Abstract
In my paper, I will seek to demonstrate that the self-destruction of the junky in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting redefines the apocalyptic mood that has come to characte- rize post-industrial Scotland. My analysis focuses therefore on the ways in which the junky renews this pessimism into a metaphoric apocalypse, symbolizing both a termi- nation and a revelation. This renewal, I argue, creates a discursive space which allows for new interpretations of the social problems that pervade Scottish society. More precisely, I will show how the junky’s internalization of sectarian violence reveals a different, more reflexive interpretation of Scottish identity.
Résumé
Dans cette étude, je viserai à démontrer que l’autodestruction du junky dans le roman Trainspotting d’Irvine Welsh redéfinit l’image apocalyptique de l’Écosse pos- tindustrielle. À travers la figure du junky, ce pessimisme est renouvelé en une apoca- lypse métaphorique, laquelle symbolise à la fois une termination et une révélation.
J’avancerai que ce renouveau crée un espace discursif dans lequel s’expriment de nouvelles interprétations des problèmes sociaux qui pèsent sur la communauté écos- saise. Plus précisément, je montrerai que le junky internalise la violence sectarienne pour révéler une interprétation réflexive de l’identité écossaise.
Richard S
pavin“In the Cause ay Oblivion”
Self-Annihilation and Apocalypse in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting
Pour citer cet article :
Richard Spavin, « “In The Cause ay Oblivion” : Self-Annihilation and Apocalypse in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting », dans Interférences littéraires, nouvelle série, n° 5, « Le sujet apocalyptique », s. dir. Christophe Meurée, novembre 2010, pp. 133-147.
http://www.uclouvain.be/sites/interferences
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rvine Welsh’s Trainspotting is a rather miserable little book. And yet, the true pessimism of the novel is not the fact that the portrayal of Scotland’s drug culture seems to exacerbate an already depressing post-industrial landscape, but that the ju- nky’s path to oblivion unveils deeper social problems that trump the economic crisis.One of the major differences between Welsh’s novel and Danny Boyle’s 1996 adapta- tion is the role sectarianism plays in Scottish society. If we can define sectarianism as an intolerant and often violent attitude towards cultural and social difference—be it religious, political or philosophical—the term takes on a very precise meaning in the context of Scottish society. Even the most cursory of readings cannot ignore the way the novel polarizes its characters along Catholic/Protestant lines. Trainspotting’s main character is confronted with this sectarianism in his very own family. As his brother is sent to Belfast to control Republican violence, Renton’s anti-imperialism and adhe- rence to distinct social rituals seem to sympathize with the Irish nationalist cause. This aspect of the novel was left out of Trainspotting the film.
Welsh, more so than Boyle, opens the junky’s lifestyle to a wider range of hu- man dysfunction. Rather than being the symptom of the new economic reforms of an Anglicized conservative rule—a renewal of British imperialism—the junky reveals something more inherent to Scottish identity. In a very basic sense, Welsh’s heroin addict is separated from his fellow man because heroin is essentially an “ego thing”:
as Hazel explains so eloquently to Renton, “You just want tae fuck up on drugs so that everyone’ll think how deep and fucking complex you are”1. Renton does not object.
He rejects the world because he sees himself as “better” than it2. Heroin becomes therefore a strange sort of rebellion, a way of dogmatically elevating oneself above the abject of society.
Paradoxically, though, the junky’s lifestyle is at the same time a self-destruction, whose very form speaks to the world it is rejecting. And the way this world is defined is the most important difference between the novel and the film. Welsh insists on the destructive role that sectarianism plays in the parameters of Scottish society, a destruc- tion which, I will argue, is internalized by the junky. This dialectic of the ways in which society and individuals can choose to destroy themselves is not, however, an insignifi- cant relationship. Through Welsh’s representation of the junky’s downward spiral into oblivion, certain revelations are to be considered that speak to the Scottish identity.
1. Irvine WelSh, Trainspotting, London, Vintage, 2004, p. 187.
2. “Why should ah reject the world, see masel as better than it? Because ah do, that’s why.
Because ah fuckin am, and that’s that”(Ibidem).
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COtlandFor Irvine Welsh, the self-destructive behaviour associated with drug pro- blems is sociological. The heroin junky, Welsh writes, is not “isolated and cut off ” but “always takes place within a context”3. The characters’ disintegration of self is often seen, in this way, as the result of the progressive disintegration of Scottish society: be it the crippling economic effects of post-industrialism, the failure of the Scottish referendum in 1979, or the more generalized post-colonial identity crises that we can associate with “Scottishness”4.
Trainspotting’s junky would seem to reflect a society that has collapsed. This is nothing new for the Scottish literary tradition5. Eleanor Bell remarks that Scotland has often been represented in literature as a country in crisis, its image too depen- dent on a problematic historical context6. This attention to contextual significance has created a tendency in Scottish studies to “equate history with literature, so that literature tends to be regarded as the effect of cultural processes, rather than as an in- tervention in those processes [...]”7. The result is that Scottish works must always be referred back to their Scottishness, whose paradigms often remain the same8. Bell’s objection is an important one because it relates the Scottish narrative to different social problems that are not particular to the Scottish condition. Bell follows the lead of Irish philosopher Richard Kearney who is concerned with the future direc- tions of nationalism when placed under pressure by forces such as globalism9.
This attitude towards social context is of particular interest when reading Welsh’s Trainspotting. While the junky is historically situated in 1980’s Edinburgh—a post-industrialized, Thatcherite Scotland—this context is as much subject to repre- sentation as the rest of the novel. The junky is a product of society, but this rela- tionship must be grounded within the novel itself, within the novels own constructs.
