Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies Volume 5: Issue 1 Migrating Minds AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen JOURNAL OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH STUDIES Volume 5, Issue 1 Autumn 2011 Migrating Minds Published by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen in association with The universities of the The Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative ISSN 1753-2396 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies General Editor: Cairns Craig Issue Editor: Paul Shanks Associate Editor: Michael Brown Editorial Advisory Board: Fran Brearton, Queen’s University, Belfast Eleanor Bell, University of Strathclyde Ewen Cameron, University of Edinburgh Sean Connolly, Queen’s University, Belfast Patrick Crotty, University of Aberdeen David Dickson, Trinity College, Dublin T. M. Devine, University of Edinburgh David Dumville, University of Aberdeen Aaron Kelly, University of Edinburgh Edna Longley, Queen’s University, Belfast Peter Mackay, Queen’s University, Belfast Shane Alcobia-Murphy, University of Aberdeen Ian Campbell Ross, Trinity College, Dublin Graham Walker, Queen’s University, Belfast International Advisory Board: Don Akenson, Queen’s University, Kingston Tom Brooking, University of Otago Keith Dixon, Université Lumière Lyon 2 Marjorie Howes, Boston College H. Gustav Klaus, University of Rostock Peter Kuch, University of Otago Graeme Morton, University of Guelph Brad Patterson, Victoria University, Wellington Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young David Wilson, University of Toronto The Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies is a peer reviewed journal published twice yearly in autumn and spring by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. An electronic reviews section is available on the AHRC Centre’s website at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/issjournal.shtml Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission, should be addressed to The Editors, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, Humanity Manse, 19 College Bounds, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UG or emailed to: [email protected] Subscription information can be found on www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/publications Cover image: James Gillray, ‘DUN-SHAW: One Foot in Leadenhall Street and the other in the Province of Bengal’ (1788). Copyright The British Library. CONTENTS Editorial v Working in the Outer Reaches 1 Kenneth White Kenneth White and Scotland’s Intellectual Nomads 15 Cairns Craig Imagining Russia: A Scottish Perspective 29 Florian Gassner Imagining India in the Waverley Novels 49 Sally Newsome The Macs meet the ‘Micmacs’: Scottish Gaelic First Encounter 67 Narratives from Nova Scotia Michael Newton More an emotion than a country?: Scottish Identity, 97 Nationhood and the New World Diaspora Elizabeth Carnegie The Public Intellectual as Exile: Representing the Self in 119 Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah Sumit Chakrabarti Othering Identities and the Conflicts of Migration in Jameela 133 Siddiqi’s The Feast of the Nine Virgins Jendele Hungbo America Imagined in James Kelman’s You Have to be Careful in 151 the Land of the Free Paul Shanks A Public Interview with James Kelman 167 Interviewed by Paul Shanks Notes on Contributors 179 EDITORIAL This edition of the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies emerged from a two-day conference that was run in May 2009 on the subject of ‘Migrating Minds: Imagined Journeys – Imagined Homecomings’. The aim of the event was to create a forum that would explore the impact that journeys and homecomings have had on Irish and Scottish imaginations through reference to literature (both fiction and non-fiction), personal documents and art. These conceptual frameworks were extended to the intellectual migration of ideas between Ireland, Scotland, Europe and the New World. It was our further intention to consider the phenomenon of diasporic writing from other non Irish-Scottish perspectives in order to gain some broader insights into our discipline. One of the many highlights of the conference was a public reading and interview with James Kelman, the world-renowned Glasgow writer. During the interview, Kelman discussed his early experience of emigration to the United States and the effect that this subsequently had on his life and work. On the final day of the conference, conversation was informed by a concluding address from Liam Harte which addressed the Irish experience. However, this journal prioritises Scottish thinking about the diaspora while placing it in a broad international context. The complementary themes of the journal are explored via several different subject areas. The notion of intellectual migration is considered