This series of monographs on selected topics in modernism is designed to reflect and extend the range of new work in modernist studies. The studies in the series aim for a breadth of scope and for an expanded sense of the canon of modernism, rather than focusing on individual authors. Literary texts will be considered in terms of contexts including recent cultural histories (modernism and magic; sonic modernity; media studies) and topics of theoretical interest (the everyday; postmodernism; the Frankfurt School); but the series will also reconsider more familiar routes into modernism (modernism and gender; sexuality; politics). The works published will be attentive to the various cultural, intellectual and historical contexts of British, American and European modernisms, and to inter-disciplinary possibilities within modernism, including performance and the visual and plastic arts.

INTRODUCTION

The 1980s were a period of economic volatility. The Conservative government, elected in 1979, pursued a host of free-market reforms, including privatisation, reducing the powers of trade unions, deregulation and lower income tax rates. Despite considerable lobbying from the regional and district councils, the government withdrew Assisted Area Status from the Scottish Borders in 1982, which resulted in the region no longer being eligible for government or European Community regional economic development funds. This meant that financial inducements were no longer available to incoming firms and for investment projects by existing companies. Compared to the rest of Scotland, the Borders had a relatively low proportion of overseas manufacturing investment, reflecting its lack of success in attracting inward investment.

Despite continuous lobbying of government, supported by local Members of Parliament, particularly Sir David Steel, the Conservative government would not be persuaded that the Scottish Borders deserved development area status. The government's attitude is amply illustrated in the views expressed by George Younger, former Scottish Secretary on a visit to Hawick in 1987 when he suggested that: ‘The Borders is a good example of how an area can fend for itself. With a certain amount of help from the local authorities and the SDA, the Borders people have done their own thing successfully’. His comments incensed Galashiels Councillor Drew Tulley, who would subsequently become Chairman of the Planning and Development Committee, who demanded that a further attempt should be made to put forward a case for the reinstatement of development area status.

In April 1985, the Borders lost priority status for European Social Fund (ESF) assistance, which limited the amount available for vocational training. However, the Borders, along with other rural areas in the UK, remained eligible for assistance under the Guidance Section of the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF), which was used to provide support for the agricultural industry through initiatives such as the Less Favoured Farming Areas, Farm/Woodland Initiative, Set Aside and Farm Diversification Scheme and direct support for projects involving the processing and marketing of agricultural and fishery products, such as grain drying and storage, potato grading and storage, egg packing, vegetable and fish processing.

Literature, Politics, and Postcolonial Studies

One of the most vexed questions in the debates about literary form is its relation to politics. For many critics, to take a strong interest in form is to turn one's back on the overriding goal of contributing to the betterment of society; if literature is to serve political goals, such critics believe, content must be at the forefront of the critical process, since it's there that the writer's engagement with the concrete political issues of the day is to be found. And it's characteristic of recent literary theorists who do argue for the importance of an engagement with formal questions that they feel obliged to make a direct connection between these questions and political effectiveness.

As I suggested in the Introduction, any consideration of the contribution literature may make to political causes needs to take account of one simple fact: only through the experience of readers engaging with literary works can this contribution occur, and then only if that experience effects a significant and lasting change in the reading consciousness. Such a change can happen only if the encounter with the work is also an encounter with a previously unacknowledged way of seeing the world or of experiencing feelings about it. Examining a literary work for the political sympathies it betrays, the political events it charts, or the material conditions it exposes as if it were a static object whose properties are to be investigated may be a valuable exercise in literary criticism but cannot in itself demonstrate the work's effectiveness in this domain; a political analysis needs to be undertaken with an awareness that only as an event experienced by readers can a work have any purchase on the outside world – and only if readers are different after that event from what they were before it. If the experience of a work leaves the reader unaffected, they will not act in the world. A further requirement for political change, of course, is either that a large number of readers are moved to act in the service of some kind of popular movement – a requirement rarely met by the literary works most highly regarded by the critical establishment – or, even less likely, that a small number of highly influential figures, inspired by a book they have read, proceed to bring about a transformation in their environment.