disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory Volume 8 peregriNations Article 7 4-15-1999 (Re)-Defining Scottish Nationalism after Devolution. disClosure interviews Cairns Craig Lisa Stein University of Kentucky Amy Wright University of Kentucky DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/DISCLOSURE.08.07 Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure Part of the English Language and Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Stein, Lisa and Wright, Amy (1999) "(Re)-Defining Scottish Nationalism after Devolution. disClosure interviews Cairns Craig," disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 8 , Article 7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/DISCLOSURE.08.07 Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol8/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Questions about the journal can be sent to [email protected] sugar snow Lisa Stein and Amy Wright beneath thick slabs of ice give way to the occasional science of the avalanche (Re)-Defining as unpredictable as they are imprecise Scottish the firebreather speaks a new language of heat and kerosene Nationalism members of that profession after Devolution are highly susceptible to consumption and chronic bronchial inflammation disClosure interviews Cairns Craig The loss of the Miranda was still fresh on everyone's mind. The main object of the expedition was to study Greenland's glacier system, the inland ice cap and ice­ (4 April 1998) bergs; and to map the hitherto unknown portions of Melville Bay. Sketch the hu­ Carins Craig is the Chair of the man, animal, and vegetable. Name life of the arctic region. Visit Peary's camp and English Department at the Univer­ bring back news of him in advance of his return. Return to Philadelphia. Drift into sity of Edinburgh, Scotland, the journalism. Engineer the mountains of Pennsylvania. He has since time traveled ex­ general editor of the Determinatio~s tensively. Hunted in the vicinity of Equator. Shot reindeer feeding on lichen in series on Scottish culture and poli­ the Arctic Tundra. tics (Edinburgh UP) and general little shrines editor of a four-volume series en­ the house beautiful titled The Histon1 of Scottish Litera­ in other time, other season ture (also Edinburgh UP). He is the author of Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the cousin Anthony and I Politics of Poetry: Richest to the Rich­ inspired little rivers est (1982), Out of History: Narra~ve through suffering Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture (1996) and of many articles little journeys on Scottish literature, nationalism, we found black pebbles regionalism, and cultural identity. and cool to the touch His most recent publication is "I.A. five sins of an architect Richards, T.S. Eliot and Empiricism's Art of Memory" (Re­ tick-tock treasures vue de Morale et de Metaphysique, the nursery forthcoming) and he is currently the infants magazine writing a book on the twentieth­ century Scottish novel. the vanishing pictures With Scottish devolution hav­ of yellow beauty ing occurred in September of 199~, white wings and similar things Dr. Craig's participation in the Uru­ versity of Kentucky Committee for zigzag journeys around the world Social Theory Distinguished 801 181 IdC Interviews Cairns Craig Stein and Wright! rather retiring and unassertive, and they worried about their ~tural Speaker Series on Nation Theory, in Spring 1998, was very timely. In inferiority to the English (and the Americ~!) students. N.ow this has his lecture, Dr. Craig offered a bracing critique of Benedict Anderson's switched around entirely and the tendency is for the English students influential study Imagined Communities. Using the Scottish case as his to feel that they have to try to participate in Scot~sh life an~ learn a bit point of focus, Dr. Craig argued that Anderson's theory could not be about it and not to come simply as cultural tourists. Scottish students easily applied to Scotland or other emerging nations experiencing simi­ are much more assertive about the value of their own culture-even~s lar situations. He argued that Anderson's theory is highly poetic and like Trainspotting, both book and film, have helped her~an~ are ~onfi­ idealizing, based in part on T.S. Eliot's ideas of nationalism, in which dent in using their own voice, using an accented vmce which, in the the nation is determined by a unified imagination. For Craig, Anderson past, they would tend to be embarrassed about. Scottish accents used ~o fails to consider how conflictual the national imaginary is, out of which have a very 'low' acceptance level in the rest of the UK and people .in the nations emerges. Scotland would try to lose their accents as they moved u~ the social In this interview, he discusses his analysis of Anderson, and also scale. Now Scottish accents have a high acceptance level in England, examines the situation in Scotland before and after the September 1997 with the result that people in the media and public life actually try to referendum and the potential for the "evolution" of literature depart­ assert their Scottishness through their accents. ments in Scottish universities after devolution. dC: This has all happened since September? disClosure: We just wanted to start by asking you a general question CC: No, just not since September, though the confidence factor has in­ about Scottish devolution and what that means and what differences it creased rapidly since then. There has actually been a steady develop­ is going to make. ment over the last ten years or so-a growing sense of confidence and Cairns Craig: Well, I think that the truth is that we don't know what commitment. What happened in September was not so much~ new b~­ specific differences it's going to make to various parts of Scottish life-­ ginning as the culmination of a long process tha~' s ~een going on ~ only that it will make an enormous difference to the whole of Scottish Scotland since the 1960s. I suppose it's the culmination of Scotland s life because it is going to generate a new kind of politics and new level long retreat from the British Empire and the k~d of ~den~ty th~t ~e of democratic involvement in areas that previously were run by Empire required, and the opening out of.a new kind ~f identity which is Westminster-appointed bureaucracies. Specific changes are that there more in tune with a Europe of small nations and regions. are going to be a lot more women in the parliament, there are going to dC: We were also interested in hearing you speak abo~t the period be­ be a range of people who are not professional politicians because they tween 1979 and 1997 and what has been going on to re1uvenate the cul­ will be selected from a party 'list' on the proportional representation ture of Scotland. We know you started the journal ~en crastus and basis. This will change the nature of political debate. Since the powers wanted to know more about it and the people who were involved. of the parliament are restricted, cultural and educational issues will be CC: After the failure to establish a Scottish parliament in 1979 ti:ie sense very high on the agenda. At the political level both the fact of the parlia­ of depression was enormous: the vote had in fact been a vote in favor ment and its representation system will radically change traditional but only by a tiny margin, and the lack o f commi'tm en t among the Scot- voting patterns within Scotland. Already we are seeing a huge increase tish people (over 30% didn't vote) made it impossible to feel that there in support for nationalists, for instance, when the Labour Party had ex­ would ever be a resolution of the Scottish situation. It seemed that ther.e pected that the creation of the parliament would be sufficient to deflate would always be a strong grouping in favour of independence but it the nationalistic aspirations for most Scottish people. People are now looked like it would never be strong enough to succeed so ~at w~ talking about a possible victory for the Nationalist party in the first would have a politics of stalemate. And, of course, it was the failure 0 elections and about independence within five years. Change on this the Scottish devolution bill that brought down the Labour government scale was unimaginable even a year ago. in 1979 because the Scottish Nationalists voted against it, and that let And whatever kind of politics comes from Devolution, at the cultural Mrs. Thatcher' into. power, so that there was ~ d eep divide betweenen level the changes are, already, enormous, simply from the very fact that Labour and the Scottish Nationalists- a deep bitterness even betwe this vote has happened. There is a sense of confidence in people that those who shared a lot of common ground and that soured the a.tmo­ hasn't been there previously in their lives. In the university in sphere in Scotland. As a result, we were looking forward and fearing a Edinburgh where I work, for instance, Scottish students used to be 183 821 Ide interviews Cairns Craig Stein and Wright! nect with an international culture rather than to develop its own. Al­ decade of cultural emptiness. A lot of people thought that we were most everything that had been written about Scotland was about its heading into a cultural desert and that what had been happening failure as a culture, about the lack of any past values on which the fu­ through the 1970s, with a gradual increase in cultural vitality, would ture could be built.