“Recognize My Face”: Phil Lynott, Scalar Interculturalism, and the Nested Figure

Abstract

This chapter outlines scalar intercuturalism as a critical framework that allows us to read intercultural performance on the level of the individual and as it occurs beyond aesthetics. I extend a politics of scale to cultural production and performance, arguing that performances originating from lower scales (such as the self, the community, and the emergent) have the political potential to challenge or complicate hegemonies emanating from higher scales (such as the national, historical, and global). I contend that these scales are nested within and can be read through the telescopic figure, which I define as a cultural producer whose performances index their location in the imbricated matrices of race, nationality, and identity across two or more cultures. The telescopic figure thus performs an interculturalism that originates at the level of the individual and on the scale of the body, which is both shaped by and complicates hegemonic understandings of culture and identity. Using the case study of mixed race Irish rock musician Phil Lynott, I illustrate how scalar interculturalism operates as an analytic lens by unpacking some of the geographic and temporal layers that inform the creation and ongoing reception of Lynott’s cultural production in Ireland.