James Kelman and the ‘part of no-part’

James Kelman’s most recent novel, “God’s teeth and other phenomena”, was published last year and reviewed in The Prisma. “Keep moving and no questions” is a collection of nearly 30 short stories by Kelman, also published in 2023, and together they constitute a fictional representation of what Jacques Rancière termed “the part of no-part”.

Sean Sheehan

The part of no-part serves to describe those in society without a proper position. They represent a place of inner dislocation within a social system and identifying with the part of no-part is the basis for choosing this side in class struggle and subjectively engaging with its position.

If the proletariat comes to be someone who makes this choice, disidentifies with their given social role, then the protagonists in “Keep moving and no questions” are pure proletarians.

They are often unemployed or unemployable and if they do have a job it is likely to be poorly paid and involve unskilled labour. Typically, in an affront to the liberal mind that likes to think everyone can improve their lot if they put their mind to it, the narrator in “Bellies are Bellies” prefers to search for half-smoked cigarettes and butt ends on the pavement. “No job; okay. Abode there was none; okay. Cash ditto” is the self-summary of the protagonist’s situation in “Pieces of shit do not have the power to speak”. The story’s title comes from the words of a police officer who explains to him why he was not allowed to say anything in his own defence in a court judgement that deemed him an undesirable member of society.

Each of Kelman’s stories in this collection is told by a character about a moment or a situation in their life that seems to sum up their place in society. They may be judged abject failures by others but not by themselves and their self-deprecation and wry humour saves them from falling into despair.

Žižek writes in “Freedom: A disease without a cure” (2023) of the “ineradicable, absolutely authentic Communist desire’ as “the Idea of a society which fully overcomes domination”. It does not promise a return to a prelapsarian unity, the recuperation of a mythical mother earth savaged by capitalism, but it does call for the excluded to be included. It demands the full participation of the dispossessed and disadvantaged that make up the part of no-part, those who represent “what has to remain invisible so that the visible may be visible”, the subtracted element which, unlike those with a place and particular interest in a system, are excluded from it.

Kelman’s protagonists give expression in their own voices to resilience and resistance, to standing up for themselves and not letting the system crush them into the dust. They offer hope and good cheer because of the way they dig down into themselves and find their own salvation. Their stories are uplifting.