coloniser and colonised. Jamil is from Pakistan, which was colonised by the British, including Scottish soldiers. Those colonisers would have used the same terms when describing the colonised Pakistanis: as beastly, savage natives. From a London perspective, however, it is the Scottish who are described as the uncivilised savages of whom Jamil must be warned.

In conclusion, *Psychoraag* paints a complex, contradictory and sometimes even paradoxical picture of the Asian immigrant experience in Scotland. Saadi points out that the experience for Asians in Scotland differs considerably from the immigrant experience of those living in London. Thus, the challenges and preconceptions that Zaf faces lead to his identity crisis and the question as to whether skin colour, race or nation can remain valid markers of identity. The predominance of music in the novel, particularly of music influenced by all kinds of cultural backgrounds, opens up different conceptions of identification and community.

#### **8.3 Communities of Faith as a Transcendence of Race?—Leila Aboulela's** *The Translator*

Leila Aboulela's novel *The Translator* may not be an obvious choice for an analysis of Scottish fiction, since the author was born in Egypt, was raised in Sudan and moved to the UK in her twenties in order to study in London, though she currently lives in Aberdeen and in Abu Dhabi. Criticism of her work is often included in volumes on Arab or Muslim writers (amongst others Ahmed, Morey & Yaqin 2012) or African writers (see, for example, Olaussen & Angelfors 2009). However, apart from the fact that part of the novel is set in Scotland, several external factors also justify considering *The Translator* as a Scottish novel. Firstly, *The Translator* was originally published in 1999 by the Edinburgh publisher Polygon, and the publication was funded by the Scottish Arts Council.71 On its website, the agency outlines

<sup>71</sup> The Scottish Arts Council is now called Creative Scotland.

its aim as a national organisation to "[fund] and [support] the development of Scotland's arts, screen and creative industries" (Creative Scotland 2013). Thus, the funding the publisher received suggests that *The Translator* can be recognised as a Scottish novel. Secondly, when Aboulela was asked in an interview whether she preferred the more specific description of being referred to as a '*Scottish* Arab writer', she answered: "I mean, the Scottish description—I moved away from that in a way with *Minaret* [her second novel] […] So yes, I'm happy with *The Translator* being described as a Scottish novel, because it is set in Scotland, and one of the main characters is Scottish and so on, so that is all fine […]" (original emphasis; in Chambers 2009, 91). Furthermore, the novel is concerned with the construction of identity in a Scottish context as well as with the negotiation of a multicultural, hybrid Scottish identity.

Sammar, the main protagonist of the novel, has been recently widowed and works as a translator at the university near where she lives. There she works for the lecturer of Middle Eastern studies, Rae Isles, who is Scottish. Though Sammar falls in love with him, the fact that he is not a Muslim proves to be an obstacle to their relationship, and she returns to her mother-in-law and her son in Khartoum. The text is divided into two parts; the first part is set in Aberdeen and ends with Sammar on the plane travelling back to Khartoum, where the second part is set. Sammar considers Africa as her home, since she feels exiled in Scotland (*TL* 16). Her move to Scotland seems to be a coincidence rather than being prompted by any identification with the country itself; her parents were students in Britain when she was born and, due to immigration laws at that time, anyone born in Britain was eligible for a British passport: "If it had not been for the passport, Sammar would not have been here now. It was because coming back to live in Britain was feasible that she had got on the plane after quarrelling with her aunt […]" (*TL* 70). Furthermore, her late husband had worked in Aberdeen. Although her move to Scotland seems to be coincidental, Willy Maley draws attention to the interrelatedness of Sudan and Scotland. In his paper included in *Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature*, Maley analyses the parallels between *The Translator* and Tayeb Salih's *Season of Migration to the North*, pointing out that Sudan was ruled by the British, supported by Egypt, from 1898 to 1956: "Although this was a period of essentially British rule, Scotland played a disproportionate role in the governance of what was the second largest colonial administration after India […]" (Maley 2011, 185). According to Maley, the setting of Aberdeen is chosen very deliberately and "exemplifies the way in which the novel knowingly evokes this colonial connection" (Maley 2011, 186). This is also alluded to in the novel with a reference to the statue of Charles George Gordon72 in Aberdeen, which Rae points out to Sammar: "'You might like to look at it sometime.' A plaque in stone, the words *died in Khartoum 1885*. 'I didn't know he was Scottish. They didn't teach

72 Charles George Gordon, also known as Gordon of Khartoum, was a British Army officer. He was appointed Governor-General of Sudan in 1884 and fought in the battle against the Mahdi revolt.

us that at school.' 'It was the British…' 'The *Ingeleez*…' They laughed […]" (original emphasis; *TL* 50). The interrelatedness of Sudan and Scotland is emphasised further by their position as countries colonised by the English. In his youth, Rae supported anti-colonialism campaigns, and he regards Scotland as the first victim of English imperialism, claiming that "[t]he Highlands were the first place the English colonised […] later India and Africa. They got Scottish men to pillage that place for the Empire. It was Scottish men who lost their lives […] They were the foot soldiers" (*TL* 52). In combination these points suggest a certain importance of setting as opposed to a random choice of Sudan and Scotland as the places that characters come from.

