Performing Brexit: How a Post-Brexit World is Imagined Outside the UK

TY - JOUR

T1 - Performing Brexit

T2 - How a Post-Brexit World is Imagined Outside the UK

AU - Adler-Nissen, Rebecca

AU - Galpin, Charlotte

AU - Rosamond, Ben

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - Theresa May’s claim that ‘Brexit means Brexit' demonstrates the malleability of the concept. The referendum campaign showed that ‘Brexit’ can be articulated to a variety of post-Brexit scenarios. While it is important to analyse how Brexit gives rise to contestation in the UK, Brexit is also constructed from the outside. Brexit signifies more than the technical complexities of the UK withdrawing from the European Union. It works both as a promise of a different future and performatively to establish a particular past. Brexit works as a frame with potential to shape perceptions in three domains. The first is identity. How does ‘Brexit' shape national and European identities in distinct national environments? The second is how Brexit shapes understandings of geopolitical reality and influences conceptions of what is diplomatically possible. Third is the global economy. How does ‘Brexit' work within intersubjective frames about the nature of global economic order?

AB - Theresa May’s claim that ‘Brexit means Brexit' demonstrates the malleability of the concept. The referendum campaign showed that ‘Brexit’ can be articulated to a variety of post-Brexit scenarios. While it is important to analyse how Brexit gives rise to contestation in the UK, Brexit is also constructed from the outside. Brexit signifies more than the technical complexities of the UK withdrawing from the European Union. It works both as a promise of a different future and performatively to establish a particular past. Brexit works as a frame with potential to shape perceptions in three domains. The first is identity. How does ‘Brexit' shape national and European identities in distinct national environments? The second is how Brexit shapes understandings of geopolitical reality and influences conceptions of what is diplomatically possible. Third is the global economy. How does ‘Brexit' work within intersubjective frames about the nature of global economic order?

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Brexit

KW - European Integration

KW - Performance

KW - Performativity

KW - Diplomacy

KW - Political economy

KW - National Identity

KW - United Kingdom

KW - Germany

KW - Commonwealth

KW - Judith Butler

KW - Speech-act

KW - Discourse analysis

KW - Austin

KW - European Integration Theory

U2 - 10.1177/1369148117711092

DO - 10.1177/1369148117711092

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1369-1481

VL - 19

SP - 573

EP - 591

JO - British Journal of Politics and International Relations

JF - British Journal of Politics and International Relations

IS - 3

M1 - 11

ER -