Briand-Boyd, Julie (2019) the (Un)Becoming-Scot: Irvine Welsh, Gilles Deleuze and the Minor Literature of Scotland After Scotland
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Briand-Boyd, Julie (2019) The (un)becoming-Scot: Irvine Welsh, Gilles Deleuze and the minor literature of Scotland after Scotland. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/74304/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The (Un)Becoming-Scot: Irvine Welsh, Gilles Deleuze and the Minor Literature of Scotland After Scotland Julie Briand-Boyd Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Scottish Literature School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow July 2019 2 Abstract This thesis examines the works of Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh alongside the philosophical works of French poststructuralists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as a case study for minor literature. By utilising Deleuze and Guattari’s aesthetic philosophies in a deep reading of Welsh’s novels, the thesis hopes to highlight the post-national potentials within both minor literature theory and the literary philosophy of Irvine Welsh. The first half of the thesis consists of three chapters that highlight the three categorical elements of minor literature: minor use of a major language, anti-establishmentarian politics, and a collective value for audiences. In Chapters One, Two and Three, I will not only describe these factors, but I will attempt at examining the linguistic, political, and communitarian elements of unbecoming-Scottish throughout Welsh’s novels. The second half of the thesis specifically focuses more on the ways in which becoming and unbecoming can alter Welsh’s view of Scottish cultural and national identity, which, for him, begins in a critique of masculinity, violence, colonial histories, religious identity and the problems of family. Therefore, Chapters Four, Five and Six respond to the three elements of Welsh’s critiques of majoritarian national identity: in a becoming-woman, an unbecoming-man and a new becoming-pack, modes of existential transformation that challenge both patriarchy and the institution of family. Throughout the thesis, I hope to illustrate how the minor voices of Welsh’s works reflect the minor voices of other post- national, post-industrial writers and artists. In reading Welsh with Deleuze as a minor artist, we might find some radical value in the transgressive, cruel and brutal aesthetics of such an ‘unbecoming Scot’, Irvine Welsh. Like his characters who must face the terror of Scotland after Scotland, industry and country obliterated by failed attempts at independence and the growth of global neoliberal capitalism, this thesis faces the major, molar and dominant facets of national, linguistic, cultural, gendered or racial identity construction in Welsh’s novels, and thus to establish a universal response to poverty and violence: to choose life. 3 Table of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Declaration of Originality Abbreviations Introduction: Irvine Welsh, the Unbecoming Scot 9 The Receptions and Traditions of Irvine Welsh 10 The Rise of Welsh Studies as Minor Literature 19 Why Deleuze and Welsh?: Towards a Vernacular Philosophy of Literature 25 Summary of Chapters: Blood on the Tracks and Choosing Life 38 Part I: ‘Blood of the Tracks’ and Three Paths of the Minor 40 Chapter One: Minor Literature, Minor Voices and Translating Irvine Welsh 41 The Decolonial Projects of Welsh’s Diglossic and Heteroglossic Translations 54 Minor to Miner: The Argotic Bridge Between Scots and Picard 62 From Capitale to Cacapitale: The ‘Shitty’ Translation of Edinburgh’s Inner City 66 From Trainspotting to Férrovipathes: The Québecois Conundrum 68 Chapter Two: The Minor Marxism of Irvine Welsh’s Minor Literature 73 A Scot Against the State: Deleuze, Althusser, and a Leith Head 79 Welsh Against Austerity, Renton Against Thatcher 84 Hard-On or Braveheart?: The Failure of Phallic Freedom in A Decent Ride 94 A Dead Politics: The End of Spud as Welsh’s Marxist Lament 104 Chapter Three: Becoming-Skag and the Collective Value of Irvine Welsh’s Fiction 107 Enter the Welshverse: A Rhizomatic Reading 109 The Destruction of Community and the Rise of the Individual 113 Returning to the Pack: Becoming-Animal as Becoming-Skag in the Welshverse 116 Psychic Defence or Existential Ecstasy? The Nuances of Drug Use in Skag-Lit 127 Part II: Choosing Life and Its (Un)Becomings 136 Chapter Four: Becoming-Woman and Welsh’s Experience of Écriture Féminine in Porno 137 Porno’s Popular Reviews and its Gendered Divisions 137 Becoming-Woman in Welsh’s Novels: Rhizomatism as Écriture Féminine 143 The Carnivalesque and the Abject: Inverting the Male Gaze 148 Nina and the Becoming-Woman of the