Irvine Welsh and the Ethic of Emergence Benjamin George Lanier-Nabors Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2005 After Scotland: Irvine Welsh and the Ethic of Emergence Benjamin George Lanier-Nabors Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Lanier-Nabors, Benjamin George, "After Scotland: Irvine Welsh and the Ethic of Emergence" (2005). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2580. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2580 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. AFTER SCOTLAND: IRVINE WELSH AND THE ETHIC OF EMERGENCE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Benjamin George Lanier-Nabors B.S., University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1995 M.A., University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1999 December 2005 Giving to my beloved friend, partner, and counselor, Joni, and to the wee cateran and reiver who has stolen our hearts, Geordie Park. Remembering a man who made a bad situation better, George Parker Dexter, Jr., 1916-2000. In itself nothing but a new way of seeing things, it made of a monotony that had seemed unshakeable something incomprehensibly new that was also comprehensibly familiar. —Candia McWilliam, Debatable Land ii Acknowledgements I must first acknowledge the multitude , without which I would not be writing this and thus would not be in a position to acknowledge anyone. I give my wholehearted thanks to my major professor and director, Patrick McGee. A principled risk taker himself, he encouraged me when “I chose something else.” My immense gratitude goes to a committee composed of some of the most talented scholars, committed teachers, and sincere people I have ever met: Carl Freedman, Michael Hegarty, Keith A. Sandiford, and Husain Sarkar. Special thanks also go to Irvin Peckham and Mustapha Marrouchi. The Department of English at Louisiana State University challenged and supported me. The Graduate School at LSU was extremely generous in awarding me a Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship. That award allowed me much-needed freedom to research and write. I will be forever indebted. I must thank LSU for giving me the opportunity to grow as a teacher and critical writer. My career as a student of letters and as a teacher would not have been possible without William Hutchings, Professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and, more importantly, a dear friend. Moreover, my doctoral work would have been inconceivable without the fantastic faculty in UAB’s Department of English, where I earned my MA. Special thanks go to Marilyn Kurata, Lila Miranda Graves, Amy Elias, Kyle Grimes, Jim Mersmann, and the late Tom Brown. The love and support I have received from some very special people have made a dream a possibility and a possibility a probability. In Birmingham, Alabama, they are John McCulloch, Gary Argo, Skip Elliott, and Dain Forsythe. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, they are Claudia Landry, Bessie LeBlanc, Ronlyn Domingue, Dallas Hulsey, and Ford Baker. iii Table of Contents Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………. ii Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………………… iii Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………… v Chapter 1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 2. Medieval Thread: Outlaw Congregation ………………………………. 27 2.1 First Medieval Strand: Outlaw Tales ………………………………………. 34 2.2 Second Medieval Strand: Fenian Scéalta ………………………………….. 46 2.3 Third Medieval Strand: Historical Fenian Continuum? …………………… 51 2.4 Fourth Medieval Strand: A Postmodern Medievalism …………………….. 62 2.5 Medieval Virtue: Congregation ……………………………………………. 66 Chapter 3. Reformation Thread: Covenant of Integration ………………………... 80 3.1 First Reformation Strand: The Worm That Shall Not Die …………………. 94 3.2 Second Reformation Strand: An Individual Bigger Than One Individual’s Ego 109 3.3 Reformation Virtue: Integration …………………………………………... 121 Chapter 4. Enlightenment Thread: Mapping Emergence ………………………… 127 4.1 First Enlightenment Strand: Knowing Pilgrimages ……………………….. 131 4.2 Second Enlightenment Strand: Reasoning with Antisyzygy …………….... 140 4.3 Third Enlightenment Strand: Cognitive Cartography …………………….. 151 4.4 Enlightenment Virtue: Emergence ………………………………………... 178 Chapter 5. Postmodern Loom: Emergence through Forgiveness ………………… 183 5.1 Congregation Spool: Fowl Mythology and Faulty Remembrance ………... 197 5.2 Integration Spool: The Bonds of Flesh ……………………………………. 