Myths of the Nation: A Discursive-Genealogical Investigation of Scottish Nationalism

The 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum was a momentous and transformative event in recent Scottish political history. Curiously, despite the attention given to the referendum in commentary and academic study, there is a comparative lack of engagement with the driving force behind these events. That being Nationalism. This is in part due to the subsequent developments in both Scottish and British politics but is mainly the result of the deficiencies of orthodox theories and approaches to nationalism in grasping the agency and context of nationalism as a political phenomenon. This thesis contributes to nationalism studies in addressing these shortcomings by utilising contributions from Essex School Discourse Theory, establishing nationalism as a discourse that constructs the nation for specified political ends. By returning to Gramsci’s writings on Organic Intellectuals and Language, and supplementing this with Voloshinov’s concept of multi-accentuality, the thesis presents the reactivated concept of Intellectual Function as an analytical tool to supplement the discursive conception of nationalism in getting to grips with the agency and context of nationalism and nationalist practices. To operationalise these advancements, the research adopts a Logics approach alongside Foucault’s genealogical method to identify 4 myths crucial to the development and constitution of modern Scottish nationalism from the 1960s-2014, providing a critical examination and evaluation of its development and expressions in this period. Following this the research, through the application of intellectual function provides a critical evaluation of how the practices and expressions of nationalism articulated these myths during the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. In doing so, the thesis contributes a conception and method for approaching and grasping the specificity of the agency and context that were operant during the 2014 referendum, thus producing new forms of knowledge on both nationalism and its specific Scottish manifestation.