Aaron Kelly’s interpretation of the junky as a metaphor for capitalism—an extreme consumer whose abuse will inevitably consume him10 — is interesting but is ulti-
. Elizabeth young, “Blood on the tracks”, in Guardian, 14 August 1993, p. 33.
4. I am referring here to the different concepts of Scottishness that Christie L. March re- fers to in her introduction to Rewriting Scotland. Welsh, McLean, Warner, Banks, Galloway, and Kennedy, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2002. Scottish identity is seemingly divided between the pastoral image of the crofter or the alcoholic, working-class urbanite.
5. Since the onset of industrialization in the early 20th century, the picture of “Scotland”
has dramatically changed. Literary representations have departed from the mythological view of
“Scotland the Brave” to focus more on thegrittiness of the urban landscape. As Christie L. March explains, the Scottish literature of the 20th century no longer perpetuates the legends of William Wallace or Rob Roy as realistic portrayals of Scottish identity. Writers like George Friel, Robin Jenkins and James Kelman insist more typically on the spiritual bleakness and hopelessness of modern Scotland, where narratives from the country’s past have become utterly irrelevant (Ibid., p. 3).
. Eleanor Bell, Questioning Scotland. Literature, Nationalism, Postmodernism, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p. 100.
7. Ibid., p. 2.
8. These paradigms are inherently postcolonial and essentialist: for Craig Beveridge and Ro- nald Turbull, Scotland has been “eclipsed” and “inferiorized” by colonialism. In this way, Scottis- hness is always seen it its unequal exchange with England. This is what Michael Hechter calls the
“peripherality” of Scotland. In his 1975 study Internal Colonialism, Hechter seeks to explore how the
“Celtic fringes of Scotland, Wales and Ireland” were subject to repeated forms of economic disad- vantages due to hegemonic control emanating from the core. See ead., “(Multi)National Identity:
Old and New Histories”, in op. cit., pp. 47-94.
9. Ibid., p. 4.
10. “Consuming heroin therefore provides a telling metaphor for the loss of identity in late capitalist consciousness and the putative pleasures and freedoms of consumer society. [...] This
mately reliant on other discourses, such as the contemporary critique of capitalism offered by Naomi Klein. Even though the metaphor is a telling one, it is construc- ted outside of the text, by the reader, and not by Welsh. Such a reading tends to perpetuate the idea that Scotland is a more socialist nation than the country which governs it. In other words, the novel can be seen as conveying values of anti- conservativism and as being, for that reason, anti-English. The junky, then, stands as the perfect foil for the expression of Scottish identity.
As many literary scholars have pointed out, however, Trainspotting is not a typical expression of Scottishness. It is in fact a critique of Scottish nationalism.
When Renton, the novel’s main character, snarls that the Scots are “the most wret- ched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation”11, we can understand Grant Farred’s argument that Trainspotting rejects any post-colonial de- termination of Scottish identity12. The notion that Scottish society is corrupt becau- se of an English rule is ultimately rejected. The problem is more internalized—or is, at least, presented as such. Welsh’s novel does not just express a dire vision of Scotland’s failure to rule itself, but asserts a categorical attack on what it actually means to be Scottish.
But does Trainspotting “abolish”Scotland as a viable entity altogether13? To conclude that a character’s opinion encompasses the whole of the novel’s message is certainly reductive. The characters may feel and express themselves in a way that is independent of the novelist’s intentions. Renton’s anti-nationalist sentiment does contribute to the novel’s overall “preoccupation”, but it does not define it. Such readings interpret Renton’s thoughts and actions too literally.
Moreover, if we are to interpret Renton’s anti-nationalism as Welsh’s main contention, how are we to understand the character’s related junk habit? When Ren- ton decides to escape Scotland to go to Amsterdam, the Mecca of drug consumption, are we to assume that Welsh thinks that all Scottish people should do the same14? My suggestion is that Welsh’s novel be taken rhetorically: as a provocation. It is meant to sound an alarm to Scottish youth. The characters’ lives dissuade the reader from fol- lowing the same destructive path. This is an essential first impression for understan- ding the rest of the novel, its effectiveness in communicating an anti-drug campaign while still remaining in touch with the culture of late 20th century youth.
My objective is to shed a different light on Welsh’s literary creation that takes into account the author’s particular representation of the social context and its re- lated drug problem. In focusing on this relationship, I will show how Trainspotting is more than a symptomatic expression of the social ills of post-industrial Scotland,
peremptory and totalising drive to consume existence in its entirety further extends heroin’s use as a metaphor in comprehending the mechanics of contemporary capitalism” (Aaron Kelly, Irvine Welsh, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005, pp. 42-43).
11. Irvine WelSh, op. cit., p. 78.
12. Grant farred, “Wankerdom: Trainspotting As a Rejection of the Postcolonial?”, The South Atlantic Quarterly, n° 1, vol. 103, Winter 2004, pp. 215-226.
13. “Trainspotting «abolishes» Scotland as a viable or desirable national entity” (Ibid., p. 225).
14. In this respect, I disagree with Farred’s conclusion that Trainspotting “urges” us to “flee Scotland [...] by any means necessary” (Ibidem). In no way are Renton’s actions supposed to incite admiration amongst Trainspotting’s readers. The novel’s termination may mark the character’s escape from Scotland, but it delineates no progression whatsoever. Renton’s real problem is heroin addic- tion, and the nihilism and solipsism that are associated with it. His betrayal of his friends in order to fund his drug consumption elsewhere proves that he is not yet cured of the disease.
and more of a figurative representation of a coming-to-an-end. With the notion of the apocalypse, I will show how the junky’s destruction of self stands as a me- taphor for the larger social problem of sectarianism. As Scotland polarizes itself in cultural divisions (chemical as well as historical), the junky subjects himself to a self-imposed violence. His apocalypse serves as an important revelation: the enemy of the Scottish condition is not necessarily an oppressive other, but an internal terrorism of the self.