Furthermore, the characters display an awareness of the negotiation of a Scottish identity. When she receives a letter from her aunt marked "Aberdeen, England", Sammar notes that "[…] someone at the postoffice went over England in red ink" (*TL* 83), and regards her aunt's ignorance as a general ignorance of her life in Europe. Back in Khartoum, Sammar is advised by family and friends to return to "England" (*TL* 84, 165) to work in order to secure a good education for her son. This suggests that, in the Africans' point of view, England is seen as a pars pro toto of the West rather than a concrete location. These contrasts are emphasised further by the changing frames of reference within the novel. When she lives in Scotland, Sammar's comparisons are made to "this country", which seems to refer to the United Kingdom in general. For example, she describes her birthplace as "this wintery kingdom" (*TL* 44), seemingly referring to the United Kingdom rather than to only Scotland. Her colleague, Yasmin, reveals the same attitude when she compares her Muslim community ("we") with the British: "'Yes, we prize virginity,' Yasmin said, 'and chastity. It's hard to believe that a British judge and jury could understand that, let alone sympathise'" (*TL* 19). When she is back in Khartoum, Sammar, in contrast to others, refers specifically to Scotland when comparing her former home to Khartoum. The difference between the two is described as so substantial that Sammar questions, "How could this be the same sky as the one in Aberdeen?" (*TL* 142).

As she was born in Britain, Sammar is considered to be a second-generation immigrant. However, she returns to Africa with her parents and feels that her home is in Sudan. In contrast to this, her colleague, Yasmin, is depicted as a second-generation immigrant who has closer ties to Britain than to her parents' home in Pakistan. Nevertheless, Yasmin feels a stronger identification with her Asian heritage: "Yasmin's parents were from Pakistan but she was born and had lived all her life in different parts of Britain. She had a habit of making general statements starting with 'we', where 'we' meant the whole of the Third World and its people" (*TL* 11). This paradox is also reflected in an interview with Aboulela, in which she says: "[…] the warmest response [to my work] comes from Muslims, and over the years I'm increasingly getting the best reception from young, second-generation Muslims who grew up in the West" (in Chambers 2009, 98); this quotation implies that second-generation immigrants in particular long for a clearer frame of

reference, and that, for them, according to Aboulela, religion should be the determining factor in their life.

Accordingly, religion plays a crucial role in the novel. The fact that Rae does not convert to Islam is the reason why the love story, the main plot of the novel, at first does not end happily but prompts Sammar to return to Khartoum. Both Sammar and one of Rae's colleagues, Fareed, cannot understand why Rae refuses to become a Muslim, since he studies Islam and reads the Koran as a sacred text. Thus, according to their logic, he should realise that Islam is the one 'true' religion and convert (*TL* 85). Religious faith is portrayed as the one stable and, therefore, defining aspect in Sammar's life. In fact, "[n]ever in her life had anyone she cared about been an unbeliever. Not religious, yes, not praying, […] but always the faith was there, always Allah was there" (*TL* 91). Negotiating this inner faith is also the outspoken aim of Aboulela's writing, as she is "[…] interested in going deep, not just looking at 'Muslim' as a cultural or political identity but something close to the centre, something that transcends but doesn't deny gender, nationality, class and race" (British Council 2011). The secularisation of the West seems to be the most unsettling fact for Sammar: "Shops must open, people must get to work. That was sacred. If Sammar had searched for anything sacred to this city and not found it, here it was" (*TL* 116). This secularisation, which is perceived as a threat, is not limited to Scotland and the West, as Sadia Abbas points out:

The mother-in-law, who wants her to work and support her son instead of remarrying, becomes the symbol of a modernity hostile to the faith, her archetypal mother-in-law villainy submerged into the villainy of history—as if Aboulela's answer to the question, What do women want?, is "marriage," because that's what God wants, because God knows women want it. (Abbas 2011, 441)

