“Acting the part of an illiterate savage”: James Kelman and the question of postcolonial masculinity

Abstract

The ubiquitous hard man of 20th‐century Scottish culture is often constructed as a product of English colonialism, a reaction to the feminization and inferiorization of Scottish culture. This article investigates the appropriateness and implications of this approach to Scottishness in the context of James Kelman’s framing of his writing through a postcolonial vision of cultural resistance, with particular reference to his Booker Prize‐winning novel How Late it Was, How Late.

Keywords:

• James Kelman
• masculinity
• Scotland
• inferiorism
• national identity
• vernacular