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rainSpOtting andthe apOCalypSeTrainspotting, as we know, is a novel that is sensitive to its context without being a mirror image of it. The novel re-presents a precise historical context and its related drug problems. If we were to read this sociological relationship through the concept of the apocalypse—that is to say, “cultural disjunctures concerned with the
«the end of the world» and thereafter”15—the novel could be read rather negatively:
the novel’s post-industrial background, which is in itself disjunctured, is compoun- ded by a secondary issue, far more threatening in its biological consequences. As well as being in a country without hope, its youth are subject to the advances of a new chemical generation, a world rife with disease and self-destruction.
The idea of social apocalypse is in fact a useful lens through which we can describe the contextual background of Welsh’s novel and, by extension, a certain trend of late 20th century Scottish literature. It is precisely through the concept of apocalypse that Eleanor Bell explains the pessimism associated to the Scottish literary tradition after the social and political failures following the Second-World war. Alasdair Gray’s novel Lanark (1981)16, she explains, represents Scotland as a futuristic wasteland, an image which parallels the political and social predicament of the country. For her, Lanark is “perhaps the most important Scottish novel to have emerged in the last few decades”17, in that it establishes the apocalypse as a typically Scottish “mood”. Bell’s reading of the apocalypse though does not limit the representation to one of social context. She insists on the fact that Gray’s use of apocalypse is not centred within actual, historical disjunctures, but is first and foremost a symbolic manifestation. Hence the apocalypse’s inherent contradic- tion:
On the one hand we can read apocalypse as a reflection of “the end”, as an historical moment of pessimism [...]. Yet on the other, we can read it as an escape from this pervasive mood, where the opportunity of apocalyptic revelation provides the possibility of renewal, which then offers an implicit challenge to such pessimism and political stasis18
This notion of the apocalypse brings us back to the ancient Greek meaning of the word, apokalyptein, which is marked by the condition of “disclosure”19. In this way,
15. John R. hall, Apocalypse. From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity, 2009;
p. 2.
16. Alasdair gray, Lanark, Boston, Mariner Books, 1981.
17. Eleanor Bell, op. cit., p. 99.
18. Ibid., p. 106.
19. John R. hall, op. cit., p. 2.
the apocalypse is seen as a divulgation, or more specifically, as an unveiling of so- mething that everyday life tends to shield. As Hall explains,
Apocalypse as disclosure may unveil aspects of the human condition or pre- sent historical moment[s] that pierce the protective screen, just as a loved one’s death proves traumatic for those who survive, but on a wider scale. Previously taken-for-granted understandings of “how things are” break down. Histori- cally new possibilities are revealed, so awesome as to foster collective belief that “life as we know it” has been transgressed, never to be the same again20.
The concept of apocalypse is thus communicative and discursive more than it is a sociological event. For it is only through discourse that this definition of the apoca- lypse—as something dual, contradictory—can be expressed. This is what is meant by Derrida when he writes that apocalypse in the nuclear age is only something we can “talk and write about... It has never occurred, itself; it is a non-event”21. With respect to Trainspotting, the context of post-industrialism, what is normally referred to when we describe Scottish literature as “apocalyptic”— “the taken-for-granted understandings of how things are”— is interestingly eclipsed by a self-inflicted drug problem. While the social context is still referred to, it is clearly secondary to the destructive forces of heroin addiction.
The novel’s first chapter, “Skag Boys”, presents these new dangers that face the subculture of junkyism. Goagsie, a fellow user, or “associate”, has “goat AIDS now”, but as Jonny Swan the drug dealer says to him, “it isnae the end ay the world, Goagsie. Ye kin learn tae live wi the virus22”. The reader, however, is cautio- ned by Renton’s narration which corrects Swan’s casual approach to a disease his business helps propagate. “It’s easy tae be philosophical when some other cunt’s goat shite fir blood”23. AIDS is omnipresent throughout Trainspotting. As other characters succumb to the virus, it becomes all too clear that Swan is in fact mista- ken. The reader remembers Matty, who, unaware of his HIV infection, eventually dies of toxoplasmosis from cat excrement, and whose funeral is the subject of an entire chapter. Of particular mention also is the inserted novella-like chapter “Bad Blood” which recounts the revenge story of how one AIDS patient kills the man who infected his girlfriend. And of course the novel features the story of Tommy who is a significant character because we are able to follow him from his first encounter with heroin until his last days as an infected user. For him, his drug ad- diction and subsequent seropositivity are seen as the result of his breaking-up with his girlfriend Lizzie. This is significant because drugs are often an added problem to an already dire (emotional, political) situation. In Tommy and Renton’s case, heroin is a means of self-medicating this emotional turmoil, with the irony being that it exacerbates and worsens psychological conflict by creating new problems that shield the old ones.
On the one hand, Trainspotting’s representation of Edinburgh’s drug culture can be seen as an exacerbation of Scotland’s already grave social problems. The novel does effectively point to the ways in which drug use is layered on top of the
20. Ibid., p. 3.
21. Jacques derrida, “No Apocalypse, Not Now (full speed ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)”, in Diacritics, n° 14, vol. 2, 1984, p. 24.
22. Irvine WelSh, op. cit., p. 10.
23. Ibidem.
background of post-industrialism. When Renton pays a visit to his dealer Mike For- rester, he describes in passing the general economic stasis that now describes the Scottish landscape: “Ah cross the dual carriageway and walk through the centre. Ah pass the steel-shuttered units which have never been let and cross over the car park where cars have never parked. Never since it was built. Over twenty years ago”24. What is conveyed through this description is a sense of abandonment, a country where cultural and economic vibrancy is no longer present. The novel’s own title ironically refers to the discrepancy between the old hobby of counting trains, the symbol of modernity, and the new context of post-industrialism, where industrial and manufacturing advances have come to a halt.