This strong faith also influences the characters' position on multiculturalism. Yasmin is very dismissive when she says that "[m]ixed couples just don't look right, they irritate everyone" (*TL* 90). Only in a desperate moment does Sammar offer Rae that he only has to say the words of the shahadah, the Muslim profession of faith, even if he is not sure that he means them (*TL* 124). However, ultimately, this offer does not resolve the conflict, as instead, "[i]n fairytale fashion, both realize that the in-between cross-cultural space cannot accommodate their love, and so, one eventually has to give way to the other" (Russell 2006, 58f.). This does not mean that different heritages cannot be accommodated, but rather that faith offers a common denominator that is far more important. This is apparent not only in *The Translator* but also in Aboulela's second novel, *Minaret*: "She [Aboulela] has described her work as 'Muslim immigrant fiction', indicating that geographical specificity is less central to her vision than faith-based identification" (Moore 2012, 75). For Aboulela, faith is the most important frame of reference and, thus, transcends place, nation, and even family. This becomes evident when a converted Rae travels to Sudan to marry Sammar: the couple return to Scotland, although Sammar prefers Sudan, because the feeling of love proves to be stronger than her ties to home, as "[s]he had been given the chance and she had not been able to substitute her country for him […]" (*TL* 191), and the shared faith is more important. After converting to Islam, Rae also internalises faith as the first point of identification, sharing this notion: "'Ours isn't a religion of suffering,' he said, 'nor is it tied to a particular place'" (*TL* 191). Lindsey Moore points out that this perspective, which Rae ultimately adopts, challenges the conservative notions of nationality, as "[w]hilst Aboulela's protagonists also claim a (non-exclusive) British identity, they privilege a *supra*-national space of belonging and thereby challenge the frame, rather than merely the content […] of the nation" (Moore 2012, 76).

For Abbas, the novel ties in with the recent religious turn in cultural studies, illustrating the view of religion as essential for identity formation:

For the architects of the religious turn, the leeching of religion from life disenchants the world and in the colonized world is, to boot, quite inextricably a result of imperialism. Committed to a reenchanted world, they see secularism as damaging even its own adherents. Religion is the anti-imperialist elixir of lifeworld harmony; it alone heals the ruptures in the West's dissociated sensibility and preserves the radical alterity of Europe's Muslim migrants. (Abbas 2011, 432)

Furthermore, Islam is depicted as the solution that Rae has been looking for his entire life. Having been involved in leftist politics and rejecting Orientalism, he now identifies a way of living that allows him to integrate all of his views and opinions, as "Rae's Scottish nationalism, early socialism, and anti-Orientalist anticolonialism can be swallowed by a placeless Muslim universalism, an effect of globalization but eventually—and this too is providential—perhaps its gift" (Abbas 2011, 440). This development is further emphasised by the fact that Rae's illness and his inability to breathe after an asthma attack prompt him to pray (*TL* 192).

Thus, the novel points towards a transcendence of postcolonial categories, as it advocates the transcendence of national frameworks; nation, place and race are shown to be irrelevant. Religion is described as fundamentally anti-imperialist and the identification with faith is constructed as more stable than any other category:

In this sense, the faith-based rootings of Aboulela's characters prove generative, producing alternative cartographies that reinscribe and overwrite the official limits of national space, and relocate their inhabitants from the margins to the centre of community and belonging. (Ball 2010, 125)

This may signal a new period in Scottish writing: on one hand, it continues the negotiation of Scotland's double role as both coloniser and colonised; on the other hand, once the construction of Scotland as a postcolonial country has led to Scotland's feeling of inferiority being overcome, and Scotland's nationalism can be regarded an end in itself rather than an act of countering marginalisation, Scottish fiction, such as *The Translator*, may be able to offer a direction that is able to transcend even the category of the nation:

[T]he textual landscapes of Aboulela's novels conjure diasporic landscapes formed not in the interstices, on the move or in the margins, but born out of the secure boundaries of faith-based community and identity, in which the establishment of roots […] are posited as central to the diasporic experience. Aboulela's work therefore invites the postcolonial theorist not only to challenge the associations of rootedness with mental and spatial restriction, but to turn their attention towards questions of faith-based identity and community […]. (Ball 2010, 118)

#### **8.4 Conclusion: New Directions**

Race remains a category that is not easy to pin down in the Scottish context. Historically, it has been used to classify allegedly different ethnic groups within Scotland (Highlanders versus Lowlanders, for example), as well as to identify the Scots in general as a 'race' that is different from the English. However, contemporary fiction has also revealed an interest in stories negotiating racial Otherness and engaging with the nation's ambiguous position as a participant in an Empire of slave labour. New voices of immigrants are often subsumed under the heading of 'Black British writers' whereas the analysis above has argued that this constitutes another 'colonialisation', as the term cannot adequately represent the black Scottish experience. The analysis of two very different Scottish authors has shown that Scottish literature is able to accommodate various new perspectives. The investigation has revealed a double marginalisation, as writers feel marginalised because they are Scottish and, in addition to this, they feel marginalised within a predominantly white Scottish society. Suhayl Saadi demonstrates how important questions of skin colour are for young Asian immigrants. While questioning concepts of fixed identities, such as nationality, he simultaneously highlights commonalities between different cultures. The importance of music in his novel hints at a marker of identity in cultural products that transcend national boundaries, such as music. Leila Aboulela's novel *The Translator* shows an even more pronounced alternative to national affiliation as a reference for identity formation. Rather than the country she lives in, her main character, Sammar, feels part of a global community of Muslims. Thus, both novels project alternative identity markers for a future in which the concept of Scottishness has become devalued, as it no longer mirrors the people's experience. However, keeping in mind that immigrants remain very clearly a minority in Scotland, though their voice in contemporary fiction is certainly a valuable enrichment in regard to range and scope, ultimately it cannot represent the Scottish mainstream.

