On Scottish Ground
Edinburgh, Polygon, 1998.
Author’s Preface
When George Buchanan came back to Scotland after an extremely creative period in France, he set about "gathering his papers” and, among other things, produced his History.
Here I have done something of the same.
But if there are, very definitely, elements of history in these texts, it is not primarily with history that they are concerned, but with an itinerary of the mind going all the way from radical analysis to expressive activity, and with the opening, via projective cartography, of a field, the whole constituting what I think of at the moment as "an atlantic enlightenment”.
Some of the texts here gathered were written in Scotland before I left for the Continent (they tell, among other things, why, at one point, I felt the need to leave), some were written in the Atlantic Pyrenees, but the majority in Brittany, on the occasion of my renewed contact with the English-language world in general, and the Scottish scene in particular, from 1989 on. In the context of this book, they have been dechronologised, spatialised.
All in all, the book offers the testimony of what you might call a Euro-Scot, in the line, say, of Duns Scot, the said George Buchanan and David Hume, to mention only three examples among many in a tradition I value highly and have tried to live up to.
As Hume said, introducing his studies on human nature : “I was seized very early with a passion for literature, philosophy and general learning… I went over to France with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat, and I there laid that plan of life which I have steadily pursued.”
I chose to renew contact with the English-language sphere via Scotland, I’ve chosen here in this initial book of essays (the first in a series entitled globally "The Nomad Mind”) to talk about Scotland. But what I say of Scotland, with Scottish references, is, I think, with extrapolation, valid for other places. I have always considered my native place neither as nation nor as region, but as microcosm.
Extracts
Press