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The Red Cockatoo: James Kelman and the Art of Committment

What are the political commitments and activism of the writer James Kelman? What is the relationship between his fictional writings, his political and social critical writings and his political activism and campaigning? The book investigates the inter-relationships of these aspects of James Kelman’s work, and examines how their effects and implications play out in society and the city through time and space.

Whereas many previous critiques insist on the incompatibility of his political writings and his fiction, this is the first full-length piece to fully address the question. This work uses an examination of private footage of Kelman’s Glasgow 1990 conference with Noam Chomsky, George Davie and others, an interview with his collaborators, and analysis of political and fictional texts as its sources of evidence.

The book was launched at a two-day conference 'Kelman in the City' at Glasgow University in October 2011 and a paper was delivered on Kelman and De Certeau ‘Poaching Territory in Kelman’s Manor’.

Since that time, the author has presented the work at the Edinburgh International Radical Book Festival (October 2011).

Conference papers followed at the 2012 Peripheral Modernisms Conference, University of London; and Turku Finland in April 2012. A related paper, Rodger J (2012) ‘Poaching Territory in James Kelman’s Manor’ was presented at Abo Akademi University, Finland. Refereed journal articles published after the book was published include ‘The Writer as Tactician: The Everyday Practice of James Kelman’, Scottish Literary Review, vol 4 no. 1, pp151-168. and Rodger, J & Miller, M (2013), ‘Strange Currencies: Margaret Thatcher and James Kelman as Two Faces of the Globalisation Coin’, Scottish Affairs, no.83, Spring, pp73-92. The book was reviewed in The Scotsman by Dr Scott Hames ‘Free Radical’, 7th January 2012, and by Dr Simon Kovesi, ‘This is a Landmark publication’, http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/the-red-cockatoo-I9781905207688/