Warning signs: Postcolonial writing and the apprehension of Brexit

ABSTRACT

This article considers how postcolonial fiction anticipated, apprehended, and critically explored the political and cultural milieu which facilitated the outcome of the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum. In suggesting that “Brexit Literature” existed before Brexit was formally pursued, it understands Brexit as driving an English nationalism that unnervingly appropriates the history of the British Empire and World War II. It uncovers the representation of these manoeuvres in a number of key texts. Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore both logs and challenges the malevolent imagining of newcomers that has deep roots in notions of war and empire. Zadie Smith’s NW represents post-crash austerity as proleptically exposing the complex politics of race and class which fuelled the pro-Brexit populism that lies latent in the novel. Ultimately, the article calls for a post-Brexit postcolonialism that harnesses the power of critical thought to continue the long-standing contestation of the prevailing political orthodoxy.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• Anglosphere
• war
• empire
• austerity
• postcolonial

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For more on these local activities co-ordinated by the David Oluwale Memorial Association (DOMA), visit https://rememberoluwale.org/. Caryl Phillips is a patron of DOMA.

2. My discussion of NW is highly indebted to the critical imagination of my students at the University of Leeds, with whom I have studied the novel as part of my undergraduate module, “Postcolonial London”. In particular, my comments about Natalie Blake’s initials and Nathan Bogle’s lack of a chapter to himself are inspired by the insights of my students, several of whom saw such things long before I did.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John McLeod

John McLeod is professor of postcolonial and diaspora literatures at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Life Lines: Writing Transcultural Adoption (2015), J.G. Farrell (2007), Beginning Postcolonialism (2nd ed., 2010), and Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis (2004).