Bitter nostalgia: social redundancy in Irvine Welsh's 'Kingdom of Fife'

Alex Law, Eddie Rocks

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

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    Abstract

    Any socio-analysis of fiction runs the risk of taking an objectivist sledgehammer to the enchanted spell of the perceptible literary effect (see Bourdieu 1996). In courting this risk we offer the alibi that socio-analysis of Welsh’s “Kingdom of Fife” intensifies and enriches the truth of social suffering since the strike. Literary transgressions and inversions of the sort produced by Welsh both express and veil the structure of damaged social space, its constraints and possibilities, as the contradictory consequences of collective defeat.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationDigging the seam
    Subtitle of host publicationpopular cultures of the 1984/5 miners' strike
    Editors Simon Popple, Ian W. Macdonald
    Place of PublicationNewcastle upon Tyne
    PublisherCambridge Scholars Publishing
    Chapter16
    Pages217-229
    Number of pages13
    ISBN (Electronic)9781443843041
    ISBN (Print)9781443840811
    Publication statusPublished - 9 Nov 2012

    Keywords

    • Sociology of literature
    • Pierre Bourdieu
    • Irvine Welsh
    • Miners strike
    • Habitus
    • Hysteresis

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