Thesis (PH. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Political Science, 2005. / Title from second page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [2], vii, 101 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-99).

This thesis makes two broad claims. It contends firstly that there is considerable variation in national consciousness across the population of a stateless nation. People can and do feel minutely, partly or wholely Breton, Scottish or Quebecois. Moreover, these are not merely differences of degree. Underlying the uneven intensity of nationalist sentiment within stateless nations is qualitative variation in the buttresses of national consciousness. Some - typically those with weaker national identities - are "pragmatist nationalists": people whose sense of belonging to a distinct community is firmly grounded in tangible sociological differences, be they ethnic, linguistic, religious or political. Others, more taken with the nation, are "idealist nationalists"; their sense of national belonging is more the product of an abstract and idealized sense of connectedness than hard and concrete sociological difference. This basic difference in the underpinnings of national identity, along with other attendant contrasts between pragmatist and idealist nationalists, are explored through historical analysis of various nationalist organizations and activists in Brittany, Scotland and Quebec. The second central proposition is that this qualitative variation in national identity is an important determinant of political behavior. Many of the wide-ranging attitudes and behaviors seen among exponents of the nationalist cause can be traced back to the conditioning effects of national identity on the outlook and political disposition of different nationalist players. In making this case, the analysis proceeds thematically, drawing examples variously from the three cases; it offers, in places, quantitative evidence based on analysis of the original data from previously conducted surveys. Various attitudinal and behavioral phenomena are thus explored: perceptions of the legitimacy of different means of effecting changes in the nation's political status (e.g. violence versus democratic means); the rationality of different nationalist players; their patterns of participation in nationalist projects; and overall mobilization trends. While these phenomena are somewhat disparate, they are linked by an overarching theme: idealist nationalists are less sensitive to empirical realities than their pragmatist counterparts. They are consequently more intransigent and uncompromising in their attitudes and behavior, and for this reason often play an important vanguard role in the process of nationalist mobilization. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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In nationalism studies, there has been insignificant analysis of the politics of imagining nations. This thesis addresses this lacuna in an examination of the form and design of imagined nations in Scotland and Quebec. I argue that the Scottish National Party and the Parti Quebecois have, since their advent in the 1960s, created a political-civic image of the nation that breaks with previous cultural conceptions. However, cultural images of the nation, propagated by centralist institutions, remain entrenched in contemporary Scotland and Quebec. The juxtaposition of centralist cultural images and nationalist political images of the nation have led to a dualistic, or what I have termed a 'Jekyll and Hyde', national consciousness in both countries. This exercise indicates that images of the nation are subject to multitudinous interpretations and (re)construction by various actors in the competitive state-nation political arena.

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This thesis is a critical study of Scottish literary culture since 1989. It examines and interrogates critical work in Scottish literary studies through a ‘critical nationalist’ approach. This approach aims to provide a refinement of cultural nationalist literary criticism by prioritising the oppositional politics of recent Scottish writing, its criticism of institutional and state processes, and its refusal to exempt Scotland from this critique. In the introduction I identify two fundamental tropes in recent Scottish literary criticism: opposition to a cultural nationalist critical narrative which is overly concerned with ‘Scottishness’ and critical centralising of marginalised identity in the establishment of a national canon. Chapter one interrogates a tendency in Scottish literary studies which reads Scottish literature in terms of parliamentary devolution, and demonstrates how a critical nationalist approach avoids the pitfalls of this reading. Chapter two is a study of two novels by the critically neglected and politically Unionist author Andrew O’Hagan, arguing that these novels criticise an insular and regressive Scotland in order to reveal an ambivalent, ‘Janus-faced’ nationalism. Chapter three examines representations of Scottish traditional and folk music in texts by A. L. Kennedy and Alan Bissett, engaging with the Scottish folk tradition since the 1950s revival in order to demonstrate literature and music’s ambivalent responses to aspects of literary and cultural nationalism. Chapter four examines texts by Janice Galloway, Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, analysing the relationships they construct between gender, nation and class. Chapter five examines three contemporary Scottish texts and elucidates an ethical turn in Scottish literary studies, which reads contemporary writing in terms of appropriation and exploitation.