Revolutionary Girl 155 The Joke of Womanhood: The Tensions of the Carnivalesque and Female Abject 159 ‘Some cunt’s fuckin gittin it’: Porno and the Problematic Sex Wars for Feminism 164 ‘To Lose a Whore’: The Problem of Mileage 170 Chapter Five: Facing the Stork: Confronting Colonisation and the History of Man in Marabou Stork Nightmares 175 The Brutal Being of the Hardman in the Welshverse 175 The Man of the House: Working-Class Masculinity in Crisis 179 Marabou Stork Nightmares and the Paradox of Becoming-Man 183 Diving into the Abyss: The Existential Horrors of the History of Man 189 Lies and Retaliation at the End of Marabou Stork Nightmares 208 4 Chapter Six: The Ethics of Choosing Life and the Alternative Working-Class Families of Irvine Welsh 210 Unbecoming-Father?: Franco’s Failed Escape from Fatherhood in The Blade Artist 212 The End of the Line?: The Last Lawsons, Williamsons, and Begbies of Edinburgh 223 The Redemption of the Murphys and the Rentons: Towards a Radical Ethics of Care 227 Conclusion: Irvine and Me 235 Bibliography 238 By Irvine Welsh 238 Fiction and Drama 238 Introductions and Forewards 238 Articles, Essays and Online Sources 239 Translation 240 Other Sources 240 Thesis 269 Films and Streaming 269 Podcast 270 Music 270 Reviews, Magazines, Websites, (listed by date) 270 5 List of Figures Figure 1: Trainspotting, dir. by Danny Boyle (PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, 1996). Figure 2: ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ poster (1979): <https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/history- advertising-no-90-labour-isnt-working-poster/1281255> [accessed 05/04/2018]. Figures 3-4: Braveheart, dir. by and starring Mel Gibson, written by Randall Wallace (MGM, 1995). Figure 5: ‘Freedom’ by Tom Church, sculpture remained on the steps of Stirling Castle between 1996-2008. Figure 6: ‘Auld Faithful 3’ from Irvine Welsh’s A Decent Ride (London: Vintage, 2015), p. 359. Figure 7: T2 Trainspotting, dir. Danny Boyle (Film4, 2017). 6 Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude for The Andrew Tannahill fund for their financial support during this project. I would also like to thank the staff and students at the University of Glasgow for their many helpful suggestions during my research. I would like to thank especially my supervisors Prof. Alan Riach and Prof. Willy Maley for their guidance, support and encouragement throughout this project. I would not have started this PhD without the exceptional teaching of Dr. François Vergne and Mr. Dougal Campbell during my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Thank you for inspiring me and helping me throughout these years. I am particularly grateful to Mr. Dougal Campbell for helping me with my first chapter, for providing me with materials and vivid conversations about translation, French culture and Scottish literature. Equally, I would like to thank Prof. Michael Syrotinski for kindly accepting to read this chapter and providing me with helpful advice. I want to thank Dr. Aaron Kelly and Dr. Theo Van Heijnsbergen for their profoundly informed feedback during my viva which will help me go further in my research in the future. I am also grateful to my time spent at the British Library, for the help of its staff in giving me access to so many useful materials; and to the Imperial College Library for sheltering me for about a year in South Kensington. I also want to thank the staff from the small library of the Institut du Monde Anglophone in Paris for helping me find sources for the first chapter of this thesis. To my friends who supported me during these four years I want to say thank you, especially to my best friends Élodie Devauchelle and Maëlle Lebon for always welcoming me in either Paris or Barcelona and to Marc Colell Teixidó for being the best colleague and friend in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. A special thanks to Maëlle for helping me translate Spanish in this thesis. I am also very lucky for my parents to have always pushed me to continue in my studies, for my brothers Antoine and Benjamin and my sister-in-law Salima for supporting me throughout the good and the difficult moments. Merci! To my husband Dr. David John Boyd, thank you so much for being my best friend, my companion and philosopher. I would not have made it to the end without your love, your unflinching support and faith in me. I am incredibly fortunate to have met you during this experience, not only for our countless conversations about Deleuze and politics which shaped this PhD, but also for the rest of our lives shared together and my many endless becomings. 7 Declaration of originality I declare that the thesis does not include work forming part of a thesis presented successfully for another degree.