## **9. Conclusion: National Identity and the Postcolonial in Scottish Fiction**

In his book *The Modern Scottish Novel: Narration and the National Imagination*, published in 1999, the year of the first session of Scotland's new devolved Parliament, Cairns Craig analyses the importance of the novel for a collective national imagination, providing the following definition:

The nature of a national imagination, like a language, is an unending series of interactions between different strands of tradition, between influences from within and without, between the impact of new experiences and the reinterpretation of past experiences: the nation is a series of ongoing debates, founded in institutions and patterns of life, whose elements are continually changing but which constitute, by the nature of the issues which they foreground, and by their reiteration of elements of the past, a dialogue which is unique to that particular place. (Craig 1999, 31)

This study has illustrated that the dialogue that constitutes the Scottish national imagination is polyphonic. One part of this dialogue manifests itself in debates about language, class, gender, spatiality and race in relation to Scotland's status as English colony. As this comprehensive study of the contemporary Scottish novel has demonstrated, this part of the dialogue can be meaningfully analysed by the adaptation of postcolonial theory.

Taking Irvine Welsh's debut novel *Trainspotting* as a starting point, this study has demonstrated that Scottish contemporary fiction uses strategies for the construction of identity that can be compared to those employed by other postcolonial literatures. The publication of *Trainspotting* in 1993 marked the beginning of the time frame scrutinised in this study, as the novel differs considerably from Scottish fiction up until this point both in terms of content and style. The quotation, "colonized by wankers", from which the title of this study is borrowed, summarises the potency of reactions that are sparked by feelings of inferiority, oppression and abjection.

The status of Scotland as a colony of England has been the source of much debate, but due to the development of postcolonial theory in the 21st century, the term 'postcolonial' has been applied more broadly to describe uneven relationships of power that can result from imperial or neo-colonial dominance. Thus, postcolonial theory has been applied throughout this study to selected Scottish novels as a reading strategy within the framework of a discourse analysis. After the examination of fiction that explicitly addresses Scotland's state as postcolonial, a number of different facets of cultural identity were scrutinised, namely language, class, gender, space and place, and race. Furthermore, the theoretical considerations have demonstrated that, even in an increasingly globalised world dominated by international and transcultural networks, the analysis of Scottish national identity retains its relevance. Scotland's status as a 'stateless nation' (McCrone 1992) has caused a reliance on cultural narratives to construct Scottish identity, and the importance of these have persisted even after devolution. At the same time, Scottish fiction exhibits a tendency to engage with issues other than national identity. Nevertheless, the close reading of the selected novels has illustrated that national identity remains a concern that pervades Scottish fiction.

Michael Hechter's (1975) theory of Scotland as an internal colony and Immanuel Wallerstein's (1974) concept of core and periphery regions form the basis of theories of imbalances of power whereupon the peripheral Scotland can be considered England's colony although Scotland and England are officially parts of the same state. The reason for the widening of the gap between England and Scotland is evident in the loss of a cohesive British identity; as Scots no longer feel represented by the concept of a joint British identity, this has been replaced by a strengthened Scottish identity. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that, though the challenges of Scotland as postcolonial need to be considered, they are founded on a binary and, thus, limited interpretation of the term 'postcolonial'. The accusation that Scotland cannot claim to have a postcolonial status because it actively took part in the colonisation of others as part of the British Empire, however, overlooks the fact that in other postcolonial contexts parts of the colonised populations also profited from colonisation. In addition, the claim that an adaptation of postcolonial theory neglects the fact that Scotland is a highly heterogeneous nation has also been refuted by the analysis. The majority of novels analysed here question the concept of Scotland as homogeneous and address contradictions and internal oppressions in their discussions of Scotland as postcolonial.

As has been illustrated in the preceding analysis, Frantz Fanon's concept of inferiorisation can fruitfully be adapted for a reading of the Scottish novel. Processes of mystification and exoticisation devalue a Scottish sense of self, leading to the belief that Scotland is inferior to an England that constructs itself as hegemonic. Stereotypical depictions of Scotland that focus on the rural Highlands as a mythical landscape and the Highland warrior as a noble savage, to whom a kind of 'natural' authenticity is ascribed, facilitate the construction of Scotland as the inferior Other of a civilised, cultured and rational England. Most recently, Scotland's status as postcolonial has been theorised by employing the theory of the subaltern; by adapting this to the Scottish novel, the analysis has shown that Scottish fiction performs similar functions to other postcolonial literatures, functioning as resistance to a stereotyped and thus inferiorised perception of the nation.

