Hard Times
The Return of Politics
Issue 101 (1/2018) P u b l i s h i n g I n f o Irmgard Maassen|LukeMartellIngridvonRosenberg Frauke Hofmeister|Stephanie Jürries |MichaelKrause Anke Bartels, GeorgiaChristinidis,andDirkWiemann | JürgenEnkemannJessicaFischerJanaGohrisch Aileen Behrendt |SebastianBergDietmarBöhnke Department ofEnglishDepartment andAmericanStudies Christian Schmitt-Kilb|JörgStrehmann Anke Bartels andDirk Wiemann Please addressanyenquiriesto [email protected] www.hard-times-magazine.org founded byJürgenEnkemann Hard TimesAdvisoryBoard Hard TimesEditorialTeam Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier ISSN 2627-4264(Online) Photo onfront cover by ISSN 0171-1695(Print) Prof Dr Dirk Wiemann University ofPotsdam HardMagazine Times Editors ofthisissue Am Neuen Palais 10 Stephanie Jürries Andrey Kuzmin 14469 Potsdam Hard Times Layout by Germany or T a b l e O f C o n t e n t s 68 58 48 37 31 24 15 12 1 i Dirk Wiemann Refugee Tales, orHow Politics Comes Back toLiterature Make English Sweet Again! Aileen Behrendt British Humour in Times ofBrexit Who Can We LaughAt? Anke Bartels Brexit onScreen andStage “Britain First” or White Privilege Reloaded? Sebastian Berg Populism intheSocial Sciences Luke Martell Corbyn, Populism andPower Dirk Wiemann andAnke Bartels Editorial -The Return of Politics Harald Pittel Fiction inDark Times: theBrexit Novel andAliSmith Grace Krause A strikepoem Resilience orFuck You Neoliberalism Christin Hoene andLena Wånggren Two perspectives ontherecent strikeatUKuniversities “In order tobeutopian,you havetofeelutopian” An InterviewwithYannisStravrakakisbyDirkWiemann Egalitarian Version ofPopulism “...saying whatwaspreviously unthinkable”: foran Editorial Editorial The Return of Politics
n his 2016 book-length analysis of alleged instrumentalisation of culture Ithe ‘Corbyn phenomenon’, political for crudely political causes. Thus, commentator and blogger Richard novelist and critic Tim Parks diagnoses Seymour interprets Corbyn’s election as (and overtly bemoans) “the intensifying Labour Party leader as symptomatic of politicization of the literary world” the “strange rebirth of radical politics”. (Parks 2017, n.p.) as writers, especially The second, revised edition of the book, after Brexit and Trump, assume again for breathlessly penned to the moment themselves the role of unacknowledged after Labour’s impressive turnout in the legislators. Parks’ exasperation at this 2017 general elections, emphasises the development may remind one of Tony idea of a leftist revival even more: from Blair’s incredulous “bafflement” with “a tea-towel memory of better days, a Corbyn’s unlikely victory over the nostalgic, left-behind hangover”, left- Labour grandees. While Blair and his wing working-class politics resurfaced confederates flinched at the prospect of in a “fizz of angry exuberance” that Labour becoming a “party of permanent “celebrated an abrupt widening of the protest” (Seymour 2016, 1) – read: a horizons of the thinkable” (Seymour political party, again –, Parks similarly 2017, xxxi). What Seymour suggests admonishes his politicized colleagues here – namely that we are witnessing (or whom he perceives to mistake literature better: taking part in) a return of politics for activism. For them, Parks alleges, – seems to get seconded and find its “simply putting pen to paper is already especially pronounced expression in the an act of courage and a bid for freedom”. area of cultural production. Whether in literature, theatre and dance, pop music, arks’ impatience with such “juvenile” film, the museum circuit or the fine arts: Pantics seems to indicate that the the cultural field is bristling with anger good old days of committed style are and discontent over austerity measures, back again indeed. And do we not in fact neo-nationalism, right-wing populism, witness the comeback of the social-realist Brexit, rampant xenophobia, you name condition-of-England novel (its most it. And while many celebrate the current recent avatar being the ‘Brexit novel’)? penchant for critical commitment in Even more pointedly, Alex Clark recently the arts, others complain about the proclaimed the “return of the protest
Page i Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Editorial novel” (Clark 2017, n.p.). The trend to May’s notorious ‘hostile environment’ literary neo-commitment seems to have policy, or the ongoing demolition infected even such apparently playful and of the last remnants of the NHS … ‘irresponsible’ authors as Will Self, who describes his latest work, Phone (2018), … themes that figure prominently, too,
© Image by Noddy Guevara via Flickr (source) as the first English novel to seriously in the adjacent field of pop music, that assault the “collective amnesia” around other cultural domain where the return of the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War politics is clearly visible. Here the return and the concomitant national guilt. For is signalled by a revamped neo-post- Self, his book is primarily an intervention punk diction that effectively does away into the immediate present, where “the with the last residues of the affirmative refusal to engage with [the hushed-up retro-chic – the Beatles, Kinks or glam recent past] is playing out in political rock references – that characterised the decisions that are being made right now” ‘Britpop’ of the Blair period. By contrast, (qu. in Clark 2018, n.p.): fatefully wrong current acts like Cabbage, The Idles or decisions all, whether Brexit, Theresa PWR BTTM go back to the raw energy
Page ii Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Editorial and simplicity of 1970s punk: a musical returned. Of course this is not really style that is congenial to the stark anger true: politics has never vanished. What expressed in their lyrics. In songs like is true, however, that its relevance or “Uber Capitalist Death Trade” or “The even existence have been denied. Not Road to Wigan Pier”, Cabbage rage too long ago, especially in the global against austerity, Tory callousness and north societies seemed to have entered chauvinism. Meanwhile, some of The a condition that many leading political Idles songs sound like Didier Eribon theorists criticized as ‘post-political’: rendered punk music: in “Divide & in this perspective, proper politics Conquer”, the disembowelment of the consists of the struggle between different NHS poignantly boils down to the interest groups over distribution and blistering slogan-like line, “A loved representation, whereas by contrast one perished at the hand of the barren- post-politics assumes a deep consensus hearted right”; and the ultra-angry within society and reduces politics “Mother” opens with the screaming to mere administration. Blair’s New out of how “My mother worked fifteen Labour and their ‘Third Way’ doctrine hours five days a week / My mother are as symptomatic for this dominant worked sixteen hours six days a week trend as the “Neue Mitte” rhetoric of / My mother worked seventeen hours the Schroeder cabinets in Germany, not seven days a week”, followed by some to mention the stoic and “systematic practical recommendations about “the refusal of politics” so typical of most best way to scare a Tory”. No wonder periods of Merkel’s chancellorship. that commentators have repeatedly Differences between major political diagnosed “the return of protest pop” parties got blurred (very much to the (Beaumont 2017), and that even the detriment of Social Democracy all over German tageszeitung have regained Europe) and parliamentary democracy some faith in Britain’s indie scene. got eroded to a procedural rather than a political process. Extra-parliamentary The return of politics? social movements whose pressure politics had traditionally addressed and f ‘culture’ is a seismograph that registers influenced certain representatives within Iwhat is going on, then the return of parliament tended to get delinked from politics must surely be in the air. Yet to major decision-making processes and speak of a ‘return’ may be misleading, as lost much of their energy in a climate of it suggests a comeback, as if politics had general depoliticization. The status quo at some point in time moved elsewhere of the neoliberal post-Cold-War world or even fully disappeared, and now order appeared eternal, and the ‘there-is-
Page iii Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Editorial no-alternative’ mantra served to entrench tangible as, all through the early 2000s, the limits of the political imagination. one Latin American country after the other adopted some version of Chavez’s eedless to say, the stasis of this ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. A little later, Npost-political leaden time was the ‘Arab Spring’ shook many parts of never real. Post-politics was not a reality Africa’s Mediterranean rim and urged but an ideological programme: a more democratic reforms, just like the Gezi or less successful attempt to make Park protesters in Turkey claimed more politics appear obsolete and discredit democratic participation, too. But also it as ‘populism’ (of which more later). in the metropolitan centres of the global Meanwhile, all over the world political north politics proper raised its head movements and struggles continued and again and ‘returned’ with a vengeance gained in intensity, giving the lie to the after the near-meltdown of capitalism post-political ideology. “Another world in the wake of the Lehmann Brothers is possible” – the slogan of the world bankruptcy and the subsequent politics social forum movement – succinctly to bail out ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks at the captured the claim to reopen the space expense of the majority of people. The of politics as a contest of alternative ‘Occupy’ movement brought questions
© Image by John Geoffrey Walker via Flickr (source) modes of shaping the social world. of equitable redistribution and justice The possibility of another, alternative to the fore and re-asserted that which world order beyond the paradigms of post-political ideology had tried to neoliberal globalization became more conceal: the divisiveness of society. The
Page iv Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Editorial slogan, “we are the 99%”, pointedly demagogic scaremongering, especially emphasised that the actual dividing line around the phantom problem of the runs not between genders, sexes, ethnic so-called ‘refugee crisis’. This has led or religious groups, but classes. Within to the enforcement of border policing, Europe, this renewed mobilization to the thorough militarization of the around issues of economic redistribution Mediterranean, to the criminalization found its most critical expression in of refugees, to the illegal deportation those countries that were most severely of asylum seekers with pending cases, affected by the implementation of and, most recently, the legal persecution draconian austerity measures in the of activists involved in humanitarian aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis: rescue missions off the Libyan coast. Spain, Portugal and especially Greece, All this, of course, is also politics: a where for a few months in early 2015 reactionary politics whose function it is an actual alternative appeared to take to contain the emancipatory impulses shape at the level of state government. enumerated above. In short, if politics has returned it has not returned in rom today’s perspective, these the form expected or desired by the Fmoments of political mobilization critics of the post-political consensus. in the name of redistributive democracy appear to belong to another time The return of politics! altogether. For the past three years or so a massive rollback on a global scale has o doubt progressive politics is on set in: the pro-democracy movements Nthe retreat at this moment, but it in the Arab world, in Turkey and should not be denied that all the various elsewhere have been crushed with the movements of the past fifteen years or so help of newly enthroned authoritarian have had at least one major and important and autocratic regimes. Meanwhile in effect: namely, to undo the faith in Europe, the movements towards a more the neoliberal worldview and the ‘no equitable and solidary architecture of the alternative’ doctrine. Post-politics is over. EU have effectively been bullied away by The containment of progressive politics a new rampant nationalism. The success can no longer be organized through of the ‘leave’ campaign in Britain is as stoic administration but through forms symptomatic of this as the coming into of government that appear themselves as power of a range of right-wing parties political. The rise of the anti-democratic in such countries as Poland, Hungary, if not fully autocratic right, therefore, Austria and Italy, among others. Much is an indicator of the fading out of the of this neo-nationalism thrives on post-political version of governance.