in Kenneth White’s essay which focuses on the cultural and intellectual nomadism of ‘Scotic’ philosophers like John Scot Erigena and Duns Scotus. White sees himself as working within a similar tradition to these ‘Scoti vagantes’ but also distances himself from the parochial ‘regionalism’ which he sees as enclosing modern-day Scotland. Cairns Craig’s essay on White reassesses this rejection of contemporary Scottish culture while also illustrating how much White’s intellectual and poetic trajectory resembles that of other travelling Scots like Patrick Geddes and Robert Louis Stevenson. The nomadic tendency can therefore be seen, according to Craig, as ‘part of the very fabric of Scottish intellectual life’. vi Editorial From the more recent context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Florian Gassner’s paper views intellectual migration from yet another angle, considering the ways in which Scottish Enlightenment thinkers reflected on Russia from a more historically informed perspective than their European counterparts. His paper ends by charting an early instance of Russian- Scottish cross fertilisation in considering a novel that attempted to emulate the style and subject matter of Walter Scott’s Waverley novels (as has been documented, Scott’s treatment of history in his fiction owed much to the thought of Scottish intellectuals like Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith). The ‘writer of Waverley’ also forms the subject matter of Sally Newsome’s paper, which considers Scott’s attempts to imagine the Orient. Newsome’s discussion provides a timely revision of those that have criticised Scott’s proto-Imperialist tendencies (such as Edward Said) and convincingly demonstrates the ways in which his narratives served to simultaneously challenge and consolidate ‘British’ perceptions of India. Subsequent to these initial explorations of the cerebral and the fictive, we move on to consider our theme via two different instances of cultural amalgamation in Canada and the USA. Michael Newton’s paper investigates first encounter narratives between the indigenous population of Nova Scotia and Highland settlers as they were transcribed in Gaelic oral texts. His discussion substantively illustrates the forms of cultural exchange, consolidation and contestation that characterised these meetings. Elizabeth Carnegie looks at the symbiosis of divergent cultural narratives from a more contemporary context; her paper, informed by data compiled from a detailed on-line survey, focuses on Scottish-American identity and the generation of an idealised non-urban image of Scotland by US citizens with a Scottish inheritance. In this respect, the nation becomes a composite of recognisable tropes which gain emotive weight when personalised by those who are (or think of themselves as) former emigrants. Moving away from the Scottish vantage point, the next two papers by Sumit Chakrabarti and Jendele Hungbo grapple with the topic of enforced migration. Chakrabarti assesses the effect of imposed displacement on one’s sense of ‘home’ through reference to Mourid Barghouti’s elegiac account of his return to Ramallah after partition. The responsibilities of the public intellectual in addressing the experience of ‘exile’ are explored in this discussion via the writings of Theodor Adorno, Julien Benda, Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said. Hungbo’s essay looks at the internecine frictions between Indian settlers and the indigenous populations of Uganda prior to the mass eviction of Asians Migrating Minds vii under the regime of Idi Amin as dramatised in Jameela Siddiqi’s The Feast of the Nine Virgins. In discussion of the novel, Hungbo charts out the potential for a more inclusive notion of identity when considering migrants in relation to their host communities. The subject matter of both papers resonate with aspects of the Scottish experience, such as the historical incidence of forced migration and the difficulties encountered by emigrants who wish to maintain allegiances with the homeland while also affiliating themselves with another culture. The tensions of immigration and assimilation are further explored in Paul Shanks’ essay on James Kelman’s fifth novel (set in a fictionalised version of the States). The Glaswegian protagonist can only envisage a return to Scotland as a sign of failure rather than a cause for celebration, yet his attempts to gain secure citizenship in his adopted home proves elusive. The novel is notable in that there is little sense of a shared diasporic community and the central character tends to reject any notion of a collective Scottish identity. We conclude with Kelman himself in a transcription of the public interview that took place in May; his comments on the difficulties of migration and resettlement that he experienced with his family and