207 5.3 Emergence Spool: Fugitive Histories ..……………………………………. 212 5.4 Postmodern Tartan: Emergence through Forgiveness .……………………. 217 Chapter 6. Afterword …...……………………………………………………………. 221 References ...……………………………………………………………………………. 228 Appendix: Consent Form .……………………………………………………………. 238 Vita ................................................................................................................................... 239 iv Abstract In “After Scotland: Irvine Welsh and the Ethic of Emergence,” the author’s objective is to mirror what he argues is the Scottish writer Irvine Welsh’s objective: to chart out a future Scotland guided by a generative life ethic. In order to achieve this objective, the author lays open and reengages Scotland’s past, discovers and commits to neglected or submerged materials and energies in its past, demonstrates how Welsh’s work is faithful to those and newly produced materials and energies, and suggests that Welsh’s use of those materials and energies enables readers to envision a new Scotland that will be integral to an alternative postmodern world that countervails one ruled by late capital. Each chapter builds toward a Marxist ethic of emergence, which is composed of four virtues uncovered in Scotland’s historical-material fabric: congregation, integration, emergence, and forgiveness. To bring these virtues to the surface, the author historically grounds Welsh’s novels and short stories—Trainspotting , Glue , Porno , Filth , “The Granton Star Cause,” “The Two Philosophers,” and Marabou Stork Nightmares . Through this historiographical process, each virtue is uncovered and analyzed in the context of a particular historical period: medieval, Reformation, Enlightenment, and postmodern. Each context presents a unique set of materials and energies; each also presents an epistemological and ethical focus. The author brings the first three contexts and virtues together to formulate the ethic of emergence within the postmodern context. Throughout, the author stresses how this ethic and each of its virtues are embedded in Welsh’s work and in Scotland’s historical-material fabric. The author then suggests what he and Welsh hope will emerge from that fabric according to such an ethic. Because Welsh is a contemporary writer who has gained relatively little attention from literary scholars, another aim of this study is to situate Welsh’s work by connecting it with v literature produced inside and outside of the Scottish and postmodern contexts: e.g. Gaelic prehistorical and epic literature, Chaucer, morality plays, Robert Burns, and the modern mystery genre. The author concludes the study with an afterword, relating his project to recent events that have occurred in Scottish politics. vi Chapter 1 Introduction If it wasnae for the weavers what would we do? We widnae hae clothes made o' woo, We widnae hae a coat neither black nor blue, If it wasnae for the wark o' the weavers. —David Shaw 1 All social life is essentially practical . All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. —Karl Marx 2 Irvine Welsh? L’enfant terrible of Scottish letters? The schemie bairn turned junkie, turned construction worker, turned college student, turned MBA, turned civil servant, turned writer, turned charity boxer? Scotland’s postmodern prophet of postmodern decay? The writer who says that he does not write but just tells stories? The guy who has published a collection of twisted tales, a collection of “chemical romances,” an exposé on the half-baked schemes of heroine addicts, a tragic saga of government-housing kids’ lives, case studies on environmentally-induced schizophrenia and psychosis, and most recently, a sardonic combination of all these in a novel dealing with pornography? The Irvine Welsh who includes some sort of animal mutilation in almost every novel? The left-leaning writer who enjoyed a brief stint as a diarist for the right-wing British Daily Telegraph ? The man whose books are dominated by “cunts,” “gadges,” and “punters”? The one who writes in a Scottish underclass dialect that puts the daunting invented English syntax of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange to shame? Yes, that Irvine Welsh. 1 David Shaw, “Wark o’ the Weavers,” performed by Ewan McColl, Four Pence a Day: British Industrial Folk Songs (Stinson 1993). 2 Karl Marx, Early Writings , trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Penguin, 1992) p. 423. 1 Welsh is the most significant