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Instead of an ideology of consensus and they all have constituted themselves in business as usual, the rhetoric of these struggles for rights and entitlements, new regimes from the USA to India, from and by the very same token, in struggles Turkey to the Visegrád states within the against the status quo and its defenders. EU is essentially populist. It assumes a In this understanding, populism and permanent conflict between ‘the people’ politics cannot be held apart. For “if and its others, which may be embodied populism consists in postulating a radical in ‘the elite’/’the establishment’ but also alternative within the communitarian in ‘the foreigner’. For good reason, stiff space, a choice at the crossroads on which disapproval of this version of populist the future of a given society hinges, mobilization, especially of the demagogy does not populism become synonymous and bigotry of ‘post-truth’ and with politics? The answer can only ‘alternative facts’ politics, is widespread be affirmative.” (Laclau 2005, 47). on the left. On the other hand, a full dismissal of ‘populism’ as such appears iven this, it is precisely the difference counterproductive because it runs the Gbetween the Trump, Orbán or risk of leading back to a full refusal of Farage varieties of populism on the one politics as such. Populism hinges on hand, and a populist politics from the the assumption that the social space is left that becomes crucially important. divided into two camps, and it functions Obviously enough there is a substantial “as a flexible mode of persuasion to difference, and it consists in the very redefine the people and their adversaries” different ways in which ‘the people and (Panizza 2005, 9). In that sense it is the their adversaries’ are getting redefined. absolute opposite of post-politics. It is Right-wing populists attempt to restrict divisive to the core, and may thus be ‘the people’ to a homogeneous national specifically prone to serve for a politics of or ethnic identity, excluding immigrants, divide and rule. But then again, all social refugees, and any Other definable as movements that have contributed to the “foreign”, and to mobilize ‘the people’ betterment of society have always sprung for projects that aim to consolidate and from the insight that a fissure is running stabilize established corporate powers through society and that, accordingly, and conservative ideologies; left-wing antagonism and conflict are part and populisms, by contrast, try to involve parcel of any form of self-assertion of people in struggles for emancipatory the underprivileged. The working-class aims not foreseen by the established movement, feminism, anti-colonialism, order. As Chantal Mouffe plainly Black Power or the various LGBTQ puts it: right-wing populism today is movements have all been populist then: against migrants and for the political
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© Image by Ellie Stevenson via Flickr (source) and economic forces of neoliberalism; for the left on its hard road to renewal. left-wing populism is for migrants and Luke Martell analyses one of the more against the political and economic forces amazing and promising developments of neoliberalism (Mouffe 2015). In in this field, namely the ‘populist’ analytic terms it may not be accurate to recalibration of the Labour Party after speak of ‘the return of politics’ since, as Jeremy Corbyn’s election to leadership we have seen, politics had never withered and especially after the unexpectedly away. In strategic terms, however, it is positive turnout in the last general crucial what politics will return. After election while Sebastian Berg offers a post-politics, it is of the essence for brief overview of the general conceptual all further perspectives which of the dimensions of the term ‘populism’, contending political outlooks will gain Leading political theorist Yannis the upper hand. Culture, we hold, has Stavrakakis shares some of his thoughts a role to play in this clash of ideologies. about the aversion against populism and what it is that distinguishes The return of politics progressive from reactionary populism.
his issue of Hard Times is titled olitics is of course not exhausted with TThe Return of Politics. A couple of Ptheoretical and analytic descriptions contributions expressly focus on the but needs to be tested and further question of populism and its relevance developed in concrete interventionist
Page vii Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Editorial practice. In this issue of Hard Times, we they register the deep disillusionment touch upon only one instance that may, and simultaneous desire for change however, exemplify something like the that characterize pre-Brexit Britain. return of politics in action: Christin Hoehne and Lena Wånggren report hile committed theatre has the university strike that hit some 65 Wfound its own ways of addressing campuses all over the United Kingdom the problems of contemporary British and put teaching to a halt for a period society, political satire seems to have of more than two weeks. Since academia fallen on hard luck in times of Brexit is a sphere that has for a long time and Trump, as some observers like been exposed almost defencelessly to Hugo Rifkind or Emma Burnell claim: the assaults of neoliberal subsumption, laughing at the establishment does no the faculty strike is an important longer challenge but actually empowers enough event – not least because it has the likes of Boris Johnson or Nigel reopened debates about the social role Farage enacting a politics in the name and political responsibility of academic of some ‘anti-establishment’ populism. and scientific research and teaching, as As Aileen Behrendt diagnoses in her strike activist Grace Krause pointedly discussion of current political satire in expresses in her poem ‘Resilience’ that Britain, there is a danger that Brexit and we are happy to include in this issue. its aftermath foster the return of a politics of humour that mistakes racism, sexism, he sense of immediacy that speaks misogyny and homophobia for fun. Tthrough Krause’s text is conspicuous for some of the more significant n the first part of this introduction developments in contemporary drama, Iwe have hinted at the ways in which as Anke Bartels delineates in her article a newly re-politicized literary scene is on two productions that address Brexit involved and invested in the return head-on: My Country – A Work in Progress of politics. Harald Pittel offers a by Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris reading of Ali Smith’s ‘Brexit novels’, constellates documentary interview Autumn and Winter, that he reads extracts with Duffy’s own poetic as not only elaborate critiques of a interludes, while Brexit Shorts consists society more and more obsessed with of nine short monologues written by homogeneity, “compartmentalization nine playwrights commissioned by The and privatization” but moreover Guardian. Both productions are highly attempts to reassert the intense pleasures critical of the Leave campaign and of endorsing the divergent, diverse the outcome of the referendum, and and impure. Smith’s advocacy, in her
Page viii Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Editorial novels, of a non-insular, worldly vision of Britain corresponds with her active final remark: this is the first Hard engagement as a prominent ‘patron’ of A Times issue to be launched from the “Refugee Tales” project, which Dirk the journal’s new base camp at Potsdam Wiemann portrays in his contribution University. We are happy to act as hosts to this issue: a joint venture of refugee and we hope that our new guest will be relief activists, writers, actors, and a long-term resident, and that he/she/ academics, “Refugee Tales” is an annual it will have many visits from old and public walk-and-talk performance (hopefully) new friends. You will have against the politics of indefinite noticed while reading that you have detention of asylum seekers. Re-enacting not been holding a print version of Chaucer’s pilgrimage, the project is a Hard Times in your hands. The reason unique attempt to overwrite the ‘hostile is simple: there isn’t one any more. For environment’ that Britain has become at the times they are a-changin’, including the hands of Theresa May and her ilk, the hard ones. Less philosophically put: and reclaim the land for a more humane Hard Times must pay its tribute to the and convivial politics of hospitality. hard times we are going through these days and from now on restrict itself f course, this Hard Times volume to the disembodied spectral form of Ocannot touch upon, let alone do an online journal – for reasons both justice to, all the manifold ways in which ecological and economic (as we all know: the return of politics manifests itself. the determining factor in that last and At best, this issue can selectively mark lonely instance that never comes …). some of the more obvious and perhaps sustainable trends. In the upcoming s always, something’s lost where volumes, Hard Times will continue to Asomething’s gained and vice versa. probe into the state of the art of the What is lost: the allure of the traditional political by focusing, in volume 102, Hard Times so dear to many of us; on a on the question of gender and sexual more practical note, the portability of a politics today, and in volume 103 on hardcopy that you could leisurely browse the situation of the political left on an in the park or on the bus, or show to your international scale. We are looking friends and colleagues. What is gained: forward very much to these forthcoming the versatility of the digital that allows volumes and hope that the contributions for the possibility to have, occasionally, contained in this issue may help trigger short-notice mini-issues; the indisputable some discussion and some productive charm of an open-access publication controversy over the return of politics. that for the conceivable future will be
Page ix Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Editorial available for free (good news, therefore, Guardian, 11 Mar. 2017,
Clark, Alex (2018). “Will Self: ‘The Seymour, Richard (2016). Corbyn: Novel Is Absolutely Doomed’”. The The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. Guardian, 17 Mar. 2018,
Page x Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Corbyn, Populism and Power Luke Martell (University of Sussex)
eremy Corbyn was elected leader of Corbyn, but has a populist content to it, Jthe Labour Party in 2015 with wide for all of society, not just the core working member support but opposed by most class, and against the elite. Corbyn had of the party’s parliamentary elite. In a phase of using Trump-ist terminology late 2016, his team, wary of a possible about the system being ‘rigged’. For election and with the party lagging in the many he has seemed a man of the people, polls, decided on a populist approach, speaking directly to them, close to and for inspired by Trump’s no-nonsense anti- them, despite the opposition of political, elitism. Corbyn was never one of the media and corporate elites; a British part establishment, through his career a serial of a global populist surge in politics, left rebel against the party leadership and versions in Southern European parties was seen as having an honest ‘unpolished like Syriza and Podemos, Sanders in the authenticity’ (Bulman 2016, Stewart USA and the Latin American left. At the and Elgot 2016). He was allowed to be 2017 election, Corbyn’s Labour won an himself, perceived to be close enough to unexpectedly large vote, across classes, the people for this to find resonance with with strong support from the young. them. In the 2017 election campaign he spoke at large rallies and moved with ease arch (2017a, 2017b) argues, amongst ordinary people, in contrast Mhowever, that there is little to the Tory leader who was said to be populism in mainstream British politics, robotic in interviews and was kept away beyond politicians being people-centric from the public. He used the slogans of and claiming to be close to the people; ‘straight talking honest politics’ when as much electoralism as populism. standing for the party leadership, and Mainstream political populism, he says, ‘for the many not the few’ at the general is ‘fleeting, vague and tokenistic’ and not election. The latter is from Labour pre- populist in the true sense of being anti-
Page 1 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Corbyn, Populism and Power elitist and favouring popular sovereignty: used definition is of being for the people ‘seeing Corbyn as populist is, at best, a against the elites. A stronger and narrower half-truth’ (March 2017a). However, definition is as for popular sovereignty the glass is half full as well as half empty and popular democracy, a by the people and there are populist dimensions populism. Economic populism is about to Corbyn’s policies, although some being for the people against the elite of it leftism creating populism as in terms of material redistribution and much as populism behind his leftism. egalitarianism. Populism is sometimes defined in terms of nationalism, against here can be populism at several outsiders and exclusionary. Finally, there Tlevels. Corbyn’s advisors were is populism by aim or achievement, drawing on a perception that he is close intention or accident. Someone can to the people; a populism of the people. achieve it without intending to.
