The
Education-Knowledge Nexus in the Service of Social Cohesion: Towards the
Community Based on Love and Trust
To be different in the context of
Rourke’s novel is another NO to the
confusion obscuring the difference between facelessness and solidarity.
Bewildering cacophony is noise in the communication channel. When it occurs,
the remix devises means of resistance to distorted communication flow. This
entails an awareness about an incapacity to grasp the totality of it.
Paradoxically, the realization of such a limit enables an insight into at least
two things. One is that it might be indicative of the limits of human power.
The other builds on the former. It is the avenue such an acknowledgement opens
up: it
inspires the remix as a form of peaceful/peaceable resistance
against noise in the communication channel, against the logic of reckless
self-centeredness and hostility of nihilo-cannibalist culture.
Embracing humility and rebuking self-grandeur
reasserts both the limit and the greatness of the human, simultaneously
engendering fruitful communication within the community based on humanness:
“If this
sounds unpleasantly slavish and self-denying, it is only because we forget that
if others do this as well, the result is a form of reciprocal service which
provides the context for each self to flourish. The traditional name for this
reciprocity is love” (Eagleton 2007, 91).
Little of such reciprocity seems to be the
currency the gang of fellow-chancers use in Irvine Welsh’s Skagboys (2012).
A prequel to the celebrated Trainspotting (1993), the novel in
retrospect casts light on the narrative about junk euphoria endemic in
Edinburgh youth of the 1980s and 1990s, as captured in Welsh’s fictitious
accounts. The reader is exposed to the story that requires from one a specific
kind of suspension of belief.
One is supposed to reinvent the characters
whose destinies are allegedly known. Nevertheless, anew they can be read. The
Mark Renton of Skagboys has an air of vulnerability hardly comparable
with the junk-induced immunity to the harsh edges of the world that he develops
in Trainspotting. By contrast, Sick Boy is revealed in a fully fledged
form of both his natural cunningness and addiction-based survival skills. For
example, in order to ensure horse supply
for himself, he, having gotten Maria Anderson hooked to the drug, forces
her to prostitute herself. In a psychedelic scene of succession of intercourses
with local clients, she has an obfuscated vision of Wi Dickson, whom she
believes to be responsible for her father’s death. The encounter is a phantasm
within which Simon Williamson penetrates her, while transforming into a
nightmare imagery of the man who caused her descent to the chasm of addiction
and prostitution (Welsh 2012, 223-4). The sinister aspect of the character of
Sick Boy seems to be maximized, but, at the same time, played off against its
caricatured version. Were it viewed through an ironic filter, his darkly
unscrupulous, unselective means of obtaining skag and a trainspotter’s
mischievous camaraderie might seem to acquire an almost childlike aura. Well,
almost.
Further, Begbie does not dominate the scene as
he does in Trainspotting. A
considerable portion of the novel is void of Frank’s presence, notably
due to drug related charges and consequential imprisonment. This sounds not
much discordant with the depiction of the character of Begbie, the
trainspotter, unlike the strangely serene, almost aloof character in some
scenes in the prequel. An angular lyrical streak is interwoven in his
conversation on the bench with Alison. The female character in question emerges
in the novel as almost diametrically opposite to the heroin-ravished desperado she
is being transformed into, as the novel progresses and as accentuated in Trainspotting. Having lost her mother to
cancer, her baby to a death in the haze of drugs ruins, and all her dreams to
the desertlike life of a buzz seeker, in Skagboys, she is still sensitized
to the vibrancy of poetry and its potentials to respond against social ills.
Contrary to these divergences, the character of
Spud is suggestive of a continuity of sorts. If any, oscillations in this
character are mainly reflected in the degree of addiction. His vernacular is
impossible to mistake for somebody else’s. Danny’s reactions are childlike
despite the overshadowing murkiness resulting from the chemically altered
biochemistry.
The first part of the book focuses on Mark
Renton, a youngster from Leith, who comes to Aberdeen partly in search for
higher education, partly to experience a different setting, meet different
people, and exercise his right to independence. Partly, Rents is just trying to
escape the gloominess of the repetitive, indistinct Edinburgh days. To an
extent he does, albeit only by replacing them with Aberdeen everyday equally
void of excitement. Irvine Welsh, Skagboys:
But the chaos ay Edinburgh
reminded me ay how much ah’d grown tae like the ritual ay ma life in Aberdeen.
It made us realise that ma free-spirit pretensions were bullshit. In reality ah
saturated ma days wi routine, until it pissed us off tae the point that ah wis
compelled tae subvert it wi a dramatic break. A skag binge helped. Here,
though, ah had Fiona, ma studies and ma walks. And the reason the trips back
home had lessened: ah’d hunted doon a source ay gear. (Welsh 2012, 163-4)
Mark’s college days start with a modest
academic ambition, considerable enjoyment in obtaining knowledge, and
enchantment by emotional and erotic intensities of the relationship with Fiona,
herself a student at the same institution of higher education. Alas, the
modesty of the academic ambition is rather rapidly degrading. A reasonable
hunger for cognizance is being, if not satiated, then certainly obscured. His
investment in what seemed to be a romance flourishing into a more-or-less
steady relationship, if not commitment, is being hard-headedly sabotaged by his
own affinity to subvert a possibility to bond and to practice the gift.
