Reflections on the Rhetoric of (De)Colonization in Brexit Discourse (original) (raw)
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The colonial remains of Brexit: Empire nostalgia and narcissistic nationalism
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2020
Since the formal end of colonialism, perhaps no single political event has been as influential in shaping British narratives of national and transnational identity as the United Kingdom's (UK) departure from the European Union (EU). The elusive, protracted, and unceremonious slew of events -with their vague beginnings in the Treaty of Lisbon and an equally indeterminate ending wagering on the empire's vestigial hold in the Commonwealth -that came to be known as "Brexit" in popular parlance, continues to frame assessments of difference and sameness, freedom and dependence, regional alliances and cultural entitlements, and discourses of national health and viral threat. Brexit has triggered large-scale speculations about social insecurities and national trauma. It has given racism a free pass, and hate speech a broader acceptance in society. It has bolstered populism, prejudice, and homophobia -and yet also instilled a sense of hope and renewal, not least among its apologists, lobbyists, and also sizeable sections of the British population. The convergence of these mutually reinforcing discourses has often been attributed to the turmoil of the British Referendum on EU membership on June 23, 2016 which, for many, was a moment of reckoning -the day when Britain's deep social divisions became visibly manifest. In literary criticism, the ensuing coinage of "BrexLit" (Day 2017; Shaw 2018; Ferguson 2019) as a catch-all phrase to describe what appeared to be a novel body of texts, even a "new landscape of British fiction" (Day 2017, n.p.), similarly implied that the result of the Referendum was entirely unanticipated, triggering a sustained sense of cataclysmic change and sociopolitical emergency. This special "Brexit" issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing moves away from any such temporal or generic framing of Brexit as a novel, even unforeseeable "event". Instead, it identifies and historicizes Britain's departure from the EU as the result of a long-standing process, rooted in persisting imperial attitudes and, arguably, narcissistic yearnings.
Brexit, Retrotopia, and the Perils of Post-Colonial Delusions
Global Affairs, 2017
Brexit shocked liberal elites across Europe, instigating a burgeoning new field of research. Brexit scholarship tends to puzzle over two questions: what happened? What will happen now? This article addresses the latter and builds upon scholarship that suggests that “identity” mattered as much as economics. Digging deeper into British identity, this essay borrows from social-psychology to analyse how temporal status comparisons contributed to Brexit. It argues how the peculiar qualities of British identity narrative make Eurosceptic complaints about sovereignty, Brussels and “control”, particularly salient to nationalists. In short, negative temporal status comparisons with Britain’s former self underpins its longterm Euroscepticism: When Brits learn they once “ruled the world”, the European Union’s practices of compromise compare poorly: Cooperation is easily presented as subordination. Brexit can thus be understood as a radical attempt to arrest Britain’s decline by setting sail for a future based on a nostalgic vision of the past.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2017
This article offers a conjunctural analysis of the financial and political crisis within which Brexit occurred with a specific attentiveness to race and racism. Brexit and its aftermath have been overdetermined by racism, including racist violence. We suggest that the Leave campaign secured its victory by bringing together two contradictory but inter-locking visions. The first comprises an imperial longing to restore Britain’s place in the world as primus inter pares that occludes any coming to terms with the corrosive legacies of colonial conquest and racist subjugation. The second takes the form of an insular, Powellite narrative of island retreat from a “globalizing” world, one that is no longer recognizably “British”. Further, the article argues that an invisible driver of the Brexit vote and its racist aftermath has been a politicization of Englishness. We conclude by outlining some resources of hope that could potentially help to negotiate the current emergency.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021
IN THE scholarly analysis of contemporary politics, public opinion is king. As liberal democracies have seen multi-party competition devolve into divisive, one dimensional verdicts on strong man politics and single issue referenda, so has public opinion scholarship never been more prominent or discussed. Brexit in the UK has been a boomtime for this kind of work. University of Manchester professors Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford sit at the sober and most scholarly end of a highly visible and influential field of work, that runs from the technical boffinry of John Curtice on election night, via scholars such as Geoff Evans and Will Jennings echoing the "blue left" by charting the loss of the Labour heartlands, to the anti-liberal op. ed. provocations of Matthew Goodwin, Eric Kaufmann and David Goodhart. All of them seem to share a thirst for the media limelight: sometimes awkwardly combining "data science" with work close to the logic of media commentary and party strategising. Brexitland may stand as the capstone of a literature first launched by Ford's earlier volume with Goodwin, Revolt on the Right (2014): on the rise of UKIP, Nigel Farage, and the ripping apart and realignment of two party dominated British politics. Brexit, it argues, was the end point of a seismic shift in British politics that can be drawn right back through the post-war period. Key to this view has been the emergence of what they see as a deeply rooted "cultural war" patterned essentially on the one raging on the other side of the Atlantic, with one crucial dimension — the variable salience over the decades of "immigration" as the wild card in British politics.