© Image by duncan c via Flickr (source)
There is a politics of being popular with Populism in the party the people, with cross-class rather than sectional support, across divides and d Miliband resigned as Labour plural identities rather than based on Eleader after the 2015 election. In the a specific group. A simple and widely ensuing leadership contest Corbyn took his turn to be the candidate of the left.
Page 2 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Luke Martell
Everyone expected him to finish a distant Minister David Cameron derided fourth in a field of four. Leadership his dress sense and perseverance in elections had changed, after Miliband, persisting as leader despite the onslaught from an electoral college of unions, he was under. But Corbyn, surrounded members and MPs to one member one by solidaristic supporters and with vote, shifting power from MPs to the the backing of the party membership, grassroots. However, Labour leadership resisted pressure to resign. In 2016 a candidates required nominations from leadership challenge was made by Owen 15% of the Parliamentary Labour Party Smith. As incumbent, Corbyn no longer (PLP) and Corbyn only secured enough needed the minimum PLP nominations, because non-supporters proposed him which he would have failed to obtain to ensure a broad field of candidates. He this time. He won with 61% of the vote. attracted great support from the rank Smith received a lower proportion of and file desperate for an alternative to support than the three losing candidates austerity and to the neoliberalism and combined in 2015. Corbyn had austerity-lite of Labour since the 1990s. bypassed the media and PLP elites again Corbyn’s personal appeal played a part. and once more gained endorsement Many joined the party to vote for him. straight from party members. When he won, more signed up inspired by the direction he was taking the party. he party has grown phenomenally Corbyn achieved 60% of the vote, the Tsince Corbyn stood for and became next candidate 19%. He came first across leader, with 570,000 members at the all categories of members, registered end of 2017, compared to 200,000 supporters and affiliated members. Most when he became leader, 405,000 at the of the PLP opposed him and once he peak under Blair, and 150,000 for the was elected many would not serve in Conservative Party (Perry 2017, Waugh his shadow cabinet. Labour had voted 2017). Corbyn brought many into the in a leader more left-wing than its PLP party: the young who had been alienated and closer to the membership than the by anodyne Labour beforehand, excited parliamentary party. There were echoes of by a genuine anti-austerity alternative; populism and anti-elitism; a leader going Old Labour supporters who had left beyond elites and based in the people. the party or grown disillusioned and inactive; even Marxists and socialists orbyn’s early days as leader were who saw a radical leader and hope for Cmet with hostile opposition the social democratic parliamentary from the PLP and snide and mocking road they had previously dismissed. coverage by the media. Tory Prime
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ince Corbyn took the helm party party becomes populism of it; whether Sreforms have increased the power popular support for the leader in the party of members, with more representatives translates into the same across society on the National Executive Committee electorally, and party democratisation and a decrease in PLP nominations extends in government to popular needed by contenders for the leadership, democracy in society as a whole. reducing the elite veto. A party review has investigated how to further expand Populism in support: of and with the members’ power in policy making. people? Proposals include more representation n 2017, Prime Minister May calculated on party bodies, again reducing the role she could increase her majority of the PLP in nominating leadership I against a party with a left-wing leader contestants, and the mandatory under siege and called an election. But reselection, and so possible deselection, Corbyn won much greater support than of parliamentary candidates. Political expected. Labour’s share of the vote rose compromises have led to changes in from 30% in 2015 to 40%, compared these directions, if not all the way in to the Tories’ 42%, and Labour gained each case. The review aims to challenge an additional 30 seats in parliament. the boundaries between party and movement. What may have seemed here did Corbyn’s support lie utopian, and raising contradictions W(see Curtis 2017)? His, and that between party and movement, now for May, was cross-class, popular rather looks, in the context of change in than class-based and sectional. He won the party, plausible and coherent. especially significant support amongst the young and expanding ranks of the more o, in the party Corbyn is popular highly educated. This dropped amongst with the people, for them and on S the older and those without degrees who popular sovereignty grounds could be supported the Tories more strongly. This said to be populist. His place within group will shrink as the educated young Labour and proposed reforms fit, to grow older and take their place. A key an extent, with of-, with-, for- and by- issue is whether the backing of the young populisms. But spreading democracy educated for Corbynism is lifecycle, so to party members favours the left so it they become more right-wing as they may be politics leading to populism as get older, or generational and a sign of a much as populism being the driving lasting left anti-austerity cohort, in which force. And how populist Corbyn is, is case the Corbynite proportion of the affected by whether populism in the population will grow over time. Corbyn
Page 4 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Luke Martell can mobilise the liberal-left educated more appeal. The question is whether middle class, especially the younger this is enough to lose Labour elections. members of this strata and public- sector workers, although his acceptance ost-election surveys did not show of Brexit could risk alienating a mostly Pstrong support amongst Labour pro-Remain group. It is not clear if he voters for Corbyn as ‘Prime Minister has support from the insecure precariat, material’ but suggested belief in his a cross-class group, but they seem likely policies (Barasi 2017). Bringing to be open to his anti-austerity politics anti-austerity and redistributional more than Labour’s prior submission to politics back into mainstream political neoliberalism, and Labour was well ahead discourse has involved hegemonic amongst the unemployed in the election. leadership by Corbyn, finding points of contact between the material reality of people’s lives and his ideas and mobilising people behind them, something Thatcher was also skilled at.
o, Corbyn can be seen as populist Sin being of and with a cross-section of the population, not predominantly a particular class. But while he did well in the general election and won broad support, some groups do not support him in large numbers and he did not win. The Tories were returned to office and also received wide backing, so Corbyn has no greater claim to popular support than them. Furthermore, is cross-class support, or seeking it, which all politicians want, populism or just electoralism? Being of the people, © Image by Jon Southcoasting via Flickr (source) understanding their concerns, expressing them and winning their support, may With the private sector aspirational not be populism, or just thin populism. working class and less educated middle Being for the people against the elites class, materialistically oriented and or democratic empowerment of the sometimes self-employed, Corbyn may people, by-the-people politics, are more have a problem where Blairism has clearly in the category of populism.
