Writing Brexit

Colonial Remains

Caroline Koegler, Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Marlena Tronicke, Caroline Koegler, Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Marlena Tronicke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367775902
• eBook ISBN: 9781000399257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Literature

Drawing from a rich corpus of British cultural production and postcolonial theory, this book positions Brexit in the historical nexus of colonialism, colonial nostalgia, and the rise of narcissistic nationalism in contemporary Europe.

This collection moves away from existing literary discourses framing Brexit as a 'novel' event that ushered in a new genre of British fiction. It challenges the hackneyed public discourses that depict the results of the 2016 Referendum as the catalyst of regional instability as well as sociopolitical emergency in Europe. This book traces and critiques populist myth-making in the current United Kingdom through engagement with a wide range of literary and cultural productions, and reminds readers of the proleptic potential of postcolonial theorists and authors – Paul Gilroy, Austin Clarke, Mohsin Hamid, Ali Smith, to name a few – in identifying the residual ideologies of imperialism in the lead up to and after the Brexit campaign. The articles featured here extend Brexit's figurative geography towards India, Britain, Pakistan, Ireland, Palestine, Barbados, and Eastern Europe, amongst others. They engage with films, media representations, and public discourses alongside more traditional genres such as the novel and stage productions. With a diversified approach to scholarly fields such as postcolonial literary and cultural studies, the book offers new insights into Brexit's diverse histories not only in academic discourses, but also in the socio-political public sphere at large.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: The colonial remains of Brexit: Empire nostalgia and narcissistic nationalism
• Ain’t no black in the (Brexit) Union Jack? Race and empire in the era of Brexit and the Windrush scandal
• 2 Warning signs: Postcolonial writing and the apprehension of Brexit
• 3 Brexit literature’s present absentees: Triangulating Brexit, anti-Semitism, and the Palestinian crisis
• 4 “We are all migrants through time”: History and geography in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West
• 5 “Eastern Europeans” and BrexLit
• 6 Imperial pasts, dystopian futures, and the theatre of Brexit
• 7 The Brexit within: Mapping the rural and the urban in contemporary British fiction
• 8 Writing back to Brexit: Refugees, transcultural intertextuality, and the colonial archive
• 9 (Post)colonial friendships and Empire 2.0: A Brexit reading of Victoria & Abdul
• Index