commentary

Exhausted optimism: devolution as cultural condition

A New Statesman essay (March 2022) extending arguments from the devolution monograph to the contemporary scene.

“At times it feels as if the whole ethos and terrain of ‘the literary’ has been incorporated into the nation’s official PR, and there are few signs of dissent. Some argue – especially on the unionist side of Scottish politics – that the cultural sector has been ‘captured’ by cuddly nationalism. But it’s more the case that hegemonic Scottish nationalism has come to articulate itself as culture, an enterprise of imagined harmonies and self-actualisation. Projecting the First Minister as the peer of Booker Prize-winners hints at the realisation of the nation’s own creative potential for open-hearted prosperity and international esteem. Here ‘culture’ operates as the ‘domain of reconciliation’ in which the nation’s inner conflicts can be finessed into manageable accord, preparing the ‘consensual ground for the state form of representative democracy’, as David Lloyd and Paul Thomas put it in Culture and the State .”


Nationalism, Unionism and Devolution

Commentary on the Scottish constitutional debate and the political culture of devolution. These are mainly pieces for the New Statesman, and two political essays for The Drouth teasing out intellectual crises of Unionism (related to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence and the consolidation of Brexit nationalism after 2016).

Why Scotland is still trapped in limbo-land (May 2021)

Unpacking the 2021 election, where the image of progressive nationalism fared better than actual progress toward independence. The result highlights the Obaman qualities of Scotland’s political culture, an educated liberal populism of hope and diversity.

Who speaks for Scotland? (April 2021)

On growing divisions within Scottish nationalism, the Alba party, and the implications of competing visions of what and who independence is for. ‘The nation conceived as a spotless sender of messages, entitled to its “voice” in advance of what it is saying, begins to give way to the nation as embodied social conflict.’

The Quiet Collapse of Scottish Unionism (January 2021)

Explores growing amnesia of ‘nationalist-unionism’ — the Unionist tradition of ‘standing up for Scotland’ within the UK — in the context of recent constitutional debate. Squeezed between more attractive and successful Scottish and British nationalisms, opponents of Scottish independence are increasingly aligned with ‘non-unionist’ arguments for the constitutional status quo.

Spitfire Britain and the Zombie Union (November 2020)

Argues that Brexit-as-English-awakening torpedoes the British high politics that gave us devolution, and turns ‘the Union’ against unionism. Scottish nationalists have good reason to preserve the British dimensions and traditions of their national culture, before its most interesting twists and tensions are rendered unintelligible.

Nationalist Realism? Un-dreaming Scotland’s Future (April 2018)

Explores the emotional and imaginative dimension of constitutional blue-printing, comparing Common Weal’s recipe for state-building with the 1988 Claim of Right. ‘The anti-utopian prudence of How to Start a New Country underscores a pattern whereby the closer and more “realistic” the prospect of Scottish independence becomes … the more difficult [it is] to connect with any appetite to break with the status quo.’

Saving the Union to Death? (Winter 2015)

Views the success of the 2014 Better Together campaign as a Pyrrhic victory, seriously weakening the Union's prospects of long-term renewal and survival. Argues that Gordon Brown’s case for the UK largely evacuated Unionist rhetorical space, reversing his prior analysis of Scotland’s Britishness and unravelling the (unionist) logic of devolution. [or via Academia]

 

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