'Identity' tends of course to be a term of approval. In the psychologistic terms which inform so much discussion of nationalism, 'identity' is what frustrated nationalities want and nation-states possess. What this myth refers to is presumably the standard type of developmental social structure associated with national-based states (which one may conveniently, if not perhaps aptly, call the normal structure-superstructure relation). — Tom Nairn, "Old Nationalism and New Nationalism", 1975.[1]
As we prepare Celtic Cultural Studies for its first full issue in May 2000, we are in the midst of a significant political period for the contemporary cultures which lay some claim to being thought under the term "Celtic". Following the landslide defeat of the long-serving and constitutionally centralizing Tory administration on the three hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Union on May 1st, 1997, the devolution agenda has flourished throughout the UK. 1999 has seen the long-anticipated emergence of a tax-raising parliament in Scotland and an assembly for Wales. Increasingly, in the case of Scotland at least, speculation is rising about the possibility of devolution leading to full independence, ironically echoing the warnings given by successive Tory governments about the "dangers" of a devolved legislature. Equally, in the other main British territory with a claim to a Celtic history - Cornwall - the first successes of the campaign for Objective One status within the European Union have again suggested an alternative means of solving political problems than through the Westminster UK parliament.
In all three British territories, these events have coincided with significant developments in cultural identification with the idea of Celticity, and with the emergence of new forms of cultural politics in the arts and media. It seems that the almost two decades of Tory direct rule from Westminster (so increasingly unpopular that by the time of the 1997 general election neither Scotland, Wales nor Cornwall returned any Tory MPs at all) has galvanized the so-called "Celtic Fringe" of Britain to assert its ethnic, cultural, and political difference in strident terms.
Most remarkably of all, perhaps, we have witnessed the complexities of the peace process in Northern Ireland, still unresolved to some degree, and still in danger of collapsing into impasse yet again. But we go to press with this editorial in the same week that has seen the acceptance of the terms of the Mitchell Review by the UUP, the appointment of a former IRA Chief of Staff to the position of Education Minister, the first meeting of the new power-sharing devolved assembly which removes 25 years of direct rule by Westminster, and an IRA announcement that an interlocutor has been appointed to negotiate the decommissioning of their weapons. Even one year ago, such historic developments were literally unthinkable.
All of these events have in turn precipitated a reconsideration of many of the traditional political and cultural assumptions within the Anglo-British hegemony itself. In the absence of the constitutional stasis which prevailed from 1707 for almost the next three centuries, not only is the future of the British "periphery" now in question, but so too the assumption of English "centrality", and indeed the whole question of Englishness itself. In the famous words of Salman Rushdie, "the Empire writes back to the Centre..."
In 1975, writing at the time of the devolution debate emerging into its contemporary form, Tom Nairn questioned the assumed dependence of national identity upon the structure of the modern (some would say modernist) nation-state. According to Nairn, the idea of the stateless nation as somehow lacking a fully-fledged political and cultural identity worthy of and respondent to the condition of modernity is in itself tautologously circumscribed and determined by the conceptual apparatus of modernity. In this, cultures which have no political autonomy are viewed as compromised cultures, inevitably drawn into the problematics of identity crisis in the most psychologistic of terms. Questions about the health (or otherwise) of the national psyche seem to come to the fore, as if a lack of political autonomy could create national neuroses or even psychoses within a stateless or sub-state culture. Needless to say, much of the current debates around devolution within the UK have been centred on this kind of pseudo-psychoanalytical discourse, with much breath and ink being spent on the analysis of presumed national paranoias, schizophrenias, and so forth. But expanding upon Nairn's argument, two questions can be put to this state of affairs: firstly, is it at all appropriate to conceive of monolithic national cultures? Secondly, could it ever then be appropriate to invoke sub-Freudian metaphors in order to explain the hypothetical behaviour of diverse masses grouped under a single psychological banner?
Notions of Celticity are notoriously problematic at the best of times (although in reality are no more problematic than questions of any other cultural identification, particularly at the end of the twentieth century). In broad sections of the popular interests in this field, a common assumption of a cultural unity within the Celtic can be found operating on innumerable newsgroups, discussion lists, and websites, as if to provide Nairn's critique with yet more research matter, and in evident contrast to the diverse reality of contemporary Celticity.