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Populism in society: for and by the policy areas, as well as within the people? party, and lowering of the voting age to 16 (Labour Party 2017a, 2017b). orbyn attacks elites and argues for Cthe people on economic grounds, he party propose a constitutional criticising tax evasion and the top few’s Tconvention on extending democracy riches. The 2017 manifesto proposes the nationally, regionally and locally. The highest 5% earners pay more income policy forum developing their next tax, everyone else to give no more. manifesto takes submissions from any The middle classes are not targeted members of the public. It is consulting on for extra income tax, beneficiaries of devolving power to local communities, redistribution to be the broad mass not how to facilitate participation and just the working class, giving a populist democratic accountability in them, as much as a class basis to Labour’s extending democratic ownership in egalitarian approach. Labour propose the economy and accountability of greater popular power in the economy: educational institutions to parents, doubling the size of the co-operative children and the community. Corbyn sector, giving employees first right of has argued for public involvement in refusal if their companies go up for sale, local budget decisions, referenda on for local and community forms of non- public service outsourcing, greater profit public ownership in the energy trade union bargaining rights, and staff and water sectors, and widening trade representation on executive remuneration union representation in workplaces. The committees. He proposes more online party proposes nationalisation of rail and democracy, citizens’ assemblies, and the Royal Mail. A party report suggests replacement of the House of Lords further expansion of municipal and local with elected representation; contrasting social ownership, and democratised proposals for bottom-up democracy national state ownership. In the public with monopolisation of power in the sector, Labour intend to expand local ‘closed circles’ of central government, participation in NHS planning, reverse the heights of the civil service and health service privatisation, and re- corporate boards (Smith 2016). insource public services. They say they will increase community involvement orbyn’s politics are of, for and in local government planning and fan Cwith the people in economic participation in sports governance. egalitarian anti-elitism. There areby the Labour advocate a more representative people elements in the economic bases make-up in decision making across for participation that redistribution can facilitate. Economic egalitarian
Page 6 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Luke Martell populism may have political power orbyn’s Labour say funds should populism effects. Party policies involve Cbe diverted to areas where public shifting power to the public sector services are affected by immigration for and on behalf of the people away (Labour Party 2017a: 28-9), seemingly from private interests and economic endorsing discourses that immigration elites. They propose a more democratic causes social problems. However, while economy, greater direct popular he has said that Brexit will end free
© Image by Max Montagut via Flickr (source) participation in the workplace and movement he also states this does not pre- public-sector planning, and devolution determine a Labour government limiting of power closer to the people in localities it (Kuenssberg 2017). One of Miliband’s politically (see Guinan and O’Neill 5 election pledges in 2015 was ‘controls 2018). There are populisms of, for, and on immigration’. Corbyn’s manifesto, on behalf of the people against the elites though, makes a clear rhetorical and by the people in these policies. differentiation from anti-immigration sentiment. There is a strongly worded Nationalist and economic populism disavowal of scapegoating and blaming migrants for problems they did not opulism has been defined as about cause and for valuing their contribution nationalism and exclusionary. P to the UK (Labour Party 2017a: 28- Corbyn is primarily focused on the UK 9). Corbyn argues, like Miliband, that and the interests of people in Britain. problems ascribed to immigration, But the 2017 manifesto contains such as the undercutting of pay and internationalism in the tradition of the conditions, are labour market issues, Labour left (Labour Party 2017a: ch. 12). requiring employment protections And Corbyn is not nationalist especially. rather than immigration controls. He does not promote Britishness as an identity, and his politics are not ethnically orbyn accepts Brexit, exiting the exclusive like right-wing populism. Csingle market and is against a second
Page 7 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Corbyn, Populism and Power referendum on a completed Brexit deal. economic and right-wing populism is But Brexit was won in a referendum and cultural. There is a neoliberal populism his acceptance is for democratic rather that is socio-economic and stresses than nationalist reasons. His history of individualism and property rights; Euroscepticism is about opportunities taking power from the state and public for a left government outside a sector and giving it to people through neoliberal EU, not xenophobia. In his private ownership and market choice. departure from nationalism and racism The left departs from this by having a there are clear differences between collectivist and redistributive concept right-wing populism and Corbyn’s of empowerment. For politicians like politics. He campaigned for Remain, Corbyn, the state not the market, although perhaps for political as much and government not capital, are for as conviction reasons, and has marked the people. So, Corbyn’s populism his position off from the Conservatives’ differs from the far right’s nationalism by advocating continuing British by its socio-economic and inclusive membership of the Customs Union. approach but also from neoliberal right populism by different conceptions of t can be argued that nationalist- socio-economic justice and rights for Ipopulism is not populist as it divides the people and the means to these. ordinary people as much as unites them, whereas economic populism is about he horseshoe model that sees left a unified popular mass against a small Tand right as curving close in their wealthy elite. It less divides the many radical reaches does not work here. amongst themselves, more the many The economic egalitarianism and social against the few. Corbyn’s left-populism democracy of Corbyn is far away from is economic and about economic equality the ethno-nationalism of the radical and redistribution, against rich elites, right and the economics of neoliberal and for greater economic inclusion, populism. Economic egalitarianism justice and rights for most of the people. creates the populism in his politics. It Left economic populism has a more is ideology that makes his populism; socio-economic focus than the socio- not populism that makes his politics. cultural nationalist right concerned with identity and is more inclusive and Left, right, populism and power pluralist than the cultural and exclusive orbyn is a democratic socialist but nationalist-populism of the right. Chis policies are social democratic, for ut left and right populism do not political as much as ideological reasons, Bdiffer because the left one is socio- for egalitarian and socialist institutions Page 8 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Luke Martell within capitalism. Labour’s policies for ut Corbyn is radical measured rail nationalisation do not require the Bagainst neo-liberal austerity-lite
© Image by Kevin Walsh via Flickr (source) expropriation of private property, just Labour of the ‘90s onwards and after 30 non-renewal of contracts for companies years of neoliberalism as the paradigm running train services. 60% of the for politics in the UK. And alongside population support rail nationalisation for- and on-behalf-of the people policies and state train operations are common that shift power from private interests in countries like Germany and France to the public sector, are potentially where rail travel is superior. A majority radical by-the-people proposals for a support nationalisation in areas like mass movement-based rather than elite- water, the Royal Mail and energy (Smith led Labour Party, and greater economic 2017). A proposed National Investment democracy and popular participation Bank has featured in past Labour policies in the running of public services. and other countries. Quantitative easing At the same time, it is leftism and for the people echoes Keynesianism, once egalitarianism that make this populism accepted across the political spectrum. as much as populism constructing Abolishing £9000 student fees sounds Corbyn’s ideology. Categories of left radical. But 20 years ago there was and right tell us as much about Corbyn free university education throughout as those of elitism and populism. the UK as there is in countries like Scotland, Germany and Denmark.
Page 9 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Corbyn, Populism and Power
ritain has been under the political parliamentary elite and won cross-class Band ideological spell of neoliberalism support in the 2017 general election. His since 1979. Political discourse shifted policies match with egalitarianism rather to the right such that market principles than individualism in the electorate. It became a norm for public policy remains to be seen whether this of-, decisions, as well as for the private with- and for-the-people populism sector, and the burden of proof came to will extend to an electoral majority. lie with those who want to use collective If it does Corbyn’s programme will provision and planning rather than challenge political, media and corporate private sector delivery and the market. elites of the UK. He proposes economic This was a path set by Thatcher but egalitarianism alongside the beginnings further established by Blair, who ruled of a populist reconstruction of power out alternatives in his politics of political towards the people within and beyond caution and the market. Labour vacated his party. There will be a fightback by alternative ground. There have been no those with power and Corbyn may need mainstream political forces across the to appeal to the people in and beyond UK to oppose this and take another the party and to extra-parliamentary way. Advocating alternatives has been forces in his defence. In the face of elite left with social movements, pressure attacks, his economic populism may groups, Green and small left parties and rely on an expansion of his political academics. But rather than trying to populism that gives power to the people. compete with the Tories on their own grounds, Corbyn has brought collective I am very grateful to Sebastian Berg for provision, economic equality, and his helpful advice on this article. social democracy back into mainstream politics. He has reintroduced as normal the role of the state for the people, and Works Cited concerns for the people less focused on individual achievement and more on Barasi, Leo (2017) “How did that collective effort and the poor. Instead happen? Why the election shows Tony of accepting dominant discourses of Blair was right (about one thing) and austerity, Corbyn has mobilised support other thoughts”, noiseofthecrowd.com, for an alternative to austerity and June 12th. moved it from marginal to mainstream. Bulman, May (2016) “Labour plans orbyn’s leadership has been endorsed to relaunch Jeremy Corbyn as left- by party members against Labour’s wing populist in bid to seize on C anti-establishment sentiment”, The
Page 10 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Luke Martell
Independent, December 15th Perry, Alice (2017) “A snap election, a new leader in Scotland and a Curtis, Chris (2017) “How Britain “staggering” rise in membership – Alice Voted at the 2017 General Election”, Perry’s latest NEC report”, Labourlist. th yougov.co.uk, June 13 . org, December 1st.
Guinan, Joe and O’Neill, Martin Stewart, Heather and Elgot, Jessica (2018) “The Institutional Turn: (2016) “Labour plans Jeremy Corbyn Labour’s new political economy”, relaunch to ride anti-establishment Renewal, 26,1. wave”, The Guardian, December 15th.
Kuenssberg, Laura (2017) “Jeremy Waugh, Paul (2017) “Labour Party Corbyn: I‘ve not changed mind on Membership Soars By 35,000 In Just th immigration”, bbc.com, January 10 . Four Days - After ‚Corbyn Surge‘ In 2017 General Election”, The Huffington Labour Party (2017a) For the Many Post, June 13th. not the Few: the Labour Party manifesto 2017, Labour Party: London.
Labour Party (2017b) Alternative Models of Ownership, Labour Party: London.
March, Luke (2017a) “Contrary to popular opinion, there is no populist upsurge in Britain”, LSE Blogs, July 6th.
March, Luke (2017b) “Left and right populism compared: The British case”, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19 (2): 282-303.
Smith, Matthew (2017) “Nationalisation vs privatisation: the public view”, yougov.co.uk, May 19th.
