Thesis
The grandfather paradox
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2025
- Thesis identifier
- T17551
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 202359422
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- They say, at a certain age, you became your parents. But what about your grandparents? My grandfather, Ian M Fraser, was a buccaneering minister who travelled to 99 countries and lived to the age of one hundred. He was a magnetic storyteller, both in the pulpit and the world, and his life was tangled up with some of the most significant events of the last century. His public stature, however, stood in sharp contrast with his family reputation. Despite his good deeds and fine words, he never missed a moment to self-aggrandise or moralise. As a result, his stories were often received with an eye-roll and his moral messages with an unhealthy pinch of salt. I have always felt drawn to his story. Objectively, it is of no small interest. He was the first factory chaplain in the United Kingdom, Minister for the Olympics in Munich in 1974, blacklisted from South Africa due to his campaigning against apartheid. He was a founding member of the pioneering Iona Community, took a case against the poll tax to the European Court of Human Rights, and lectured in liberation theology in Cuba. Yet the interest, for me, is not only in objective fact but in its tension with subjective experience. The seam of character that lies between public humility and private ambition is deeply tied to Scottish culture and identity, and exploring its depths helps chip away at this submerged but obstinate element of the national character. The MRes creative work that follows, an excerpt from a book-length work-in-progress, is presented in the form of a memoir-biography. While there is a reasonably substantial archive of factual information pertaining to Ian’s life – alongside his own writings, a book-length biography has already been published – these sources only allow for assessment of his public (i.e. self constructed) reputation and image. Drawing on personal memory of Grandpa – rather than Ian – affords a vantage point on the private world that is otherwise outside of view. More than this, though, the incorporation of memoir allows an exploration of the degree to which certain aspects of Ian’s drives and ambitions – specifically toward writing, storytelling, and public speaking – mirror my own, thereby worrying at questions of inheritace, identity and culture across three generations of Scottish history. The work is titled ‘The Grandfather Paradox’ and explores the yearning impossibility of knowing the past. Like a grandfather clock, Ian swung rhythmically back and forth for each of his hundred years. Never spending a night in hospital, living independently until his ninety-ninth year. Until, suddenly, the clock stopped. Thereafter I present a critical essay that engages with Chitra Ramaswamy’s work of memoir-biography, Homelands, which contains several important resonances with the creative work. The essay focuses on so-called ‘boundary objects’ – images, text and place – which operate in the interstices between writer, biographical subject and audience unseen.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Glass, Rodge
- Resource Type
- DOI
- Embargo Note
Relações
Itens
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File | 2026-02-11 | University of Strathclyde |