The historical perspective of England and Scotland's relationship has underlined the contested nature of Scotland's status as caught between the desire to stabilise a joint British identity on the one hand and to strive for independence on the other. The analysis of the changing evaluation of the Act of Union in 1707—ranging from being seen as a contract between equals to a feeling that the Scots were blackmailed into accepting the Union—has highlighted the political potential in constructing a national identity based on one particular interpretation of history. The feeling that the Scots were not appropriately represented within the British state was reinforced after the failed devolution referendum in 1979 and the rise of the Thatcher government. The perception of a 'democratic deficit', resulting from the fact that voters in Scotland could not effectively influence the results of general elections, led to an upsurge of Scottish nationalism, and consequently a weakening of unionism. The fact that Scottish nationalism has remained an important force in Scottish society was highlighted by the independence referendum that took place in 2014 despite the successful devolution and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999. Furthermore, the split vote of the 2014 referendum reveals that Scotland is still caught between a British and a Scottish identity, a fact that is also reflected in its fiction.

The dominant metaphor for conceptionalising the history of Scottish literature has been the trope of renaissance. The nationalist movement of the 1920s and 1930s and its literature, led by figures such as Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir, has been summarised by the term 'Scottish Literary Renaissance'. Though postwar writing in Scotland has been theorised as constituting a 'new' renaissance at several points, a change in style and content has been most prominently detectable since 1979, which then culminated in the publication of Welsh's *Trainspotting* in 1993. The failed referendum of 1979 is seen as having sparked a retreat into cultural production in order to build a national identity that was not achievable on a political basis. Thus, another important factor for theorising the development of Scottish fiction has been its periodisation along important political events, such as the devolution referenda of 1979 and 1997.

A common concern of Scottish fiction has been its negotiation of Scottish identity, which is most often perceived as different to other hegemonic conceptions of identity. Thus, Scottish fiction functions as resistance to a dominant discourse and aims to re-write stereotypical depictions. Douglas S. Mack (2006) has pointed out that this tendency of writing as resistance stands in a long tradition of subaltern writing in Scottish literature, as practised, for example, by James Hogg or Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

The analysis of Irvine Welsh's novel *Trainspotting* has revealed how a postcolonial reading can benefit an understanding of the novel as writing back. In his often quoted rant that Scotland is "colonised by wankers", the main protagonist, Renton, shows not only his view that Scotland is controlled by England but also his deep feelings of abjection due to his perception of Scotland as so weak that it can be dominated by a nation that he considers effeminate. The novel engages in a critical interrogation of the effects of Margaret Thatcher's new policies on Scotland, criticising the increasing commodification and individualisation of society. At the same time the novel is critical of Scotland's ambiguous role within Britain, pointing towards the internal marginalisation and contradictions that are apparent within Scottish society. This is reinforced in the novel by contrasting Leith, the deprived part of Edinburgh where the protagonists live, with the established tourist sights of the city. Despite its function as resistance in a postcolonial reading, the novel goes a step further, questioning the concept of the nation as a whole; through his final escape to Amsterdam, Renton conceives of a new Euro-centric framework of identification.

Published in 2005, after the successful devolution of 1999, Kevin MacNeil's novel *The Stornoway Way* focuses on the Islands as a peripheral region within an already marginalised Scotland. The novel describes Scotland as oppressed and, thus, unable to gain a real sense of cultural identity. In contrast to *Trainspotting*, the novel exhibits some retrogressive tendencies, as it does not engage with the contradictory relations of power within Scotland, denying Scotland the chance to be considered a meaningful agent in a globalised, international network. In addition to novels that address the fraught relationship between England and Scotland, constructing Scotland as a victim of English oppression, other examples examined in chapter three have revealed a critical awareness of other hegemonic power relations that influence Scotland, for instance its relationship with the imperialist USA.

