Arguments within English Theory

Accelerationism, Brexit and the Problem of ‘Englishness’

Bibliographic Data

ID12224575
AuthorsB Noys (0000-0001-6105-3665, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume32
Issue5-6
Pages586-592
Publication date2018-11-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThird Text (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-8822 • E-ISSN: 1475-5297
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09528822.2018.1558645
OpenAlexW2912794407
LanguageEN
Citations received3

The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, to ‘Brexit’, appears as a traumatic shock. Here this shock is examined in the context of the national imaginary of ‘Englishness’ and its relationship to theory. I focus on the theoretical tendency known as accelerationism, which suggests we embrace abstraction and modernity to transcend the limits of contemporary capitalism into a new post-capitalist society. Accelerationism embraces the future and modernity, in contrast with the seemingly backward-looking imaginaries of Brexit. The desire of accelerationism to transcend national limits, including these backward-looking imaginaries of Englishness, is actually shaped by these imaginaries. In this way, accelerationism and the debates around it offers ways to unlock the social, psychic and theoretical formations that condition Brexit as well. What they reveal is the way in which Brexit is shaped by a particularly ‘English’ form of modernisation

Aesthetics · Brexit · Capitalism · Context (archaeology · Economics · European union · Modernity · Modernization theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Shock (circulatory · Sociology · The Imaginary · History · Law · Philosophy · Scottish History and National Identity

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