Westminsterresearch the Queer Moment: Post-Devolution Scottish
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch The Queer Moment: Post-Devolution Scottish Literature Turner, K. This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © Miss Kate Turner, 2017. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] The Queer Moment: Post-Devolution Scottish Literature Kate Turner A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree awarded: January 2017 Abstract This thesis investigates dramatic changes in the construction of Scottish national identity across the period 1999-2015; it identifies a move from hypermasculine Scottish identity at the end of the twentieth century to a queer national identity in 2015. This thesis argues that this is a product of the dramatic disorientation that Scotland encountered when it achieved devolution in 1999, as this moment disrupted the traditional means through which Scottish national identity was constructed. From this moment this thesis argues that the years 1999 to 2015 mark a period in which ideas of Scotland and Scottishness were overturned and made fragile. This thesis considers the implications of this within writing from Scotland produced between 1999 and 2014 in order to explore the consequences of this opened-up sense of Scottishness. As such this thesis explores, not simply how this writing represents Scotland but also how an overturned sense of Scottishness, combined with the varied and outward-looking themes of this writing, allows for an expansive reading practice that incorporates questions of globalisation, cosmopolitanism, and postcolonialism. The chapters track these developments through to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the landslide victory of the Scottish National Party in the 2015 UK general election and find ideas of a queer Scottish national identity amplified during these political events. This focus on Scotland evidences this thesis’s broader claim that, if nations are constructed then they can be deconstructed or ‘queered’. This is significant because the nation is typically understood as a source of hegemonic power; it regulates its citizens as a 2 healthy body politic and also demands the protection of the nation against various ‘others’. 3 Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………….pp. 2-3 Contents……………………………………………………………………………………………p. 4 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………p. 5 Declaration……………………………………………………………………………………..…p. 6 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..…….pp. 7-48 Chapter One………………………………………………………………………………………pp. 49-89 Traditional Scotland and its Transformations Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………………………...pp. 90-128 No Horizons: The Devolutionary Moment in Laura Hird’s Born Free (1999) Chapter Three……………………………………………………………………………………pp. 129-174 Reading Scottishness in relation to the Contemporary Nation and ‘the Good Life’ through Ali Smith’s The Accidental (2005) Chapter Four…………………………………………………………………………….……..…pp. 175-223 Disorientating Cosmopolitanism in Zoe Strachan’s Negative Space (2003) Chapter Five………………………………………………………….………………….…..……pp. 224-259 Queer Scottish Gothic Chapter Six………………………………………………………………………………...………pp. 260-306 Negotiating Postcolonial Scotland and the Independence Referendum Conclusion………………………………………………………….……………………………...pp. 307-321 Bibliography……………………………………………………….……………………………...pp. 322-354 4 Acknowledgements I am immensely grateful for the advice, expertise, guidance and encouragement provided by Monica Germanà throughout this project and also for her kindness in providing me access to teaching experience and encouraging me to present at conferences and submit work for publication. This support has been fundamental to the completion of this thesis but also to my personal and professional development and confidence. I am also incredibly thankful to Leigh Wilson and Simon Avery, who have provided extensive and detailed feedback on chapters, and a great deal of support, advice, and encouragement throughout the project, but particularly in its final months. A massive thank you and acknowledgement is also due to Niall Dalton-Banks, Calum Rankin, Pip Roddis, Sadie Graham, Emily Towns, and Jen Neal for their love, laughter, and encouragement over the past four years. Last, but certainly not least, I am extremely grateful for my family; to my little sister Rachel who makes me proud every day and, of course, it is impossible to thank my parents Mike Turner and Judy Pratt enough for their unconditional support and love, without them I would not have been able to complete this project. 5 I declare that all the material contained in this thesis is my own work. 6 Introduction It is generally held that 1967 saw the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, which was advised by the Wolfenden report and implemented through the Sexual Offences Act. However, Scotland did not share the same, albeit limited, reform; it requested that it be excluded from this legislation. This is the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland’s reaction to the recommendations of the Wolfenden report in 1958: ‘[homosexuality is] so repugnant to the general consensus of opinion throughout the nation that, even if private and personal, [homosexuals] should be regarded as both morally wrong and legally punishable’ (cited in Davidson and Davis, 2012, p. 56). As we will see, it is important that it is a ‘nation’, and not a people, that finds homosexuality repugnant and demands its purgation. Those seeking consolation in the idea that this was a Christian organisation and might not reflect a specifically ‘Scottish’ response to the Wolfenden report will find little comfort in the fact that these recommendations were accepted by the Church of England and by the Roman Catholic Church (Davidson and Davis, 2012, p. 65). And yet, less than sixty years after the Church of Scotland’s condemnation of homosexuality and only a matter of decades after the eventual decriminalisation of homosexuality in Scotland in 1980, Scotland is the fairest country for LGBT legal rights in Europe (Press Association, 2015, n.p.), has a female first minister, and the highest number of LGBT political party leaders in the world (Torrance, 2016, n.p.). Moreover, it has recently appointed out lesbian Jackie Kay as its Makar. It appears, then, that it is possible to map a trajectory of change in Scotland and this extends far 7 beyond the process of a nation becoming more ‘tolerant’ of LGBT rights in line with the general western gay rights movement. This transformation entails something different; it indicates a process whereby the fundamental construction of Scottish national identity has changed. This thesis is not interested in this as a celebration of Scottishness and its ‘more positive’ national identity. Instead, it finds in Scotland evidence that nationhood can be a fragile and malleable entity. This is significant given that nationhood is widely held as a constructed yet powerful organising force in our social and political lives, both for the way in which it organises people along borders and for the ways in which it regulates the bodies, behaviours and identities of its citizens around the image of a ‘healthy body politic’. Thus, Scotland provides a case study in which this often seemingly impermeable structure of ‘nation’ is disorientated, disrupted, and changed. This is what it means to refer to a ‘queering’ of Scottish national identity. As we will see, this is a broader definition of ‘queer’ than LGBT; it refers to an attempt to disrupt the regulating patriarchal heteronormative construction of nationhood. This thesis therefore explores why and how this disorientation of Scottish national identity came about, the consequences that this had both for the possibilities for gender and sexuality within the nation, and also for the way in which the very idea of ‘nationhood’ and its sacred position within society can be interrogated and expanded. Specifically, this thesis holds the years 1999-2015 as a particular point of interest; bookended by Scottish devolution and by the Scottish independence referendum, as well as the Scottish National Party’s landslide victory 8 at the 2015 UK general election, Scottish national identity was thrown both into the limelight and into question in these years. Through an analysis of writing from Scotland at this time, this thesis focuses on 1999-2015 as a period of dramatic disorientation that queered Scottish national identity. This analysis cannot be carried out in a vacuum, however, and first an understanding of nationhood and of the broad development of Scottish national identity is required. Nationhood: An ‘Imagined Community’ Phillip Spencer and Howard Wollman’s overview of nationhood and nationalisms helpfully distinguishes between nationalism, national identity, and the state; three terms that are often conflated in academic study and political rhetoric. They write that ‘national identity involves a process of identifying oneself and others as a member of a nation’ (2002, p.