Smith, Mikey (2016) “Jeremy Corbyn pledges to ‚extend democracy across Britain‘ and strengthen trade union powers”, Daily Mirror, August 22nd
Page 11 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Populism in the Social Sciences Sebastian Berg (Ruhr-University Bochum)
s a concept, ‘populism’ has had an general and politician Boulanger, Aimpressive academic career over who wanted to replace the Third the last couple of decades. Nevertheless, Republic’s parliamentary system with it is an ‘essentially contested concept’ a plebiscitary, grassroots-democracy (Cas Mudde1), meaning one whose republicanism; usefulness as an analytical tool is still • the USA’s People’s Party in the 1890s, questioned. Geographically, populism a movement aiming at a combination is more often used to describe political of economic protectionism and social phenomena in Europe and the Americas egalitarianism; than in other parts of the world, mainly for historical reasons: these are the • and a variety of parties and regions, where the term populism once movements representing the poorer was used by political actors to describe sections of society and challenging their own position – without any the predominantly white postcolonial negative connotations being implied. elites in 20th century Latin America. Examples of self-described populists are opulism thus initially stood for rather diverse reformist and revolutionary • the Russian Narodniki, urban P movements and organisations fighting revolutionary intellectuals who went political ‘elites’, socio-economic ‘into the people’ (in particular to the inegalitarianism and political oppression peasants) in the hope of radicalising at the level of the nation state, the them and creating a revolutionary dominant arena of late 19th- and 20th- movement in the 1870s (a movement century politics. Recently, however, that spectacularly and tragically the label has been transformed by the failed); media and academic commentariat into • Boulangism in late 19th-century a relatively empty signifier that lumps France, a movement named after the together all those groups seen as critics
Page 12 Sebastian Berg of really-existing democracies while • The second approach sees populism aiming at a different way of involving as a form of identification and ‘the people’ in politics. Consequently, a organisation – a top-down two-pronged dichotomy, beside the left- relationship between a leader and a right and libertarian-authoritarian axes, movement based less on ideology than is gaining in importance in mainstream on personal identification with, and political analysis: populism versus elitism, willing subordination to, the leader. and, because of populism’s allegedly S/he usually secures her/his following homogenised and essentialised notion of by referring to a common enemy/ ‘the people’, populism versus pluralism. threat whose defeat requires loyalty. Hence, both Le Pen and Mélenchon he fashionable academic interest are seen as populists even if they try Tin populism has produced, among to convince ‘the people’ of different other things, an Oxford Handbook of kinds of threats (immigration versus Populism (2017), which suggests three globalisation). According to this approaches to the populism phenomenon: approach, populism is, first of all, a strategy to gain political power. • The first and most widespread of these Once in power, populist leaders are understands populism as an ideology.2 not unlikely to rely ever more on The core of this ideology consists of authoritarian measures and less on the division of the polity into the persuasion – in this context scholars ‘pure people’ and the ‘corrupt elites’. refer to examples like Hugo Chavez. Populism stands for a programme of reintroducing the people’s ‘common • The third approach defines populism sense’ as a standard by which political as a way of political communication decisions ought to abide. Because aimed at people’s ‘lower instincts’. populism is a ‘thin’ ideology, it Here, populism acts as a provocation frequently uses ‘host’ ideologies, for established ’high’ ways of speaking which define the people either about, and doing, politics. Whereas socially (as a class) or ethnically (as ‘high’ stands for a well-behaved, a nation). Hence it becomes possible restrained, polite, disciplined, to identify both Trump and Sanders cosmopolitan, formalist register of (or Gauland and Wagenknecht, or political communication, ‘low’ stands Farage and Galloway) as populists. for a coarse, emotional, personalist Nuanced writers on populism, like and nationalist one. Michelle the late Norberto Bobbio, distinguish Obama’s statement ‘when they go an exclusionary right-wing from an low, we go high’ neatly summarises inclusionary left-wing populism. this distinction. The dichotomy is not
Page 13 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Populism in the Social Sciences
restricted to speech in a narrow sense and legally dubious, like lobbying, but extends to accent, gestures, the as well as downright illegal ones, challenging of taboos, etc. In political like money-for-favour arrangements. practice, the distinction is replicated From this perspective, populism is not in an emphasis on proceeding necessarily a danger. Consequently, for according to the rulebook (‘high’) students of politics and democracy, it or on ‘getting things done’, even if becomes more important to focus on this involves violating checks and the specific politics of populism (which balances (‘low’). Hilary Clinton and can be inclusionary, egalitarian, anti- Donald Trump are the most salient discriminatory, etc. or quite the opposite) representatives of this distinction than on the populism of politics. in recent years. However, they also exemplify its problem: the apparent integrity of the ‘high’ way might Thanks to Luke Martell for conversations be more appearance (based on the on this topic. habitus expected in the political field) than substance, which contributes to the destabilisation of this position in Notes times of political crisis. To me, the problem with all three 1 Mudde, Cas (2017). “Populism: approaches seems to be that they share An Ideational Approach”. The Ox- a normative bias: they see really-existing ford Handbook of Populism. Ed. democracy, from an idealistic perspective, Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul A. as the best of all forms of government Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, and and, formally, as static. If democracy Pierre Ostiguy. DOI: 10.1093/oxford- has been, is, and will be perfect, then hb/9780198803560.013.1 all challenges to the constitutional and practical status quo (whether ideological, 2 Ideology is, by the representatives of strategic, or stylistic) are necessarily this view, understood to be a false be- threats. From a realist and materialist lief that serves the political interests of perspective, however, democracy may those concerned. There are, of course, be seen as an arena in which different many other definitions of ideology. actors challenge each other and struggle for power and influence – employing strategies that conform to certain legal requirements and procedures, like general elections, and others that are ethically
Page 14 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “…saying what was previously unthinkable”: for an egalitarian version of populism
An Interview with Yannis Stavrakakis
Yannis Stavrakakis, Professor of Political Science at Aristotle University Thessaloniki, is a prominent representative of the ‘Essex School’ of political discourse analysis and a leading theorist of political populism. He has published extensively on populist politics and is currently writing a monograph entitled Populism, Anti-populism and Crisis.
Many thanks to Yannis Stavrakakis for agreeing to give an interview for this issue of Hard Times.
Page 15 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “…saying what was previously unthinkable”:
ard Times (HT): In your work misplaced, leading to H you have repeatedly warned serious misconceptions and against a demonization of populism misunderstandings and creating and criticized an ‘irresponsible’ conceptual confusion. Because it is anti-populism. This is somewhat usually a euphemism to label the counter-intuitive in a climate where radical right ‘populist’; it is also populism is mainly associated with something that they are often happy hard right-wing demagogy and to accept since it ‘absolves’ them from xenophobia. Could you explain far worse designations and makes what you mean when you advocate a them appear more ‘likeable’. For responsible and democratic populism? example, if a neo-nazi is denounced as ‘populist’, he/she is likely to celebrate annis Stavrakakis (YS): It sounds and cherish this naming, precisely Y counter-intuitive precisely because he/she is given a politically because of a widespread and largely softer and less damaging label. biased eurocentric identification of In most of these cases, a peripheral populism with the extreme or radical reference to ‘the people’ and ‘popular right. This uncritical identification sovereignty’ is referred back to a has dominated both academic and nationalist or racist signification, ‘the public debates in Europe and is wholly people’ is reduced to ‘the nation’ or to ‘race’ and the central
© Image by claudia gabriela marques vieira via Flickr (source)
Page 16 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) An Interview with Yannis Stavrakakis antagonism marking social and is predominantly populist and what political space is conceived in is not. Besides, political forces like terms of a horizontal frontier (in/ PODEMOS and SYRIZA, born out out) modeled along nationalist of the recent European sovereign lines. Indeed, such discourses and debt and financial crisis, exhibit movements can be very distant from precisely such characteristics and the global populist canon, from what re-establish the importance of this both a diachronic and a synchronic egalitarian populist version within analysis of international populism(s) contemporary Europe itself, thus reveals. From a historical-genealogical effecting a paradigm shift of sorts. perspective going back to the Russian If this is the case, then one also and American populism(s) of the late has to accept that populism in its 19th century, one realizes that most inclusionary form can be a corrective populist phenomena belong to the to a democracy that has lost its left and exhibit a rather egalitarian, egalitarian, participatory component, ‘inclusionary’ profile: ‘the people’ does not serve ‘popular’ but rather remains an ‘empty signifier’ able to ‘market sovereignty’ and seems to accommodate and include all the follow a post-democratic direction. excluded, impoverished and non- All those popular strata resisting this privileged sectors of a population oligarchic course are bound to utilize (including immigrants) and the central the emancipatory political grammar antagonism posited is articulated of democratic modernity and attempt along vertical lines (bottom/up or to articulate their different demands top/down): the excluded ‘people’ in a unified and thus stronger political vs. the establishment, the elite, the subject; this is how ‘the people’ 1%. Debates around populism can is discursively and performatively greatly benefit from avoiding this created, a process involving two eurocentrism and from embracing a crucial strategies: (1) people-centrism, genealogical and truly comparative a central reference to ‘the people’; perspective registering the different (2) anti-elitism, an antagonistic variants of populism, from rigorously understanding of politics in polarized registering and distinguishing what terms, pitting the people against the