On the other hand, these traces of post-industrialism are significantly limi- ted in the text itself. This is why Welsh’s portrayal of post-industrial Scotland is only vaguely “apocalyptic”, if at all. The reader does encounter the odd disdain- ful remark on unemployment or the prime minister, but these social realities are most often the source of ridicule. When Renton, for example, imagines Marga- ret Thatcher, it is outside the realm of political criticism; he uses her image as a strategy to calm himself down in the bedroom, reducing the politician to her general lack of sex appeal25. Throughout the novel, Thatcherism, in terms of its economic policies, is rather atypically left alone. The push for privatisation and the dismantling of the Welfare State—important economic aspects of That- cherism—are minimized through humour: Renton’s scamming of government assistance programs whereby he receives numerous “dole” allowances attack the integrity of Thatcher’s reforms, making it seem as if they do not exist. Also, we must consider Renton and Spud’s recruitment interviews which illustrate to what extent the junky pokes fun at unemployment: the characters choose to be unemployed rather than having it forced upon them. Renton, more so than Spud, purposely sabotages his interview in order to remain unemployed and a full-time junky26.
The apocalyptic mood is in fact transferred from the context of post-indus- trialism to the agency of the junky. This shift creates a different dynamic in the novel that represents the junky as something independent from traditional, post- industrialized configurations of a coming-to-an-end. Its main virtue is in concen- trating the apocalyptic forces of a depressed society into the body of a drug abuser, one that actively chooses to become a host of destruction. In the chapter “House Arrest”, this shifting is at its most eloquent. “House arrest” refers to the strategy employed by Renton’s parents to help him cure his heroin addiction. It is a demons- tration of “tough love” where “quitting cold turkey” is applied in all its vigour.
The results of this strategy lead to a series of horrifically psychedelic sequences of which the apparition of Dawn, an infant who died from junky neglect, is the infa- mous climax. The lead-up to this scene, however, reveals much about Renton’s own psychology and conscience and is of particular interest to us. Following the biting
24. Ibid., p. 18.
25. “Renton stopped feeling her and tried to imagine that he was shagging Margaret Thatcher, Paul Daniels, Wallace Mercer, Jimmy Savile and other turn-offs in order to bring himself off the boil”(Ibid., p. 141).
26. “Well, what ye huv tae dae is tae act enthusiastic, but still fuck up the interview. As long as ye come across as keen, they cannae say fuck all. If we jist be ourselves, n be honest, thill nivir gie either ay us the fuckin joab. Problem is, if ye just sit thair n say nowt tae the cunts, thir straight oantae the dole. Thill say: That cunt jist cannae be bothered” (Ibid., p. 63).
or severing of his own tongue, a new style of narrative voice is liberated, blurting out paradoxes in a seemingly random organization:
cancer death sick sick sick
AIDS AIDS fuck yis aw FUCKIN CUNTS FUCK YIS AW SELF-INFLICTED PEOPLE WI CANCER—NAE CHOICE FIR THAIM DESERVING
AIN FAULT AUTOMATIC DEATH SENTENCE THROWIN AWAY YIR LIFE DOESNAE NEED TAE BE AN AUTOMATIC DEATH SENTENCE DESTROY [....]
BROAT IN OAN YIRSELF.
Sleep. 27
In this semi-conscious tirade, the realization that the problem is self-inflicted, that it has been brought upon oneself, is at the centre of the guilt that Renton involun- tarily expresses throughout the chapter, guilt to which the hallucination of Dawn, the vampire baby, is a clear intensification. The narration translates this sense of imposing guilt through the elements of the tirade that do not fit into the pathology of heroin withdrawal. The word “cancer” appears twice in fragments that do not make sense: cancer is not “self-inflicted”, nor is it “deserving”. Of course, Renton is attributing criticism directed towards himself, the junky, to the innocently sick in an act of displacement. This hypallage creates confusion, but progressively beco- mes clear at the end of the tirade where the displacement is fully deconstructed and, after which, he falls asleep.
In elaborating on the duality of apocalypse as both a termination and a revela- tion in the junky’s path to rock bottom, my paper will view the junky as a metaphor for other negative realities in the novel. If Welsh does not yield to post-industrial pessimism—that is to say, the traditional post-colonial view that blames Scotland’s social problems on a centralized rule in Westminster—, the novel does speak to other social ills that coexist with economic depression and whose interpretation may benefit from the apocalyptic revelation of the junky.
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eCtarianiSmIn order for the junky’s revelation to obtain its full symbolic relevance, so that his self-annihilation speaks to more than just a drug habit, we must explore the ways in which Welsh reconnects the junky to the outside world. This may seem at first a futile exercise in that the junky expresses his self-destruction as a rebellion against contemporary society. We can refer to the now famous “Choose Life” speech which has become an important sound bite for the movie, brilliantly phrased by Ewan McGregor28. One of the most important differences in the novel however is the
27. Ibid., pp. 194-195.
28. “Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit crushing game shows, stuffing
parallel between the junky and sectarianism—a sectarianism that polarizes the po- pulation into Protestant and Catholic camps and that extends into vast political and cultural divides. Football is one of the first examples in the novel that showcases the junky’s implication in society.
