Neil M. Gunn, Chinua Achebe and the Postcolonial Debate

• Published in: Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature p. 124
• Main Author: McCulloch, Margery Palmer
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 13.06.2011
• Subjects: Anthropology; Artists; Arts; Behavioral sciences; British literature; British studies; Butcher's Broom; Chinua Achebe; Colonial literature; Communications; Communities; Cultural identity; Earth sciences; Economic disciplines; Economics; Employment; Ethnography; Ethnology; European studies; Gaelic-speaking Highlands; Geography; Geomorphology; Group identity; Highlands; Human societies; Igbo people; Irish culture; Irish literature; Irish studies; Labor economics; Literary history; Literary studies; Literary Studies (British and Irish); Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature); Literary Theory and Cultural Studies; Literature; Lowlands; Narratives; Neil Gunn; Novelists; Occupations; Okonkwo; Physical sciences; Postcolonial literature; Psychology; Social groups; Social psychology; Social sciences; Sociology; Things Fall Apart; Topography; Writers
• ISBN: 0748637745; 9780748637744
• DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637744.003.0009

In his exploration of the question of nationhood in his 1991 book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson quotes Hugh Seton-Watson’s attempt to define a nation and his conclusion that ‘all that I can find to say is that a nation exists when a significant number of people in a community consider themselves to form a nation, or behave as if they formed one’ (Anderson 1991:6). This is a definition which fits well with the way the Scots have consistently perceived themselves over the centuries, before and after they lost political sovereignty in 1707 as a result of their voluntary union with