Page 17 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “…saying what was previously unthinkable”: power bloc. Under conditions of an proper ‘populist’ moment or stage: increasingly violent neoliberalism (or movements like the Greek and worse ordoliberalism), inclusionary Spanish ‘indignados’, like Occupy or and egalitarian populism may be the some movements associated with the only viable way to resist this trend. so-called Arab Spring, etc. represent a This is why it is often demonized in rather loose assertion of heterogeneous mainstream anti-populist discourses. demands voiced by different strata and Obviously this left-wing populism by discrete social sectors and political needs to be cultivated and educated agents against a common enemy: the in order to avoid excesses and establishment, the ruling elite. What limitations, in order to incorporate follows is a hegemonic intervention a self-critical and reflexive tone. that unifies these demands and assumes the task of centrally representing them in the national political sphere: In the past ten years or so it is here that the horizontalism of HT: we have witnessed (and social movements and autonomous to some extent participated in) many initiatives, of the ‘multitude’, mutates movements that appeared to indicate into the verticalism of political ‘the return of the people’ – from the parties like SYRIZA and PODEMOS. Arab Spring to the Gezi Park protests, from Occupy to Podemos and Syriza. Our recent historical experience Not very much seems to be left from demonstrates a twin danger leading the energies of these movements, while to political impotence: when right-wing and authoritarian politics horizontalism fails to transform are gaining ground everywhere. What into a more vertical axis, then social happened to the energies of street and mobilization is bound to eventually square politics? Is left populism dead? die down; this is what happened, more or less, with Occupy. On the The process you describe other hand, if horizontal mobilization YS: involves at least two is wholly absorbed by a vertical party separate moments, let’s call them representation, then the radical axis a ‘pre-populist’ moment and a can be more easily lost with this party
Page 18 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) An Interview with Yannis Stavrakakis
© Image by EYE DJ via Flickr (source) form being ultimately incorporated will be easily colonized by the corporative into existing power structures. Radical power of the forces of the status quo. To democratic politics may involve advance both in the directions of autonomy retaining both of them in some sort and hegemony is the real challenge to those of dynamic, productive tension. who aim for a democratic future […].1
Ernesto Laclau has formulated it in a If or when these two moments very cogent manner: are combined then left populism arguably stands a better chance to
the horizontal dimension of autonomy successfully question and confront a will be incapable, left to itself, of bringing very organized neoliberal camp that about long-term historical change if operates effectively on a transnational it is not complemented by the vertical institutional level within the EU and dimension of ‘hegemony’ – that is, a radical the Eurozone and internationally. transformation of the state. Autonomy In the Greek case, this did not left to itself leads, sooner or later, to the materialize and the left-wing populism exhaustion and the dispersion of the of SYRIZA quickly felt the violent movements of protest. But hegemony not institutional pressure of the EU and accompanied by mass action at the level of other international institutions, civil society leads to a bureaucratism that but also the limitations of the
Page 19 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “…saying what was previously unthinkable”:
Greek electorate that insisted on an would agree that, unlike in Greece in ultimately untenable and impossible July 2015, something went terribly position: yes to the EU and the euro wrong in Britain. Does this not (seen not only as a currency, but also confirm the conservative’s wariness as a clear sign of European identity of a ‘populist revolution’ that, as The and acceptance from the crypto- Economist prophesies, will ultimately colonial European gaze), but no to replace orderly parliamentary austerity. In this sense, SYRIZA failed sovereignty with the rule of the mob? to change the course of Europe, but more or less stayed loyal to a rather The mob is neither contradictory crypto-colonial Greek YS: a concept I use nor a popular sentiment. Nevertheless, even concept I accept, because it tends when these forces fail to counteract to downgrade a priori popular neoliberal hegemony, they often participation in decision-making manage to change the functioning of processes. I am not sure something party systems and media debates. For went terribly wrong anywhere, and example, even if Occupy Wall Street this has nothing to do with particular failed to trasform into a political agent outcomes: we cannot judge a certain able to effect large-scale change, it institution (in this case, referenda) did manage to function as an agenda- on the basis of whether we like the setting mechanism putting forward result of a particular vote or not. ‘inequality’ as a central topic of concern. Ultimately, everything boils down to whether one opts for an elitist theory of democracy, which restricts popular In the British context, participation to periodic voting, HT: populism is mostly suspects and sets restrictions to associated with Ukip and the anti- popular participation, or whether one EU propagandists who succeeded in opts for a radical democratic position gaining the majority in the Brexit that enhances popular participation referendum. In principle, a referendum and passionate commitment in all is surely a democratic means to express levels of political life. The overall the people’s will. And still most of us trend today is in favour of the elitist
Page 20 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) An Interview with Yannis Stavrakakis camp either in its plutocratic or its death. She writes that, “the election of technocratic guise or both, and, what Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour is worse, when resistances mount Party has brought me hope that things and get invested in egalitarian, could be different in Britain. And the inclusionary types of populism they recent announcement that Corbyn
© Image by Max Montagut via Flickr (source) get discredited and violently crushed, is going to adopt a left-populist leaving only a xenophobic radical right approach indicates that he has to camouflage and sell itself as the only understood that this is the only way to alternative political force in town. renew radical politics.” A good year and a pretty successful snap election In an interview with later, would you say that Mouffe’s HT: The Guardian (29. 12. optimism has proven well grounded? 2016), Chantal Mouffe speculates that the Labour Party might turn out I do think Chantal has to be an exception to the rule which YS: a point here! Social seems to condemn social democracy to democracy has been so neoliberalized
Page 21 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “…saying what was previously unthinkable”: that it often does not realize the mortal unsayable demands of that electorate. danger it faces: what you call ‘death’, Could Corbyn and his Labour Party its reduction to insignificance in many perform such a ‘charismatic act’, too? European and global party systems, what goes by the Greek–inspired This is a discursive name pasokification. PASOK, which YS: understanding of was a strong centre-left populist party ‘charisma’, which does not draw so polling nearly 50% in the 1980s, is much on Max Weber, but rather now reduced, as an incarnation of the utilizes the very challenging work of so-called ‘extreme centre’, to almost the social and political anthropologist, 6-7% of the vote. Corbyn seems to James Scott. In this perspective, represent an exception to this rule every social setting, every power within the European context. His structure, involves the operation platform seems largely populist, clearly of both what Scott calls a ‘public pitting ‘the many’ against ‘the few’, transcript’ and a ‘hidden transcript’. thus managing to change the terms of The public transcript reproduces public debate, bypassing an extremely established hierarchies and power hostile media system, inspiring the relations and regulates accordingly grassroots and starting to change the social interaction(s). When, however, tide of British politics. This is certainly something goes wrong and ‘business a very interesting case to follow. as usual’ cannot go on – when, for example, a crisis interrupts the smooth functioning of the system –, then it For your analysis of left may happen that someone will voice HT: democratic populism you publicly a grievance or a demand that, have developed a very specific definition up to that time, was only whispered in of the term ‘charisma’. I am thinking private. The person who voices this, of your idea of the ‘charismatic bond’ for the first time publicly, is invested between the electorate (with their with a certain aura, a certain charisma. numerous grievances) and the political This is how, during Syriza’s first few agent – party and/or individual months in power, Varoufakis and – that publicly voices the hidden, Tsipras enjoyed an amazing approval
Page 22 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) An Interview with Yannis Stavrakakis rating in Greece without delivering any hard economic improvement: just on the basis of breaking the omerta that dominated the Eurogroup and the European public sphere (that Greece is a ‘success story’, that the Greek debt is sustainable, etc.). Something similar is happening today with Corbyn: saying what was previously unthinkable, as it breaks the previously established hegemony in Britain and beyond. As I already said, a crucial case to follow.