The analysis of postcolonial language use in contemporary Scottish fiction has demonstrated that many texts engage in the postcolonial strategies of language abrogation and appropriation. With a focus on Scots, it was revealed that the discussion as to whether Scots is considered a dialect or a language is considerably influenced by the political implications that both standpoints entail rather than by linguistic considerations. The Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s effected a revival of the use of vernacular language in literature; however, Scots remained tied to an alleged pureness and authenticity, and was associated with archaic contexts, mainly used in informal settings and closely connected to working-class culture. As a result of this, in a colonial move of devaluation, Scots is associated with an alleged inferiority. Both novels chosen for analysis in chapter four—Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* and James Kelman's *How Late it Was, How Late—*use the strategies of abrogation and appropriation to express difference from a perceived dominant English standard. *Trainspotting*'s use of language differs from previous novels by dispensing of quotation marks and by its extensive use of urban dialect and abusive language. What at first sight reads like a transcript of direct speech reveals itself to consist of an array of highly individualised voices. The few passages that are rendered in Standard English are consciously chosen to illustrate the respective narrators' distance from Scotland. By identifying language use in the novel as characterised by Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, the analysis exposes the way in which different dialects reflect power struggles over the definition of standard and deviance. Furthermore, both novels illustrate the necessity of Scotland as colonised culture to be able to adapt to an allegedly 'higher' standard discourse in order to be taken seriously. James Kelman pursues an outspoken political agenda by the employment of the vernacular voice for both the direct speech of his characters and the narrative voice. The controversy surrounding his award of the Booker Prize for his novel *How Late it Was, How Late* confirms his concerns that a Scottish dialect is perceived as 'uncultured' and, thus, unsophisticated.

For him, the standard third-person narrator reflects an inherently English, middle-class value system that he actively strives to undermine by his insistence on a skilfully crafted Glaswegian vernacular. Kelman perceives Scotland as postcolonial because it is confronted with an English culture that is presented as normative but which is unable to reflect the reality of the Scottish working class and demands assimilation to its allegedly superior standard. In combination with the analyses of additional novels, the chapter concludes that, in a postcolonial context, language is a powerful tool to express difference.

The use of vernacular language in Scottish fiction is presented as closely related to a working-class identity. In Scotland working-class identity functions as a strong communal bond, and Scottishness is often equated with the working class. The nation is deeply influenced by myths of equality and meritocracy, using these constructions to differentiate itself from England. This strong allegiance to the working class is grounded in the strong tradition of heavy industry that was prevalent in the west of Scotland in particular. The perception that the Scots have long been oppressed by a predominantly middle-class England was amplified during the years that witnessed the rise of Margaret Thatcher, whose new economic policies caused a decline in employment in industry in Scotland on a large scale. Scottish fiction exhibits two strands of writing that engage with discourses of class. As exemplified by James Kelman's *Kieron Smith, Boy* and Des Dillon's *Itchycooblue*, one strand of writing is concerned with stories of working-class childhoods; although they are similar in their depictions of difficult living conditions due in part to terminally ill or unemployed fathers, both novels achieve a postcolonial re-writing of stereotypical discourses of the working class by stressing imagination and the creative use of language as a possibility to overcome the harsh realities of a working-class life.

James Kelman transcends binary depictions of the Scottish working class versus the English upper class in his novel by addressing the internal marginalisation of the working class within Scotland. The effects of Margaret Thatcher's new policies in the 1980s led to the development of a new disenfranchised underclass in Scotland, as many members of the working class were now unemployed. The second strand of writing concerned with class illustrates the negative effects that these conditions have on the lives of Scottish people and how this undermines traditional working-class values. In a provocative comparison, Irvine Welsh's novel *Marabou Stork Nightmares* compares the status of the disenfranchised working class with the racism against blacks in Apartheid South Africa; by comparing their marginalised positions and lack of perspective, the protagonists in the novel position Scotland's working class in a postcolonial position. At the same time the alleged superior position that Roy and his family occupy as whites after emigrating to South Africa critically engages with Scotland's ambiguous role in the British Empire.

In a Scottish context, gender also lends itself to a postcolonial reading. Women writers, who have only gained visibility and recognition since the late 1980s, are caught in a position of double marginalisation, firstly as women and secondly as Scots. Furthermore, this perspective makes it difficult for them to engage with their identity as female, since this allegedly diverts attention from reinforcing their contested Scottish national identity. However, masculinity is also deeply affected by Scotland's ambiguous status as a colony. The feeling of being externally dominated is reflected in a feeling of inferiority that is emphasised by stereotypical notions of Scottish men as 'hard men'. This male inferiority complex is reinforced by three developments. Firstly, economic decline and the loss of traditional workplaces in the heavy industry led to the unemployment of many men, thus destabilising their gender identity, which had been dependent on their relationship to the workplace. Consequently, this led to a questioning of patriarchal structures, since many men lost their positions as sole breadwinners and providers for the family. In contemporary Scottish fiction this is illustrated by the depiction of failing men. Furthermore, the mystification of Scotland as a tourist destination, easily captured in a vignette of clichés, emphasises the feeling of inferiority. Andrew O'Hagan's novel *Our Fathers* depicts three generations of men who each paradigmatically represent a type of men depicted in Scottish fiction. The traditional 'hard man' illustrates the old values of a Scotland whose men see themselves as superior to England and thus deny any external oppression. The offspring of this generation is depicted as an example of the compensatory type of man. This man is made deeply insecure by the notion of being oppressed by the English, who themselves are perceived as effeminate, thus underscoring the ignominy of defeat. As a consequence, this type of man is shown to overcompensate for these feelings with an insistence on masculinity and violence. The youngest generation, displayed by the main protagonist, Jamie, can be described as the Scottish man in transition. This new generation engages critically with a postcolonial conception of Scotland, questioning the validity of the constructed difference between Scotland and England. In the same vein, Jackie Kay's novel *Trumpet* uses an innovative take on gender identity by portraying a cross-dressing trumpet player to illustrate how identity in general can overcome narrow definitions and the reliance on binary constructions. The novel advocates a hybrid identity that, based on Bhabha's notion, is located in a 'third space'. Kay appropriates the trope of the split personality so prevalent in the Scottish tradition and demonstrates how this concept can be re-written as a positive trait rather than a limitation.