Instead
of conspiring against the onset of increasingly heavy heroin intoxication,
Rents is decidedly commitment-resistant. The sweeping indulgence experienced
with Fiona scares him. He would rather spend his time with Don, the dealer, and
Donna, a prostitute. She enables him access to bodily sensations divested of
intercourse. Rather, she insists on allowing him to give her oral sex, or,
expertly dubbed, cunnilingus, as Si enlightens benighted Rent Boy (Welsh 2012,
185). The detail is evocative of the scene in which Mark has an affair with
Charlene while previously working on a ship, having accepted state supported
immersion in the luxury of welfare and the job provided for him and the
acquaintances. Unlike Donna, the prostitute, Charlene wouldn’t permit him to
cunnilingus her. She insists on intercourse, emphasizing the character of their
relationship being not that of lovers: “It’s just a shag” (Welsh 2012, 335).
On the other hand, Don provides him with a
pleasure of a different nature, before he disappears causing Renton’s decision to
quit college, leave his girlfriend, and go back to his native Edinburgh to
start a life of a full time junkie. Instead of bonding, he will be able to
immerse himself in the destructiveness of drug misuse, thus concealing the
obstructiveness of the commitment-phobic side of himself. He will indulge in
the fakeness of the communal spirit available to him in a distorted form of
union with his mates in petty crimes to support the ever accruing habit. Only,
he will later, in Trainspotting, call them acquaintances. He won’t be
happy and he might even know it. But, he won’t be deluded by the deceitful
glamour of success, prosperity, prospects for a matrimonial farce, and the
complicity in advancing the monstrosity of commodity driven social relations in
the company of so called friends. Or, so heroin speaks.
As is the withdrawal from university, so is
Mark’s return to his home town suggestive of the tone of the novel’s tracking
the Trainspotting themes. At the same time, these diverse aspects
of the retro-unfolding narrative reveal
the UK social realities amidst the erosion of the mythologized imperial
grandeur underpinning the microcosms full of elusive orbits, deceptive glow,
uncanny class divisions, weird sense of ethnicity, economic recession in
disguise, power relations along cultural divides of the indefinable character,
the notion of wealth whose semblance with any abstract concept is worthy of
philosophizing as much as it calls for economic strategizing, the advent and
the spread of the AIDS pandemic, subcultures whose vivacious urbanity creates
defiantly nonconformist responses against the calamities of valueless
economically minded cultural realities.
The impasse of the hypocrisy of the
officialdom, its complicity in the proliferation of illicit use of drugs,
criminalization of both drugs and certain demographics, and the impact of such
policies on the semi-atrophied social strata, slumberous and nearly immobilized
by the insufficiency of choices, might be implied in the following critical
account:
-- On the one hand the
government are encouraging the authorities to come down hard on drug use, on
the other they’re acknowledging the growing problem of heroin addiction in the
community. So there is the strong chance
of a custodial sentence if you don’t cooperate with this rehab programme. Your
parents are outside, and have been informed of the situation. What do you want
to do?
Decisions,
decisions.
-- Ah’ll
sign up. (Welsh
2012, 395 original emphasis)
By collectively signing up, for the lack of an
alternative to the detoxification offered, they demonstrate willingness to
cooperate with socially designed assistance. The three week program is followed by a several hour
aftermath preceding a relapse. About the counselor at St Monans, whom the gang
mockingly call Skinny-Specky, Mark notes in his diary kept during the rehab
program. He presents a view that reinstates the core of culturally constructed
collisions:
Skinny-Specky made some comment about salt in porridge (she took
sugar in hers) and we playfully derided her English habits. She insisted that
she was Scottish, but Ted and Skreel told her that posh Scots were, to all
intents and purposes, the same as the English. I mentioned that there were
actually working-class people in England, and social class supplanted
nationality as the parameters of our discussion. (Welsh 2012, 413 original
emphasis)
Having outlined the intricacies of the
class-nation myth, Rent Boy continues with writing his journal further
disambiguating kierkegaardian vertiginous anxiety loaded with free-spirited
bullshiteering. In one of the entries, he will write in response to the notice
on the plaque outside the Scottish Parliament evoking barely decipherable
oscillations along the center-periphery divide, all the while readdressing the
thoughts about the question of supremacy: “ENGLAND
EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO THEIR DUTY” (Welsh 2012, 473 original emphasis). About
this, the character ruminates: ”We stopped
to look at it, both of us flabbergasted as to how blatantly and effortlessly
fucked up Scotland could be” (Welsh 2012, 473 original emphasis). Like in Trainspotting,
where Scottish national idiom is defined by Tommy via Iggy Pop in the
vocabulary of polytoxicomania as the vernacular of the oppressed, Skagboys goes on to specify the
profoundly transnational stand:
If being Scottish is about
one thing, it’s aboot gitting fucked up, Renton explains, working the needle
slowly into his flesh. – Tae us intoxication isnae just a huge laugh, or even a
basic human right. It’s a way ay life, a political philosophy. Rabbie Burns
said it: whisky and freedom gang thegither. Whatever happens in the future tae
the economy, whatever fucking government’s in power, rest assured we’ll still be pissin it up and shootin shit
intae ourselves, he announces, pulsing with glorious anticipation as he sucks
his dark blood back into the barrel, then lets his ravenous veins drink the
concoction. (Welsh 2012, 355 original emphasis)
Needless to say, this is undoubtedly a
commentary on the complexity of the merciless socio-economic circumstances,
detrimental for sound countercultural responses, causing social apathy,
dissolving communal cohesion, detrimental for the sense of individuality, and
impairing social relations and human relationships by and large. Irvine Welsh, Skagboys:”The rat race n that. Stressed
if yuv goat a joab, stressed if ye huvnae. Everybody oot fir themselves, at
each other’s throat n daein each other doon. Nae solidarity nae mair, ken? The
work is ower, it’s aw gaun, n thaire’s nae particular place tae go” (Welsh
2012, 340-1).