Interview conducted by Dirk Wiemann (Potsdam)
Endnotes
1: Laclau, Ernesto, The Rhetorical Foundations of Society, London: Verso, 2014, p. 9
Page 23 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “In order to be utopian, you have to feel utopian” Two perspectives on the recent strike at UK universities Christin Hoene and Lena Wånggren
Christin Hoene, University of academics and by the vast majority of Kent members of the University and College Union (UCU) as an unacceptable threat t the beginning, the biggest strike to pension security. Hence, UCU called Aaction in the UK Higher Education for the biggest strike action in its history. sector was primarily about numbers. With 14 days of strike action at 65 ut what started out as a strike about universities across the UK, the protests Bmoney and defined by numbers against pension reforms this February turned into so much more. As Jason and March marked the longest and Hickel put it in a blog post about the biggest strike in the history of UK Higher strike: “What we’re really after is nothing Education. At the beginning, it was about short of reclaiming our universities from money. More precisely, the strike was to the banal and reductive logic of neoliberal protest employers’ plans that would cut, capitalism - including the uberization of by some estimates, up to £10,000 off lecturers, the CEO-ification of managers, the average academic’s annual pension; and the customerization of students. which adds up to around £200,000 Because really, what’s at stake here is the over the course of the average-length public university itself” (Hickel 2018). retirement. The employer, Universities o the strike turned from a focus on UK (UUK), had proposed to change pensions to a much wider discussion the Universities Superannuation Scheme S about casualization, marketization, (USS) from a defined benefit scheme, and the ever-increasing workload on which guarantees retirement income, to academics’ shoulders. It turned into a a defined contribution scheme, which sounding board about the big questions, ties pensions to the fluctuations of the the biggest of them being: what kind of stock market. This was seen by many
Page 24 Christin Hoene and Lena Wånggren university do we want? And that “we” picket lines, voicing their grievances and included staff across the vast majority complaining to management rather than of the country’s universities, and within their lecturers, voicing solidarity to their these universities, it included staff across tutors, actively shaping the discussion all the different disciplines. And that “we” about the current state and the possible included students, which is something future of education at teach-outs. that the employers had not counted There were more than 20 occupations on. In their neoliberal conception of of university buildings by students in the university as a marketplace, where solidarity with their lecturers. But, of students are treated as consumers and course, students have their own numbers staff are treated as content providers, to bear: over the past 20 years, tuition rose
© Image by Chris Betram via Flickr (source)
UUK’s logic was that the students would from the introductory £1,000 in 1998 demand the content that costs them in to a staggering cap of currently £9,250 excess of £9,000 a year in fees alone and a year for UK and EU students studying thus put pressure on staff who were, by in England, with the majority of the taking strike action, withholding that universities charging the full amount. content. The opposite happened. At universities across the country, students hat “we” of the striking staff-student supported staff in large numbers and Talliance did not, however, include in various ways: joining staff on the me. Not because I thought the strike
Page 25 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “In order to be utopian, you have to feel utopian” action to be unjust or unjustified. o what now? I asked colleagues who To the contrary: I was and still am Swere on strike about their thoughts convinced that it was the appropriate and experiences, and the consensus reaction to increasingly inappropriate was that a lot of good came out of the working conditions for academics, and strike: communication across faculties I wholeheartedly supported my striking and departments, across staff and colleagues. I informed my students about students. “Finally”, one colleague wrote the point and purpose of the strike, as a reply, “we talked about what is and I asked them to support it, by, for wrong with academia: the marketisation example, emailing the Vice Chancellor of education, tuition fees, pay cuts, and joining the picket lines. Many of precarious working conditions, the TEF, them did both. I donated money to our the fact that University management department’s strike fund to help striking doesn‘t actually know what we do/ colleagues who are on hourly paid how we teach and that their ideas of contracts and who struggle to make ends standardisation have nothing to do meet even under normal circumstances. with reality. The fact that we ARE the I worked from home when I could so as university but ‘they’ run the university.” not to cross the picket line. But I did not Another colleague mentioned the strong strike and I did not join the Union. I sense of solidarity on the picket line, am on a temporary three-year contract, and how important it is to experience and I have a student loan to repay. To that you are not alone, particularly for participate in the strike would have people who are precariously “employed” meant to dispense with half a month’s and who do so much labour for the pay and to not do any research for that university, but who are so often unheard: same half month, when I only have 15 “You look around and see that there are months of research time left on my current contract clock. So I could not afford to lose either, the money or the time. And that is another aspect of the neo- liberalisation and marketisation of higher education: striking becomes a privilege. Yet, many of my colleagues who, like me, could not afford to strike, did it anyway, and I admire their courage.
© Image by Dun.can via Flickr (source)
Page 26 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Christin Hoene and Lena Wånggren other people in the same predicament. both strike action and actions short of That’s really powerful.” He said that a strike (such as working to contract), the strike showed that another kind of we not only fight for a specific issue, University is possible; a university where but engage in a collective care for others lecturers are not content providers to that has a long history of struggle, students as consumers, but where it sacrifice, and care for each other. is about an exchange of knowledge; a university where what matters is the think that this collectivity and sense of quality of education, and not new I shared purpose and strength, which I buildings. “In order to be utopian you have always found in trade union work have to feel utopian”, he said. And I agree. and other labour organising, became available to many members first during Lena Wånggren, University of the recent industrial action in UK Edinburgh universities (note that the strike did not affect all universities, but rather those s a trade union representative, for universities which use the USS pension Ame and many colleagues, engaging in industrial action is never “just” about money, or about numbers. It is about something much larger and with centuries or even millennia (as I learned at a strike teach-out on workers’ revolt in Ancient Egypt) of shared histories of struggles. Trade union work, which includes many aspects – campaigning and negotiating on behalf of members to improve policies, pay, and working conditions; ensuring members’ views are represented at HR panels; educating staff about their own rights at work and protecting these rights; representing individual members in meetings with management; and working with other trade unions and social justice groups to create a fairer society also outside of the workplace – is at its heart about collectivity. By taking industrial action, © Image by Abyd Quinn-Aziz then, something which can include
Page 27 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “In order to be utopian, you have to feel utopian” schemes – many universities in the UK strike poem declares to the employer: belong to different schemes). Recent decades’ marketisation of higher and Fuck you for sending me invitations to stress further education in the UK (following reduction courses on similar processes across Europe, large While you make me teach larger classes for less parts of North and South Americas, money. Australia) has brought not only Fuck you for sending me booklets with breathing increased tuition fees for students, but exercises precarious working conditions, cultures While my workload grows higher and higher of performativity and overwork, and And fuck you, especially, for telling me to work damaging individualising neoliberal on my resilience managerial techniques. Whatever we do While you try to dismantle the pension is individualised and metricised, ranked That I can’t even pay into yet and measured (an Australian colleague Because you prefer to give me four casual jobs, told me about a manager putting up rather than one contracted one. rankings of individual staff members – (Krause 2018) based on their publications – available for all to see on the staff noticeboard). here is strength in unity, and together And the life outside of work is fast Twe can change the way things shrinking, with many academics expected work. We can resist the slow grinding to maintain 24/7 digital personas down of academics and professional and spend their evenings, weekends, staff in our workplaces, which result holidays doing work for the university. in not only ill health (physical and mental) but in certain cases death. gainst these above described Aindividualising discourses and or me as a precariously employed managerial techniques, the 14 day Fworker, in addition to as a union strike action brought a solidarity and representative, it was particularly shared sense of purpose which many heartening to see so many precariously colleagues had not before experienced. employed colleagues taking industrial And what many of us also shared, on action. The fact that so many hourly-paid, picket lines, at teach-outs and rallies, fixed-term, and otherwise casualised (as was this: our own strength and power as the UK term has it) staff had the strength workers. This new sense of strength and and bravery to stand up to employers who unity was also seen online, for example do not invest in them and – for those on in the various blogs, poems, and art so-called zero hour contracts – can refuse works spurred by the strike. One such to employ them the next day. For these
Page 28 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Christin Hoene and Lena Wånggren colleagues, taking action meant a larger (Hunt 2015). If one takes action, one sacrifice than for permanently employed strengthens the strike, and if one does colleagues. I had many long discussions not take action, one weakens it. But as with casualised colleagues before the these above figures show, many union members cannot afford to pay their rent even during non-strike periods. Realising the dire financial circumstances of precariously employed staff, UCU made the union strike fund available especially for this category of members.
owever, for some members the delay Hin pay or reduced pay that the strike fund could not help with, and the lack of any safety net, meant some simply could not take strike action without risking not being able to feed their children, or being thrown out of their accommodation. While I would not agree with Christin above in her statement that striking is a privilege (I would rather say that it is a collective sacrifice which not everyone © Image by Abyd Quinn-Aziz can make), it is easier to take strike strike, many of them worried about their action for some, and more difficult financial circumstances. A 2015 survey (sometimes impossible) for others. As of staff on insecure contracts carried out someone invested in trade union work by UCU reveals significant numbers and in the wellbeing of my colleagues, of precariously employed colleagues I am not at all angry at my wonderful struggling to get by: 17 percent say precariously employed colleagues or that they struggle to pay for food, 34 colleagues with caring responsibilities, percent that they struggle to pay rent or who could perhaps take only one day of mortgage repayments, and 36 percent strike action, or two, or three, rather than that they struggle to pay household bills the full 14 days, or who in some cases like fuel, electricity, water and repairs. simply could not strike at all without One respondent states: “‘I especially risking their own or their families’ dread the summer and Easter periods as health. I am filled with admiration and I have no idea how I will pay the rent’” solidarity for those colleagues (and let us
Page 29 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “In order to be utopian, you have to feel utopian” not forget, precarity also includes those sexism? Join it and change it. Do you agree staff members on permanent contracts with union principles, but have no time whose immigration status is threatened to attend union meetings? Join anyway, by taking action) who took action and and be part of that collective which we stood next to me on the picket line, represent and appeal to when negotiating even if only for one day. I am however with management on local and national disappointed at the professors and levels. What is the alternative? If not senior academics who crossed picket now, when so many of us are at breaking lines, or who worked from home (which point (or even past it), then when? is also strike breaking), because they thought striking an inconvenience.
aking part in collective industrial References action is never easy. It is a sacrifice, T Hickel, Jason (2018). “This Isn’t done out of collegiality and care for the about Pensions Anymore – There’s a collective good. It means saying: I risk my Revolution Afoot” Jason Hickel’s Blog, 15 employment, I potentially risk my career, March,
Page 30 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Resilience or Fuck You Neoliberalism - a strike poem Grace Krause (University of Cardiff)
© Image by Jean Lennox (source)
I should do a squat every day My yoga teacher tells me While I am perched awkwardly on my mat Breathing through the pain I’m not supposed to be feeling Every day just do a squat And a plank And a downward facing dog. It’s just a little effort and you’ll feel so much better.
I should meditate every day The book tells me. The book that tells me that I can cure my anxiety If I just meditate everyday
Page 31 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Resilience
And change my diet And my exercise And my life Just 45 minutes every day. It’s just a little effort for my mental health.
I should draw a little every day Because drawing relaxes me So I need to keep doing it. Do a little something I enjoy Every day And I’ll love myself more.
Just these few things I should do every day To take care of myself. Do my breathing exercises Walk 10.000 steps Eat my five a day Write in my journal Practice my drawing Water my tomatoes Meditate for 45 minutes Do a squat, a plank, a downwards facing dog
And if I just do these few small things I’ll be fine I’ll have been sufficiently kind to myself. I can tick off all the items on the to-do list of my wellbeing.