The discussion of an identity that is influenced by negotiations of language, class and gender as postcolonial is also tied to specific Scottish places. Scotland's geographical segregation into the Highlands and the Lowlands is paralleled by the perception that Scotland consists of the rural, uninhabited wilderness of the Highlands, on the one hand, and of post-industrial urban centres, most significantly Glasgow and Edinburgh, on the other. The Highlands as cultural space have been assigned an important standing in the construction of Scottish identity, as they became representative of Scotland as a whole in the 18th century, serving to strengthen a Scottish feeling of unity. In a postcolonial framework this construction of a homogeneous Scotland facilitates the oppression by the coloniser, who is thus able to oversimplify the power relations by framing the colonised as exotic and Other. Influenced by the sentimental and nostalgic employment of Highland settings in the fiction of Walter Scott and the Kailyard novel, the Highland novel is not dominant in contemporary Scottish fiction. However, the existing novels that are located in a Highland setting often engage in a postcolonial re-writing of exoticising stereotypes and in inscribing heterogeneity into the cultural landscape. Furthermore, some fiction, such as Alan Warner's first novels, highlights the effects that the marginalisation and economic hardship has had on Highland communities. Other writers, for instance Ruaridh Nicoll, engage critically with the stereotypical depiction of the Highlander's allegedly close bond with nature and reliance on masculine virility and violence. Alan Warner's *The Man Who Walks* depicts the Highlands as a postcolonial space that is not characterised by its noble savages, but by actual savages. The obscure characters that make up his protagonists undermine the suggestion of a 'natural' bond between the people and their place by subverting the journey of the main character into a futile pursuit. When the ending of the novel reveals the battlefield at Culloden to have been turned into a film set, Warner's critique of the commodification of a limiting stereotype is completed.

In contrast to a Highland setting, the urban novel, and the Glasgow novel in particular, has been a persistent presence that has become a genre in its own right. Edinburgh, Scotland's capital, and Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, are both inscribed, albeit rather disparagingly, in a vivid tradition of Scottish writing. A popular genre in Scotland that predominantly relies on an urban setting is crime fiction. Marketed with the label 'Tartan Noir', writers of Scottish crime novels, such as Denise Mina and Ian Rankin, use the genre to negotiate the state of Scottish society. Therefore, the Scottish crime novel is more akin to the American hardboiled tradition of crime fiction. The reluctance to engage with English genre conventions, which are perceived to be effeminate and dominated by upper-class values, thus functions to a limited extent as postcolonial resistance. Denise Mina's trilogy *Garnethill* uses the setting of Glasgow to point out the abuse of power by authorities and institutions. The structures of institutions representative of the British state are shown to be incapable of providing sufficient care and support networks. The devastating long-term effects of Margaret Thatcher's policies are made responsible for the hopelessness and ensuing brutalisation that affects the city. In this way, Mina places herself into a long tradition of Glaswegian fiction that has paradoxically presented the city as having a tradition independent from the rest of the nation while at the same time being quintessentially Scottish due to its strong working-class heritage. In a postcolonial move Mina reveals in her novels how these working-class values are undermined by a deficient state, thus subtly questioning the power relations to which Scotland is subject as part of Great Britain.

Ian Rankin's Rebus novels illustrate how this conflict between Scottish and British identity is inscribed in the city of Edinburgh. *Set in Darkness* takes the construction work of the new Parliament building as a starting point to investigate Scotland's route to devolution. The investigation focuses on two murders, both of which are related to the devolution referendum, of 1979 and 1997 respectively. Rankin illustrates Edinburgh as a divided city that is not only Othered by external forces, such as the tourist gaze, but also internally divided by class. The discovery of the body that had lain hidden since the 1970s and the reappearance of Cafferty underline the deeply ambivalent history that reverberates into the present, making the consolidation of a stable Scottish identity difficult. In other novels Rankin employs a police investigation that takes place in various locations all over Scotland to present an investigation of the state of the nation. This fits into a tradition of Scottish fiction that uses travelling, movement or border crossing to investigate Scottish identity. The journeys are often used to contrast Scotland with other places, most prominently England. In a postcolonial reading these journeys function as investigations of self-constructed identity concepts and the scrutinising of external attributions.

