ABSTRACT
Identity and national identity have assumed new significance in contemporary debates. Identities are deemed to be in ‘crisis’ (Mercer 1990), where traditional certainties are contested at the personal, national and global levels. The crisis of national identities is manifested in a number of ways. The political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the break-up of the USSR have led to a ‘search for lost identities’ (Woodward 1997: 17), with the reconstruction of a number of ‘nations’. This fragmentation is also discernible in post-colonial Europe and the USA, where previously marginalised ethnic groups are reasserting their identities. In Western Europe, where the European Community is asserting a ‘European identity’, a number of regionalist and nationalist movements have come to the fore. In this chapter we are particularly interested in the last of these assertions of national identity, as manifested in contemporary cultural and political developments in the Celtic Fringe nation of Scotland.