As the reader becomes acquainted with the junky’s lifestyle, it becomes evi- dent that there are certain cultural realities that cannot be rejected. In the chapter
“Victory on New Year’s Day”, football is represented as a communal experience, one that must be enjoyed at the stadium, amongst boisterous hooligans and not in the comfort of one’s home. Sick Boy’s character is peremptory on this point: “I fucking detest televised football. It’s like shagging wi a durex oan. Safe fuckin sex, safe fuckin fitba, safe fuckin everything. Let’s all build a nice safe wee world around ourselves, he mocked, his face contorting”29. Sick Boy’s likening of televised foot- ball to a “nice safe wee world” insists on a breaking down of the game’s true spec- tatorship, which for him must be collective and violent, a sort of tribal experience.
The analogy of “shagging wi a durex oan” refers furthermore to our civilized, modern approach to sex, which distances ourselves from our authentic, procreative nature. Watching football on TV is more than just a picking up of a few “bad habits doon in London”. It is an affront to Scottish identity30. This is something on which everyone agrees, even Renton, which is unusual, as the two characters are normally
“always slagging each other off ”31.
Even Spud, whose match tickets are “good for nothing except future roach material”32, cannot reject the importance of football when it comes to the most banal instances of conversation. When he encounters an acquaintance by the name of Ricky Monaghan, Spud is forced to express himself in the terms of their local football club, Hibernian, of which he knows very little. And so he attempts to par- take in the critiquing of the club’s manager: “Yeah... Miller... we need a new cat in the manager’s basket” 33. But as he lets the reader know, he is ignorant to who the manager even is, let alone the names of the players in the team. His last attempt at football banter focuses on other Scottish teams to which Hibernian is competitively opposed: “Yeah, right man. Durie. Ah remember that cat scorin a cracker against Celtic. Or wis it Rangers? Same thing really though man, when ye think aboot it li- kesay... kinday different sides ay the same coin, ken?”34 Ricky shrugs unconvinced.
What interests us in this last part of Spud’s reasoning is an inherent error in the character’s logic. Spud is trying to reduce the politics of Scottish football to one of “Us” versus “Them”, meaning any team that is not ours is the enemy. This is not
fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye’ve produced. Choose life” (Ibid., p. 187).
29. Ibid., p. 42.
30. According to George Farred and others, it is through culture and not politics that Scot- tish nationalism is asserted. “Scotland is a uniquely constituted polity in which «civil society [is]
divorced from political nationalism,» producing a powerful identity rooted in the Kirk (Scottish Presbyterianism), Celtic paraphernalia, the Scottish brogue, and the intense animosity displayed at England-Scotland football games (according to James Kellas, Scottish «working class nationalism is generally related to culture and football, not politics»)” (George farred,“Wankerdom: Trainspotting As a Rejection of the Postcolonial”, art. cit., p. 217).
31. Irvine WelSh, op. cit., p. 42.
32. Ibid., p. 49.
33. Ibid., p. 122.
34. Ibidem.
necessarily a poor tactic. But to put Celtic F.C. on the same level as the Rangers F.C is a fallacy. As Spud’s narration continues, “Ricky, Monny, Richard Monaghan, fellow Fenian freedom fighter, to be sure, to be sure [..]”35, it opens the Scottish football culture to the issue of sectarianism. The term “Fenian” refers to The Fenian Bro- therhood, a Republican (Irish nationalist) physical-force movement founded in 1858, active in the 19th century in Britain and the United States. Today the term is applied to Catholics by loyalists and is in the novel often used as an insult towards Hibernian F.C. supporters. This is evident in the chapter “Victory on New Year’s Day” when Stevie gets taunted and beaten up by the Hearts F.C. supporters, who call him “Hibby bastard” and “Fenian cunt” before punching him in the mouth36. The fallacy which Spud commits then is ignoring the cultural bond between Hibernian and Celtic. In fact, the two clubs share a common ancestry, being both founded by Irish Catholic immigrants and whose team colours, green and white, symbolize their attachment to Ireland. Celtic and Rangers are therefore not “two sides of the same coin”, because this would deny Scottish Football its alliances and necessary tribalism.
For Renton, his adherence to Hibernian has always coexisted with a sense of opposition, where violence and fanaticism are necessary conditions of supporting the team. In fact, football helps to explain the fundamental differences between Renton and his brother, Billy. At a very young age, Renton supported Hibernian, while his brother Billy was a Hearts fan. This divide seems to determine their future political positions.
Billy Boy, Billy Boy. Ah remember you sitting oan toap ay us. Me helplessly pinned tae the flair. Windpipe constricted tae the width ay a straw. [...] Who’s the best team, you’d ask us, crushing, digging or twisting harder. No respite for me until ah sais: Hearts. Even after we’d fucked yous seven-nil on New Year’s Day at Tynecastle, you still made me say Hearts. Ah suppose ah should have been flattered that an utterance from me carried more weight than the actual result37.
Renton remembers this childhood memory at his brother’s funeral. Billy, as it turns out, joins the British Army and ends up getting killed in Northern Ireland. His representation as a cruel, older brother who forces the weaker one to renounce his loyalties and pledge allegiance to the “Protestant” football club is not an insi- gnificant memory. The childhood dispute foreshadows the ideological differences between the two brothers in adulthood. While Renton claims to have no illusions about freedom fighters38—about the validity in their call to arms and terrorist vio- lence—it is clear that he chooses to separate himself from the unionist ideology with which his brother and father’s side of the family are associated. Renton expres- ses sentiments that seem to sympathize with Ireland’s anti-imperialism and that go against his Glaswegian, Protestant side of the family. This explains his disgust when he sees his brother’s coffin:
Ah cannae feel remorse, only anger and contempt. Ah seethed when ah saw that fuckin Union Jack oan his coffin, n watched that smarmy, wimpy cunt ay 35. Ibid., p. 123.
36. Ibid., p. 49.
37. Ibid., p. 210.
38. Ibid., p. 221.
an officer, obviously oot ay his depth here, trying tae talk tae ma Ma. Wor- se still, these Glasgow cunts, the auld boy’s side, are through here en masse.