Rather than travelling outside of Scotland to make contact with other identities, Scottish fiction has also increasingly witnessed the inclusion of voices from different racial backgrounds into the canon. The analysis has emphasised the necessity of establishing a Black Scottish tradition, since the label 'Black British writing' cannot adequately represent the Scottish experience as it is predominantly applied to fiction focusing on an English urban experience. A writer such as Suhayl Saadi negotiates a Scottish identity from a hybrid starting point that encompasses Scottishness as well as being influenced by his Asian heritage. Saadi describes the feeling of a double marginalisation in his novels, employing postcolonial strategies, for instance a creative engagement with different languages and dialects, to consolidate a hybrid Scottish identity. Leila Aboulela presents an outsider's view, engaging critically in the attempt to blend an immigrant identity with Scottishness. Both writers are aware of Scotland's contested position and add a new angle to this with their own hybridity. At the same time, they both argue in favour of the necessity of defining identity with the help of other frameworks, thus transcending the concept of the nation. Saadi advocates the recognition of the commonalities of all cultures and presents music and the technique of sampling as a means of identity construction that best describes the identity of his main protagonist Zaf in *Psychoraag*. In *The Translator*, Aboulela endorses religion as the ultimate point of reference for the construction of identity as a concept that can transcend the nation and at the same time offer a framework for an allegedly universally ethical way of living.

However, the tendency to negotiate identity outside of the boundaries of Scotland is a trend that is visible not only in fiction produced by immigrant writers; in the first decade of the 21st century the Scottish novel has witnessed a development away from a fixation on Scottish identity and a move to more universal concerns, drawing on international and cosmopolitan reading strategies. However, the optimistic prognosis that post-devolutionary writing no longer needs to be concerned

with the state of Scotland, as since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 the nation is no longer dependent on culture to construct a national identity, has not rung entirely true. As the independence referendum in 2014 highlighted, the debate over the status of Scotland and its role within the United Kingdom has not ceased. Thus, writers with diverse backgrounds, such as Saadi and Aboulela, can function as an inspiration for other writers to explore identity beyond the concept of the nation. Writing in 2010, Graeme Macdonald seems optimistic that this can be achieved by underlining the importance of Scottish literature for identity:

It remains to be seen how new 'globally aware' junctures of race and class may dictate the future political and international affinities of a semi-stateless nation in devolutionary process. This is where literature remains powerfully provocative, as a 'devolved' arena imagining the politics of possibility. (G. Macdonald 2010, 100)

The analysis in this study has shown that the Scottish novel is still engaged in contesting Scottish national identity and negotiating it by taking into consideration Scotland's ambivalent history with England and the United Kingdom. A reading of contemporary Scottish literature as postcolonial has proven fruitful, as it draws attention to structures of power that work as a marginalising force both from outside Scotland, in the guise of the neo-colonial influence of the British state or imperialistic forces in the wake of globalisation, and from within Scottish society. Comparably to other postcolonial literatures, postcolonial discourses in Scottish fiction function as re-writing and resistance. The analysis has revealed how the postcolonial pervades all facets of Scottish identity. The investigation of the discourses of language use, class, gender, spatiality and race as postcolonial has demonstrated that they are all interwoven with Scottish national identity and influenced by a feeling of inferiority caused by the postcolonial condition of Scotland. Thus, a postcolonial reading of the contemporary Scottish novel since *Trainspotting* has been shown to be an important contribution to the dialogue on Scotland's national imagination.

## **Bibliography**

#### **List of Abbreviations**


#### **Works Cited**


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**Has Scotland suffered from colonial oppression by England for the last 300 years? While historiography may give an answer in the negative, this study reveals that the contemporary Scottish novel is haunted by strong feelings, marked by perceptions of abjection and inferiorisation in response to constructing the English as dominating. Drawing from an unprecedented corpus of contemporary Scottish novels, this study explores the postcolonial in Scottish fiction in order to investigate the underlying discursive power relations that shape the Scottish literary imagination. The study consequently demonstrates that the analysis of Scottish national identity profits from this new angle of interpretation of the Scottish novel as postcolonial. The analysis of discourses such as those of gender, class, space and place, and race reveals how the construction of the Scottish as marginalised permeates the width of the contemporary Scottish novel, by referring to diverse examples, such as James Kelman's**  *How late it was, how late* **or genre fiction such as Ian Rankin's** *Set in Darkness***. Thus, this study provides an insightful reading in the wake of current political developments such as the Scottish independence referendum.**

*Jessica Homberg-Schramm* **studied at the University of Cologne and Durham University. After a stay at Murray Edwards College at the University of Cambridge, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Cologne. Her teaching and research focuses on 20thand 21st-century literature.**

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