Entangled (K)nots. Reconceptualising The Nation In Scottish Devolution Writing

This chapter reconsiders Scottish devolution writing both as an expression of and a form of resistance to globalization and global culture, in the light of Scotland’s changing nationalism and on the backdrop of a rapidly transforming world scene. It contends that Scottish writers’ work, far from being ‘provincial’, thoughtfully engages with contemporary global concerns and with wider political and theoretical issues. Their firm critique of Britishness, for example, subtly connects, in the same period, with the postcolonial and archipelagic projects. Finally, by considering the work of some of the most prominent writers of the devolutionary decade (Alisdair Gray, Iain Banks, Ian Rankin, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Iain Crichton Smith, Robert Alan Jamieson, Jackie Kay), the chapter aims at showing how their work radically redefines Scottish nationalism and, at a more general level, the relationship between the local and the global.