They’re fill ay shite aboot how he died in the service ay his country n aw that servile Hun crap39.
Throughout this whole chapter, Renton is vehemently opposed to the Protestant or “Hun” side of his family who support Britain’s militaristic control in Northern Ireland. Even if Renton does not explicitly pledge allegiance to the IRA, it is his football club’s traditions that help associate Renton and other Hibs’ supporters to the Irish nationalist cause. Here, we must refer to the football songs that are chan- ted before heading to Easter Road for the Hibernian vs Hearts match:
Oh fa-thir why are you-hoo so-ho sad Oan this fine Ea-heas-ti-her morn
Whe-hen I-rish men are prow-howd ah-hand glad Off the land where they-hey we-her born Aw-haun be-ing just a la-had li-hike you I joined the I-hi-A-har-A — provishnil wing!40
This is “The Boys of the Old Brigade” which is an Irish Republican folk song about the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). The “Easter Rising”—
to which refers “On this fine Easter morn”— was an insurrection that took place in Ireland during the Easter Week of 19141. As Jennifer M. Jeffers has shown, there is an important assemblage of discourses in Trainspotting that presents Scot- tish identity as being intimately linked to the Irish. This is particularly manifest in Renton’s “hybrid” identity. But Spud (Danny Murphy) too is of Irish des- cent, hence his “Republic of Ireland football strip” which he proudly wears when travelling to England42. The two characters and their related Hibernian football supporters are polarized in the novel, their Irishness helping to further delineate on which side of sectarianism the characters of Trainspotting are situated. But this sectarianism becomes even more interesting in the way it relates to the characters’
heroin addiction. When Renton jokes that his drug problems may be related to Hibernian’s poor performances over the eighties43, we must ask what the possible relationship is between sectarianism, so inherent to the novel’s representation of football, and the junky’s self-inflicted apocalypse.
39. Ibid., p. 218.
40. Ibid., p. 46.
41. As Padraig O’Malley explains, “The Easter Rising of 191 was mythic. Planned in secret by a small cabal in the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood), itself a small cabal in the Sinn Fein Volunteers, it was designed to fail, to be a blood sacrifice that would redeem the Irish nation and rouse it to action. [...] Ill prepared, ill equipped, without any apparent plan of action, they were more like the occupants of besieged garrisons ready to resist assault rather than the vanguard of a national uprising. [...] Outrage at the Volunteers turned into outrage at the authorities, and those who had been executed became martyr-heroes. «Every student of the Rising, reluctantly or othe- rwise, has reached the conclusion that it was a cardinal event—a cardo rerum, a hinge or turning point of fortune, after which all recourse to Home Rule on the part of the English government became impossible», the historian George Dangerfield writes in the Damnable Question” (Padraig o’Malley, Biting at the Grave. The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair, Boston, Beacon Press, 1990, pp. 13-14).
42. Irvine WelSh, op. cit., p. 326.
43. Ibid., p. 150.
4. p
OlitiCizing thejunky:
Self-
annihilatiOnandSeCtarianiSmAs we know, there is a palpable conflict between Renton and his father’s side of the family that Billy’s funeral brings to the forefront. On one hand, Renton’s nar- rative exposes a strong anti-imperialist interpretation of his brother’s death, on the other, Renton is also anti-nationalist, explaining that he has “no illusions about [the IRA] as freedom fighters”. For him, “they were cunts as well” because “the bastards made [his] brother intae a pile ay catfood”44. It is not possible therefore to say that Renton is nationalist or unionist because he is very clearly neither. The hatred that he expresses towards his father’s family is intensified by their mere presence, and not by any pro-nationalist republican ideology.
What Renton does take a clear position on is sectarianism. In his eyes, both sides of the conflict are at fault, and he directs his criticism towards their belief in the virtues of sectarian violence. On multiple occasions, he ridicules the ritual of turning dead soldiers into war heroes. He objects to the reader when his family tries to do the same to Billy. “Billy was a silly cunt, pure and simple. No a hero, no a martyr, jist a daft cunt”45. It should be mentioned however that this seemingly negative depiction of Renton’s brother is not an attack, but rather an apology, a posthumous reunion with his brother. Towards the end of the chapter, Renton is unable to finish his sentences. “Aw Billy. Aw fuck sakes. Ah didnae”46. The lack of punctuation, which almost seems like a mistake on the page, a style that has come to characterize Welsh’s writing, attests to the attachment and fraternal bond between the two very different siblings.
More specifically, though, the last few words of the chapter clarify, not wi- thout irony, the similarities between Renton and Billy’s life choices. After Renton has sex with his brother’s pregnant and widowed wife, he decides to shoot up, because, as he says, “every cause needs its martyrs [...]”47. Like Billy who chooses to die for the cause of imperialism, Renton decides to shoot up in “the cause ay oblivion”48. This parallel between the two brothers can be linked to a previous scene in the novel where Renton is telling Spud how his brother used to think that being in the army was a lot like being a junky, except “thit ye dinnae git shot at sae often bein a junky. Besides, it’s usually you that does the shootin”49. The analogy does not seem overly convincing at this early stage in the novel. The play on words
“to shoot someone” which is equated with “to shoot up” does evoke however the strange proximity with which violence is related to the two conditions. If the British soldier is largely shot at, the object of violence, the junky “shoots” himself, as both the object and subject of violence.
