An excerpt from something I wrote in 1993, in a very McBennite mode, for the Scottish culture-and-politics magazine Variant (here's the PDF of the magazine):
I am beginning to think that we become politically and economically modern - an effective nation-state - through culturally and social post-modern means. That is, through figures, spokespersons, groupings and movements, arguing for a Scottish polity, society and culture that is futuristic; that links our deepest moral urges - for security, connection, novelty, freedom - to our most most practical societal arrangements.
Edward Said, in the second of his Reith Lectures on the role of the intellectual, gives the radical potential of Scottish national liberation a perfect rationale: quoting Frantz Fanon, Said says that the point is not to replace oppressive administrators with benign administrators: the point is "the invention of new souls". And for intellectuals, artists and other political actors, the point is to "universalise" the national crisis - to "give greater human scope to what a particular nation has suffered, to associate that experience with the suffering of others". National liberation, as a means to human liberation.
So self-determination can mean determination of one's self: nations and persons can both express autonomy-in-solidarity with their fellow citizens and the world community. Scotland can be free, if free-thinking; Scotland can be recreated, if its citizens are truly, profoundly, illimitably creative.
Yes, I've been around this block a few times before...