The Queer Moment: Post-Devolution Scottish Literature

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
healthy body politic and also demands the protection of the nation against various ‘others’.