But, go they do. Into the adventure through the
cityscape known, however revealed in a phantasmagoric haze of
sickness-exhausted bodies and minds. Completely unaware that a contingent of
brown is being transported towards the city from another part of the country,
Mark is awoken to the reality of the morning following the night spent with
Hazel. Still sound asleep, her presence is a reminder of safety. No, they did
not have sex—is what Mark realizes with a relief reconfirming Hazel’s
unthreatening symbiotic friendship. They could not have sex—it is the contract
between the victim of incest and of the heroin-crushed libido. Having realized
there is nothing worrying about the previous night, Mark focuses on the
quandary caused by the increasingly aggressive withdrawal. Sick Boy wakes up to
the same reality. Only, in contrast to the routine calls to Swanney, Seeker, or
whoever could procure heroin, the morning to which they awake brings no ritual
visits to the places where withdrawal-induced miseries can end. Of all the
places on the planet, Edinburgh finds itself with no readily available much
needed substance.
As the gang is assembling, they embark on a
journey that starts as an aimless stroll through the well known neighborhoods
whose facial features appear not as familiar as they do when smack supplies
abound. Pilrig, Leith, Gorgie…way too unwelcoming without safe havens such as
Swanney’s or Seeker’s. The walk starts acquiring distinct characteristics as
Mark, Si, Spud, Matty are heading towards the source: Blandfield Works,
pharmaceutical manufacturer. They realize that the plant can only be reached
via the ceiling and in order to accomplish it, they find themselves at the
point from which they overlook the old Gorgie Station. Trainspotters. They need
tools that will enable access to opioids. They decide planks they find as they
go can do the job.
The characters of Keezbo, Second Prize, and the
memories of Billy, Mark’s elder brother, enter the scene as the plot is
unwrapping and the gang is tirelessly cutting across the concrete desert.
Tirelessly until it becomes apparent that the source denies them access. Until
Spud vocalizes the wrongness of it all and announces that it has to stop. The
aggregating component is seeping out through the crevices of the survival urge.
They are not sure where each of the mates is. They seem to have lost Spud. They
need to find the way back.
Back
through the awareness of the experience of nothingness, having realized “that
you couldn’t simply turn your back on nihilism; you had to live through it and
hopefully emerge out the other side, leaving it behind” (Welsh 2012, 530). As
if it were an echo of Seeker’s remark from the beginning of the chapter:
Although he’d become a valued
customer, Seeker made Renton feel as if he was somehow disappointed in him for
being on junk, that he was better than that. – Mark Renton, he smiled, --
you’re a strange yin. Can never quite figure you oot.
Like
everything Seeker said, Renton was aware it carried a barely suppressed element
of threat. But this, he supposed, was as close to friendship and respect as it
was possible for Seeker to get. (Welsh 2012, 503)
As if it were concentrated circles emanated
from the epicenter of sickness before they reached Blandfield Works whose name
is flashing out from the sign of a three-storey victorian building. As if they
were from the books of the eras bygone: “[T]he Punks
were the Postmodern children of Dickens” (Savage 2001, 374). As if they were renegade children of Dickens asking
themselves:”Who are these people, these
aliens, that we move among in such sadness?” (Welsh 2012, 506 original
emphasis).
As if the walk through the citydesert were a
journey through the history of Scotland, as presented in the novel:
The Scottish Enlightenment.
You could trace the line from that period of the city’s global greatness, to
the Aids capital of Europe, going straight through that mix of processing
plants and warehouses within those security fences. It was a peculiarly
Edinburgh brainchild of medicine, invention and economics; from the analytical
minds of the Blacks and Cullens, filtered through the speculations of the Humes
and the Smiths. From the deliberations and actions of Edinburgh’s finest sons
in the eighteenth century, to its poorest ones poisoning themselves with heroin
at the close of this one. (Welsh 2012, 516-7)
As if the lurking wake up call “What are we
daein here?” (Welsh 2012, 506) were evocative of the statement such as:
”History is made by those who say ‘No’ and Punk’s utopian heresies remain its
gift to the world” (Savage 2001, 541).