Of course, there are many ideas abroad today and in the past as to what actually constitutes Celticity. For many, even today, it implies some genetic context (previously thought under the concept of race), often with a heavy spiritual investment in cultural history. For others, a linguistic determination is central to its definition, while increasingly, it seems, a more broadly culturalist perspective is also emerging, not least within academic circles, which is circumscribed by a certain materialist relativism. Not least within the field of prehistoric archaeology, these issues are deeply contested and have given rise to a great deal of heated debate. The question facing any venture such as Celtic Cultural Studies, then, would seem immanently to be one of defining the proper field of Celticity - a perenially problematic endeavour. However, our project here is not one of definition as such: Celtic Cultural Studies does not aim to "solve" the problematic with a simple and unequivocal answer which will give solace to some and frustration to others. Rather, we aim to broadly represent diverse positions on the question, while continuously subjecting our criteria to sceptical and critical interrogation.
The papers in the current provisional issue of Celtic Cultural Studies might seem to suggest not only a divergence of approach to various problematics within Celticity, but also a range of differing conclusions with regard to these and other questions. Kenneth MacKinnon's sociolinguistic survey of popular constructions of self-identity in the Gàidhealtachd implies the existence of an ethnic allegiance to national, rather than regional cultural identity, despite the linguistic differences between the Scottish regions. Conversely, in explaining his work on British prehistory, Simon James argues against homogeneity, stressing difference rather than group coherence. For David Cooper, there is a certain irony to be derived from the fact that the song traditions of Ulster Unionism can be shown to have distinct commonalities with the Gaeilge repertoire, while Steve Sweeney-Turner concentrates on Lowland representations of the Gàidheal as a cultural Other. Meic Llewellyn, on the other hand, takes his analysis of contemporary Welsh popular music into territories which suggest common agendas outwith the Celtic sphere, not least in connection with the Basque scene, and following Matthew Arnold, C.W. Sullivan stresses the influences of early Welsh mythical writings on more recent English-language fantasy literatures - a theme very much in operation on the increasingly vast number of populist websites claiming a Celtic connection.
Overall, what we hope to achieve with Celtic Cultural Studies is an alternative to such websites, many of which promote views of Celticity which are deeply fantastical, and occasionally even fanatical. Here, we aim to provide diverse critical perspectives on the very notion of the term "Celtic", from a specifically academic, albeit user-friendly, position. Equally, the editorial board feels that a sea-change is due within the discipline of Celtic Studies itself. Traditional academic approaches have tended to be methodologically grounded in empirical and humanist values. Ironically, of course, simultaneous with the rise of "Celtic Studies" in the last few decades, the humanities have also witnessed various rigorous challenges to empiricism and humanism, few of which seem, to date, to have seriously impinged upon the hallowed institutions of the discipline in question. With regard to Celticity, such fields as cultural studies, gender studies and post-colonial theory, and their more hardcore, theoretically-based companions of post-structuralism, deconstruction and postmodernity, would all seem to have a range of important methodological questions (and occasionally answers) to pose within Celtic Studies. Furthermore, the general current mood of interdisciplinarity in the humanities (some even go so far as to talk of an emergent post-disciplinarity) evidently has much to offer a field such as Celtic culture, where frequent cross-disciplinary research has become almost traditional by default. Celtic Cultural Studies aims to incorporate these contemporary themes into it modus operandi, hooking into the fields of critical and cultural theory along with the necessarily attendant challenging of disciplinary boundaries which the methodologies of such fields demand.
In all of these and many other contexts, it cannot be doubted that contemporary cultures are in the midst of massive transformations as the millennium draws to its arbitrary conclusion - and the cultures which claim a Celtic content today are no different in this to any other. Furthermore, central to the vast majority of these transformations, of course, is the medium which we ourselves have chosen to publish in - the internet. A controversial choice for 1999, perhaps, in a climate in which the digital publishing revolution is only just beginning to have a serious and credible impact upon the academy. However, in making this choice, we hope to provide a precedent within humanities publishing, demonstrating the enhanced power of the media involved when compared with traditional academic journal formats. In particular, the internet opens access to academic thought to a literally global audience - something rarely achieved by the academy in the past (albeit with the occasional and thus notable exception). While some within the hallowed halls may see this as risking a certain "dumbing-down" of the intellectual life, Celtic Cultural Studies sees it as a radical and important shift in the very nature of the academic project which is at its best, after all, inherently concerned with the dissemination of thought and the interrogation of received wisdoms.
Steve Sweeney-Turner,
Winter 1999.
Founding Editor (1999-2001)
Internet Editor (2001-2007)
[1] Tom Nairn, "Old Nationalism and New Nationalism", in ed. Gordon Brown, The Red Paper on Scotland (Edinburgh: EUSPB, 1975), p.44.