{"title":"Imagining Brexit, reimagining Britain","authors":"Colin Hay","doi":"10.1057/s41293-023-00236-z","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract There are times in the political life of any nation in which its imagining and reimagining become more intensely political, more conscious and more consciously intersubjective. Brexit has provided, provides today and will surely continue to provide a series of such moments. In and through a critical appreciation of Benedict Anderson’s famous reflections on the nation as an ‘imagined community', I consider the (necessarily) imagined character of Brexit and the reimaginings of Britain that its imagining envisaged. I reflect on whether—and if so how and in what ways—‘actually existing Brexit’ is likely to pose a reality check on imagined Brexit, exploring in the process some of the wider political implications.","PeriodicalId":46067,"journal":{"name":"British Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"British Politics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-023-00236-z","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract There are times in the political life of any nation in which its imagining and reimagining become more intensely political, more conscious and more consciously intersubjective. Brexit has provided, provides today and will surely continue to provide a series of such moments. In and through a critical appreciation of Benedict Anderson’s famous reflections on the nation as an ‘imagined community', I consider the (necessarily) imagined character of Brexit and the reimaginings of Britain that its imagining envisaged. I reflect on whether—and if so how and in what ways—‘actually existing Brexit’ is likely to pose a reality check on imagined Brexit, exploring in the process some of the wider political implications.
期刊介绍:
British Politics offers the only forum explicitly designed to promote research in British political studies, and seeks to provide a counterweight to the growing fragmentation of this field during recent years. To this end, the journal aims to promote a more holistic understanding of British politics by encouraging a closer integration between theoretical and empirical research, between historical and contemporary analyses, and by fostering a conception of British politics as a broad and multi-disciplinary field of study. This incorporates a range of sub-fields, including psephology, policy analysis, regional studies, comparative politics, institutional analysis, political theory, political economy, historical analysis, cultural studies and social policy.
While recognising the validity and the importance of research into specific aspects of British politics, the journal takes it to be a guiding principle that such research is more useful, and indeed meaningful, if it is related to the field of British politics in a broader and fuller sense.
The scope of the journal will therefore be broad, incorporating a range of research papers and review articles from all theoretical perspectives, and on all aspects of British politics, including policy developments, institutional change and political behaviour. Priority will, however, be given to contributions which link contemporary developments in British politics to theoretical and/or historical analyses. The aim is as much to encourage the development of empirical research that is theoretically rigorous and informed, as it is to encourage the empirical application of theoretical work (or at least to encourage theorists to explicitly signify how their work could be applied in an empirical manner).