Renton’s interpretation of heroin addiction as a form of martyrdom may be read, it would seem, in one of two ways. His comments may signify a sarcastic re- cognition of the unionist’s tendency to transform their dead into holy martyrs. To associate such a consecration with a heroin addiction is of course insulting to his
44. Ibid., p. 221.
45. Ibid., p. 209.
46. Ibid., p. 222.
47. Ibidem.
48. Ibidem.
49. Ibid., p. 133.
father’s family, in line with Renton’s general attitude towards unionist ideology. On the other hand, Renton’s self-proclaimed martyrdom could help to explain heroin’s symbolism with respect to larger social processes. If we were to interpret Renton’s self-destruction in the first way, his martyrdom is meaningless: his self-sacrifice, in the cause of oblivion, is an inherently nihilistic act; a self-annihilation which ac- celerates life’s natural course to nothingness. This reading would deny the junky’s place in his society and nullify his criticism of its sectarianism. But this is not the way Welsh presents the heroin addict, for the junky is opposed to the forms of hatred and polarization that are so prevalent in Scottish society50. This is what fuels Renton’s disgust of both imperialism and nationalism—it is also what motivates his next hit. If martyrdom for the Unionists can “fuel thir pointless anger, git thum bought drinks in pubs, and establish thir doss-bastard credibility wi other sectarian arseholes”51, Renton’s junky martyrdom stands in direct opposition. “Every cause needs its martyrs” is less of a sarcastic insult towards the unionist members of Ren- ton’s family than a veritable argument which redirects sectarian logic against itself.
Trainspotting’s junky can be seen in this way as a type of protestation against sectarianism. And it is the form in which his protestation takes—self-destruction—
that is of particular significance. As we have seen above, Welsh’s junky is culturally linked to Irish nationalist values; his cultural heritage seems to have already pre- determined his situation along sectarian lines. Nevertheless, my contention is that the representation of the junky’s heroin addiction is formulated in a way which deconstructs unionist ideology along with the idea of nationalism. Certain narrative strategies that relate the junky’s desire to self-destruction are satiric in origin and seem to diffuse nationalist mythology.
If we are to assume that the junky’s self-inflicted violence is a sort of political statement, we must compare it to specific references in the novel that may inform the junky’s actions. In other words, against which social reality does the heroin ad- dicts destruction of self take on significance? In order to clarify this reading, we must return to an important scene in the novel: the moments leading up the fight that oppose Spud and his Uncle Dode with the group of unionist skinheads.
Wir in the vicinity ay some unsound lookin cats. Some ur skinheids, some urnae. Some huv Scottish, others English, or Belfast accents. One guy’s goat a Skrewdriver T-Shirt oan, another’s likesay wearin an Ulster is British toap. They start singin a song aboot Bobby Sands, slaggin him off, likesay. Ah dunno much aboot politics, but Sands tae me, seemed a brave dude, likes, whae never killed anybody. Likesay, it must take courage tae die like that, ken?52
The reference to Bobby Sands is an important one. He was the first person to die in the hunger strikes during the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the 1980s. Sands
50. Anti-sectarianism is particularly manifest in Spud’s character. Welsh presents Spud as a sort of enlightened junky. This is certainly evident in Spud’s narrated chapter “Na Na and other Nazis”, when he has to defend his mixed-race uncle Dode from a band of skinheads (Ibid., p. 127).
We should also recall Spud’s defence of animals when Renton was about to shoot a squirrel (Ibid., p. 159.), as well as his defence of Renton’s vegetarianism as a morally sound way of life (Ibid., p. 272).
51. Ibid., p. 221.
52. Ibid., p. 127. We will explain in depth Bobby Sands significance in this citation, but the reference to Skrewdriver insists on the racist, unionist aspect of the characters’ image. Skrewdriver is probably the most famous punk/neo-Nazi band to have come out of Britain in the late 70s through to the early 90s. Hence the chapter’s title “Na Na and other Nazis”.
led the 1981 hunger strike in order to oppose Thatcher’s refusal to grant political sta- tus to imprisoned freedom fighters. Spud’s admiration for Sands is interesting in that it informs the reader on what he considers bravery and effective non-violent protest.
Much has been written about the Irish prisoners ‘resistance techniques’ at the Maze/Long Kesh prison. Laurence McKeown has pointed out that the prisoners’
desperation escalated to hunger strikes when other means of protestation were deemed ineffective, such as the “blanket” or the “no-wash protest”. Between 1976 and the beginning of the hunger strikes in 1980, hundreds of protesting Republi- can prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms in protest at the denial of “special category status”53. Instead, in order to assert their status, prisoners chose to wear their prison-issue blankets. The “blanket protest” ultimately became a “no-wash”
and then a “dirty protest” in which prisoners smeared the walls of their cells with their own excrement.
Given the assemblage of discourses that link Welsh’s novel to the context of Northern Ireland, we must explain the ways in which the junky’s self-annihilation, or apocalypticism, relate to the resistance techniques of republican prisoners. Certain instances in the novel may reveal themselves as creatively informed or inspired by the different protests that led to the hunger strikes in the Maze/Long Kesh prison. In one of the more comical chapters in the novel, “Traditional Sunday Breakfast”, Davie, a friend of the “Leith boys” (Tommy, Renton and their mates) wakes up in a pile of his own mess: “Yes. I woke up in a strange bed in a strange room, covered in my own mess. I had pished the bed. I had puked up in the bed. I had shat myself in the bed”54. After realizing that he is at a friend’s house he takes the dirty sheets downstairs where a tug-of-war ensues between Davie and his friend’s mother who insists on washing them herself. Eventually the sheets fly open and “a pungent shower of skittery shite, thin alcohol sick, and vile pish [splash] out across the floor”55.
Robert A. Morace interprets this scene as an example of Rabelaisian physica- lity, where Welsh’s brand of grotesquery implies the “damage done [to] the Scottish body: physical, psychological, and economic”56. In other words, the scene exempli- fies post-colonial resentment towards a history of British policy that continues to undermine Scotland’s cultural and economic interests. On the contrary, I argue that the chapter itself insists on the damage done to the Scottish body by the Scottish body.
