Reivindicación de la cultura urbana en 'The Role of Notable Silences in Scottish History', de A.L. Kennedy

Abstract

Demanding recognition of a city culture has become, in the recent decades, a social vindication against the established order. In this sense, A.L. Kennedy’s “The Role of Notable Silences in Scottish History” offers a literary reinterpretation of Scottish national archetypes, often associated with a rural identity detached from the urban reality of Glaswegians. Moreover, one of the main peculiarities in Kennedy's writings is her disposition to articulate individual lives that subvert masculine portrayals of Glasgow. In order to question the cultural unity imposed over the city’s population, I will focus on Foucault’s analysis (1976) of social hierarchies and how they can be subverted to make visible everyday experiences taking place in the city through the plasticity of space (Rose 1999). In addition, I will analyze how bodies internalize social discourse (Grosz 1998) in the short story, as well as how urban practices transform the map of the city into a text (de Certeau 1984).