Brexit and the rise of nostalgia identity

So i'm starting this with an amazing quote about the Brexit campaigning being "seemingly endless cultural representations of a backward looking gaze into a mythical sense of nation and place."

Traditionally, the field of nationalism has not paid a great deal of attention to nostalgia. Since its inception in the 1960s, the dominant paradigm in the study of nationalism has been modernism. Represented by authors such as Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and John Breuilly, the modernist approach argues that both nations and nationalism are modern phenomena. Furthermore, it sees the nation as a significant entity only when in relation to the state. Hence, these authors examine historical processes associated with modernity, such as the rise of the nation-state, the spread of capitalism or the emergence of printed communities, among others. The vulnerable point of these theories, however, is that although they provide an effective explanation for the genesis and development of nationalism they fail to explain why it continues to attract unwavering support.

But this is where nostalgia ties in, as the way we construct a national identity, as ‘collective memory of symbols conveying intense affect. Thus, the agenda of the leave campaign in the UK's Brexit crisis can be seen to latch on to this nationalist and therefore nostalgic sentiment. The calls for regaining sovereignty, the symbolic re-purposing of a 'nation alone', choosing its own destiny yet couched within a language of austerity and images of war fetishism, feed into the symbolic imagery of a national space. This began to pervade all areas of society, even in our education system, with the introduction of new 'British values' in primary education.

It is a distinctively top-down, traditional and conservative interpretation of history that utilises the use of Churchillian rhetoric and a triumphant and uncritical interpretation of history that has become a dominant conservative narrative of contemporary renewal within a context of disengagement.

This is only my initial engagement with this idea, and it something I will continue to look into, but I think the notion of nostalgia being a huge part of the leave campaign is really interesting for our project! Ket me know what you think

kat