What is it about?
The writing of James Kelman is usually linked to wider projects of reclaiming collective voice and identity. But if we look carefully, his fiction is highly sceptical about the forms of connection and peoplehood usually associated with his work. This essay offers a new approach to Kelman's politics of voice, focusing on the fraying and disavowal of 'vocal solidarities', and the importance of 'inner speech' that never crosses the boundary between private and public.
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Why is it important?
Kelman has been a pivotal figure in recent Scottish writing, but his most influential contribution -- his politics of voice -- has been widely misunderstood and over-simplified. This essay restores attention to the complexity and ambivalence of Kelman's fiction when it comes to notions of 'community' and collective voice, whether in fiction or in politics.
Perspectives
This chapter tries to establish a new approach to Kelman's politics of voice, based in close observation of his treatment of consciousness and 'non-expression'. It was challenging to write, but hopefully recovers a facet of Kelman's writing that is often overlooked or handled reductively. I'd like to pursue this angle further in the future.
Scott Hames
University of Stirling
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Maybe Singing into Yourself’: James Kelman, Inner Speech and Vocal Communion, January 2016, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004317451_012.
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