From mood to movement: English nationalism, the European Union and taking back control
Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 2019
This article considers whether the 2016 EU referendum can be perceived as an English nationalist movement. Specifically, attention is given to examining how memories of the former British Empire were nostalgically enveloped in anxieties regarding England’s location within the devolved UK state. The comments and work of Enoch Powell and George Orwell are used to help explore the link between nostalgia and anxiety in accounts of English nationalism. Despite their opposing political orientations, when considered together, it is argued that both men provide a unique cross-political perspective on Englishness, empire and nostalgia. By way of exploring these themes in relation to the EU referendum, Aughey’s assertion that English nationalism can be perceived as both a ‘mood’ and ‘movement’ is used to highlight how a sense of English anxiety regarding its lack of national sovereignty (mood), as well as a desire to reclaim this sovereignty by renegotiating trade relations with the ‘Anglo-sphere’ (movement), were conjoined in the popular referendum slogan, ‘take back control’. In conclusion, it is argued that the contextualization of the referendum can be predicated upon an orientation to empire that steers away from glorifying pro-imperial images of England/Britain, towards a more positive and progressive appropriation of the EU referendum as a statement of national change and belonging.
Feeling Brexit Nationalism and the Affective Politics of Movement
GeoHumanities, 2019
“Brexit” reveals the necessity of understanding the role of affect in political life, in particular in constituting ideas about nationality and in animating the politics of populism. This article discusses what “Brexit” felt like in the year following the UK vote—held on 23 June 2016—to leave the European Union through a performance called “The Populars” created and performed in 2017 by Volcano Theatre, in Swansea (Abertawe). In this paper, I discuss feelings of shame, hostility, and resentment and situate them in relation to the crises of British multiculturalism and rise of populism, before turning to how such feelings were addressed in this performance through move- ment and dance. The article addresses three specific contributions that engaging affect does in the context of “Brexit”: first, it forms an invitation to address heightened political feelings; second, it suggests an alternative approach to the politics of knowledge to that enabled by a focus on voter interests or identities; third, it opens up other ways of understanding being in common. Overall, I make the case for how an affective approach to the politics of movement suggests ways of thinking and acting politically that defy the closures of nationalist populism.
Critical Discourse Studies, 2019
While the exact nature of Britain’s exit from the EU – or ‘Brexit’ as it has been popularised – is still as unclear as whether it will take place at all, the complex ontology, unfolding and impact of such an unprecedented event have been investigated widely in several aca- demic fields and especially in the sizeable body of work at the intersection of sociological, political and communicative dimensions (see for example, Clarke & Newman, 2017; Evans & Menon, 2017; Koller, Kopf, & Miglbauer, 2019; Ridge-Newman, Leon-Solis, & O’Donnell, 2018; Outhwaite, 2017; Wincott, Peterson, & Convery, 2017). While our special issue joins the existent studies, it also differs from such work by specifically taking a critical discursive perspective. In doing so, we rely on an interpretation of Brexit as a ‘critical juncture’ (see below) in which different historical and contingent discursive nexuses and trajectories have been at play. Hence, we focus on the interplay between socio-political contexts as well as, therein, on various patterns of discursive work of both mediatisation and politicisation of Brexit, both before and after the UK 2016 EU Referendum. Through our focus, we explore a variety of context-dependent, ideologically-driven social, political and econ- omic imaginaries that were attached to the idea/concept of Brexit and related notions in the process of their discursive articulation and legitimation in the UK and internationally. Our contribution has thus three interrelated aims. First, the articles in this special issue provide evidence of how the Brexit referendum debate and its immediate reactions were discursively framed and made sense of by a variety of social and political actors and through different media. Second, we show how such discourses reflect the wider path-dependent historical and political processes which have been instrumental in defining the discursive and mediatic contexts within which Brexit has been articulated. Third, we identify discursive trajectories at play in the ongoing process of Brexit putting forward an agenda for further analysis of such trajectories.