(Scottish) Critic Fodder: On Why Alasdair Gray's Lanark Isn't a Nationationalit or a Postmodernist Text, Mostly

This article examines the construction of Alasdair Gray as a nationalist and postmodernist writer. It argues that although the formal innovations Gray makes in Lanark are redolent of the postmodern style, his work also has important affiliations with a socialist humanist conception of art and subjectivity. The article then traces the links between postmodernism and the Scottish nationalist project which seeks to construct a canon of Scottish literature as part of a wider move towards Scottish independence. I argue that in fact the representation of nationalism in Lanark is highly ambivalent and that to read it as unproblematically a nationalist text is to ignore many of the subtleties of Gray’s representation of the complex and often damaging intertwining of the desire for power and the creative subject.