In this essay we set out to show how a deeper understanding of the coherence of the political and social vision which informs the work of writer James Kelman can be gained through a reading of the French philosopher Michel De Certeau, and in particular the latter’s most in£uential work, The Practice of Everyday Life. In that book De Certeau (1925-86) brings interdisciplinary learning and techniques from philosophy, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, social theory, and history together to show how individuals and communities can and do incessantly undermine and reinscribe conventional paths of social power. However, before making a comparison of De Certeau’s understandings and techniques with those found in Kelman’s work, we examine why it is necessary at all to look to the question of ‘coherence’ in Kelman’s writing.