For it is on this agency which Welsh insists when characterizing the junky lifestyle:
apocalypse is, as we recall, reflexive, “brought on by the self ”. Therefore it is not Thatcher who forced Davie to consume “the space-cake and the speed, the acid and the dope, but most of all the drink, the bottle of the vodka that [he] downed”57 before going to the pub and which led to the emptying of his bowels in someone else’s bed.
There are certainly many differences between the Irish prisoners’ resistance techniques and the self-sacrificial aspects of Welsh’s novel. For example, the scato-
53. See Laurence McKeoWn, Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners 1970-2000, Belfast, Beyond the Pale Press, 2001.
54. Irvine WelSh, op. cit., p. 92.
55. Ibid., p. 94.
56. Robert A. Morace, Trainspotting: A Reader’s Guide, New York, Continuum, 2001, pp. 34- 35. 57. Irvine WelSh, op. cit., p. 92.
logical in the “dirty protest” is fully assumed by the prisoners who refuse to empty their chamber pots in retaliation to Margaret Thatcher’s intransigence. Whereas, in Trainspotting, Davie is completely mortified by the sight of his own filth. The
“brown flecks of [his] runny shite” on “Mr Houston’s glasses, face and white shirt [...] sprayed across the linoleum table and his food”58 is a site that he cannot bear.
“I just want out of here”59, Davie says, as if his “dirty protest” creates a feeling of imprisonment rather than a space of empowerment.
In the chapter “House Arrest”, Renton is also unable to morally assume his heroin withdrawal as he progressively hits rock bottom. He is riddled with guilt as he faces the consequences of the junky’s destructive lifestyle. Withdrawal becomes the site of apocalyptic revelation: his “martyrdom” was nothing more than an in- ternalization of violence, hence the repetitious “death death death” of his hallu- cination. Even if the junky rejects society, its abjectness, the act of self-sacrifice is demystified, itself an abject rebellion. This is why Trainspotting cannot be seen as a promotion of drug culture, because the novel does not illicit any desire to repeat the actions of its characters. Ultimately, Renton’s drug problem is viewed as the result of his association with “the laddie Murphy”, Spud, “because [he] is a lazy, scruffy bastard, who’s naturally spaced out and seems as if he’s oan drugs, even when he’s clean”60. Despite the virtues that Renton may associate to his chemically enhanced rebellion, no one sees him as “deep” or “complex”, nor is he perceived as better than the world he seeks to reject. In fact, they all treat him “like a simple cunt”61. This is what the junky learns after the pain of withdrawal, his failure.
If we are to return to Spud’s admiration of Bobby Sands, the irony is that his hunger strike and ultimate death was, in reality, a violent protest. This is something that Spud does not fully comprehend but to which Renton’s apocalyptic realization speaks loudly. The choice to kill oneself in an act of protestation does not eradicate the presence of violence. In terms of sectarianism, the Us versus Them divide is internalized, redirected towards the self. In the words of Terence McSwiney, ano- ther mythical Irish hunger striker who died after a seventy-three-day fast, “It is not those who inflict the most but those who suffer the most who will conquer”62. This is what Huey Newton would call “revolutionary suicide”: the belief that it is better to oppose the forces that would drive you to self-murder than to endure them63. It is an event conducive to mythology, one that demonizes the adversary while justi- fying the dead, thus galvanizing new generations of sectarian violence which aim to avenge the death of their martyrs. It is precisely this ideology that the junky’s revelation dispels through the self-destruction of heroin addiction.
This being said, the junky’s revelation does not alleviate any sense of pessi- mism that can be attributed to the Scottish condition. Not all revelations are positi- ve ones. But this does not mean that the junky’s apocalypse is inherently negative. In terms of the Scottish identity, there is something to be gained through the junky’s renewed sense of pessimism. In post-industrialized or post-colonial conceptions of
58. Ibidem.
59. Ibidem.
60. Ibid., p. 198.
61. Ibidem.
62. Cited in Padraig o’Malley, op. cit., pp. 26-27.
63. See Huey P. neWton, Revolutionary Suicide, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 197.
Scottish identity, Scottishness is fundamentally oppositional in nature. This means that the Scottish identity is not conceived of with respect to itself but always with respect to its “peripherality”. However, when a national identity is considered in relation to its similarities with other cultures—like the relationality between Scot- land and Ireland—a better understanding of identity can take place. The Scottish identity that the junky is able to express may indeed be a miserable one, but it is an identity that is not introverted or mystified by its own minority, but that gains awareness of itself through its similarity with others.
In his book, Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair, Padraig O’Malley admits to having expressed an anger towards the Irish hunger strikes that we can compare to the revelation of the junky in post-industrial, post- colonial Scotland.
But there is no history now, just lies, distortion and sham. And it is to this that the sad and awful death of Bobby Sands will add. He is myth now, part of an elaborately cultivated contrivance about the past to conceal an ugliness about ourselves that we [the Irish] dare not face; it is the Irish who are doing the damage to the Irish. We are our own oppressors64.
O’Malley criticizes Irish history as being based on lies, because, for him, none of it actually speaks to Irishness, but only to its conflicts. It is a history of adversity where the enemy’s difference ultimately determines the specificity of Irish culture, something Sands’ martyrdom threatens to perpetuate into the future. For Welsh, the junky is at risk of not even having a future because the anger he harbours towards the world is ultimately reflexive and backfiring. His alienation is thus comparable to the tragic emotional alienation of a young Sands as he prepares to meet the empire with, in his own words, “enough hate to topple the world”65.
Richard Spavin
University of Toronto
64. Padraig o’Malley, op. cit., p. 5.
65. Irvine WelSh, op. cit., p. 46.