And I thought about how few items I had ticked last year Last year when the world was closing in on me When the world wouldn’t stop spinning And fear spread through my body Unstoppable Unmanageable When I sat at my desk shaking Not knowing if I’d be able to get up again I thought of all the things I could have done to take better care of myself
Page 32 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Grace Krause
And how I would not have felt like this If only I had Meditated every day Done my breathing exercises Walked 10.000 steps Watered my tomatoes Written in my journal Practiced my drawing And done my squat, my plank, my downward facing dog.
And I knew that it was my fault I wasn’t coping And that if only I’d have done those few things I would have been able to handle it all.
I would not have cried like I did When my pay was cut. I would not have felt so dejected When I had to fight to get paid even what little I was owed For the third time. I would not a have lashed out like I did, at others as stuck in these structures as I am When I didn’t like their tone when they delivered me the messages that threatened my income. I would not have lost so much sleep worrying about deadlines, about angry emails, about how I was failing my students, about whether, between my four different jobs, I would be able to pay my rent next month.
I would have been able to handle all this If I’d taken better care of myself If I’d only built up my resilience.
And it’s only now That I’ve found my feet again (and yes I did meditate And did do breathing exercises And all the things I was supposed to do And yes, they did help)
Page 33 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Resilience
It’s only now that I feel myself again And trust myself again That I can say
That I was never meant to handle this. That we’re not meant to handle this.
That when you’re telling me to be resilient you are really telling me that I am failing the system, when really it is the system that is failing me.
So fuck you.
Fuck you for sending me invitations to stress reduction courses While you make me teach larger classes for less money. Fuck you for sending me booklets with breathing exercises While my workload grows higher and higher And fuck you, especially, for telling me to work on my resilience While you try to dismantle the pension That I can’t even pay into yet Because you prefer to give me four casual jobs, rather than one contracted one.
Because you and I both know that if you take this pension from me It will mean I was living a lie That I was lying to myself Thinking my precariousness was just a temporal phenomena A stage I have to go through, on my way to the stability of tenure. Instead I can look forward to lying awake at night again Worrying about how I will pay my rent when I’m too old to do a squat, a plank, a downward facing dog.
And, seriously, fuck that. And, seriously, fuck you.
I refuse to be resilient. I refuse to be ok with this because I am not. Because none of us are. Not really. I refuse to numb myself to the pain caused by a system Which treats me like a thing.
Page 34 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Grace Krause
I refuse to be complicit in my own oppression.
I will continue to meditate (irregularly) Because it helps me calm my mind and to know myself (and I’m getting to like this person that I’m learning I am) I will continue to draw Because it brings me joy (but under no circumstances will I ‘practice’ drawing.) I have made peace with the fact that my tomatoes are all dead. I will go for walks when the weather is nice. Occasionally, when my back feels tight, I will squat I will plank I will do my downward facing dog.
But do not for a second think that I am doing any of these things for you, That they will make me more Resilient Efficient Compliant That they will make me forget.
Don’t think for a second that they will make me forget The better world that I deserve. The better world I can imagine.
The world I have seen on picket lines And community halls In whispered conversations And shouted in slogans Scrawled all over sidewalks And written on the internet.
Because fuck you and your individualising bullshit. Because I know (as we all know) That this is a world we can only achieve together And that this is a world that we can achieve together. Because while I refuse to take Responsibility for my own suffering
Page 35 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Resilience
I will gladly accept Responsibility for our collective wellbeing.
We are the university
Reprinted with kind permission from the author’s blog “Thinking in the Open” (blogs. cardiff.ac.uk).
Page 36 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “Britain First” or White Privilege Reloaded? Brexit on Screen and Stage Anke Bartels (University of Potsdam)
ote Leave, Take Back Control”, These sentiments are also documented “Vwas the main slogan of the in two recent British productions which Leavers in the run-up to the referendum aim at making the voices of ‘the people’ trying to establish if Britain should audible, Brexit Shorts, a series of short remain in or leave the European Union. clips launched online in two instalments Supposedly about freedom from Brussels a year after the referendum, and My and EU regulations, the idea of taking Country, a play beginning its stage life control of the country, the economy at the National Theatre in London at but, most importantly, the borders roughly the same time. After a few (and the future of migration connected introductory remarks on the tenets of to them) played a much more decisive populism and racism in Britain, I will role in the final outcome of the vote for show how these are represented in Brexit. At the heart of this lies a populist both productions in the (sometimes resurgence of nationalism, which has its unconscious) reflection of white roots in a deep-seated fear of migration privilege in the expressed sentiments of and a mourning of the alleged losses with ‘the people’ shown on stage and screen. regard to a British culture and a British identity defined as ultimately white. As a result, multiculturalism was declared a Populism, Racism and the Question of failed project by creating a moral panic White Privilege about migration as well as security and order accompanied by an increasing common denominator of right- racism directed against all people not A wing populist movements seems perceived to be part of the illustrious to be their claim to speak for all people community defined in this manner.
Page 37 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “Britain First” or White Privilege Reloaded? while usually establishing a claim to the moral high road. In a fitting example, Nigel Farage celebrated the outcome of the Brexit referendum as “a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people” (Duffy & Norris 2017, 49). But what about the other 48%? Are they not real? And who are these real people that are, for example, represented in the Leavers’ campaign? Probably for the most part not Black people because, despite Britain’s colonial past (or more probably because of it), Britishness still seems to be predominantly defined as white. Satnam Virdee and Brendan McGeever have © Image by Matt Brown via Flickr (source) shown that this was clearly reflected in the meritocracy hinders equal opportunities narrative of the Leave campaign which and bestows negative stereotypes on Black
was underscored by two contradictory but people. In this context white privilege “is inter-locking visions. The first was a deep an absence of the negative consequences nostalgia for empire, but one secured through of racism”, which will “positively impact an occlusion of the underside of the British your life’s trajectory in some way. imperial project: the corrosive legacies of And you probably won’t even notice colonialism and racism, past and present. The it” (Eddo-Lodge 2018, 86f.). Eddo- second was a more insular, Powellite narrative Lodge goes on to show that discussions of retreating from a globalizing world that is no about an erosion of Britishness or the longer recognizably “British”. What gave these preservation of an alleged national visions such traction […] was that they carefully identity are usually directed against activated long-standing racialized structures Black people. She states that “[t]he of feeling about immigration and national word multiculturalism has become belonging. (Virdee & McGeever 2017, 2f.) proxy for a ton of British anxieties about immigration, race, difference, crime and n her book Why I’m No Longer Talking danger. It’s now a dirty word, a front Ito White People about Race, Reni word for fears about black and brown and Eddo-Lodge painstakingly analyses foreign people posing a danger to white the structural racism at the heart of Brits” (Eddo-Lodge 2018, 119). This British society, which despite all talk of became especially explicit in the Brexit
Page 38 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Anke Bartels campaigns of the Leavers who wanted and are accused of unjustly benefitting their country back or were warning from British achievements (as became about the ‘Islamisation’ of Britain. visible in the recent Windrush scandal which clearly demonstrated that people f course, white privilege does not from the Caribbean once invited to Omean exactly the same for all white help rebuilding Britain after the Second World War are still not accepted as British citizens). In a similar vein, Black people are no homogeneous group either. With regard to the Brexit referendum, this is clearly discernible in the paradox of Black votes for the Leave campaign, which will be explored later.
My Country: A Work in Progress – But whose country is it?
y Country by poet laureate Carol MAnn Duffy and NT director Rufus Norris is a piece of verbatim theatre
© Image by duncan c via Flickr (source) interspersed with poetry by Duffy. In the days after the results of the Brexit Brits as you have to take class, gender referendum, interviewers collected and other factors into account, which testimonials from people aged between 9 affect access to it in complex ways, but and 97 all over the country, resulting in it remains a fact that at the heart of the more than 300 hours of tape. The finished campaign of those supporting to leave play was first staged at the Dorfman the European Union, a monocultural auditorium of the National Theatre on form of identity politics can be discerned 28 February 2017 and went on to be that constructs the ‘real’ British people toured nationally. It is dedicated to the as a homogenous group united by the memory of Jo Cox, the pro-EU Labour fantasy of a common language, a shared MP who was murdered by a right-wing history and, at least just as important, of extremist shouting “Britain first, keep having the same skin colour, i.e. being Britain independent, Britain will always racialized as white. Those who do not come first” (Cobain et al. 2016) while belong to the ‘we’ constructed in this inflicting the deadly knife wounds. manner fall prey to populist propaganda
Page 39 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “Britain First” or White Privilege Reloaded?
y Country opens to the arrival up a photograph of the person whose Mof Britannia, a bureaucrat soon testimonial they render, which often adorned with Union Jack shield, plumed runs counter to their own gender, race helmet and trident, who has called for or age. Britannia, on the other hand, a meeting of her people represented by represents the voices of Westminster like personified Caledonia, Cymru, East those of Nigel Farage, David Cameron Midlands, North East, Northern Ireland or Boris Johnson. To overcome their and the South West. In the mundane divisions, Britannia and the regions setting of a plain room with lined-up decide to engage in “The Sacrament of desks and ballot boxes at the rear of the Listening” (Duffy & Norris 2017, 11), as stage, the spectators are introduced to the opposed to an analysis, postulating this different parts of the United Kingdom, to be the only way for productive change. which appear to be far from united as their squabbles about sports or their he increasingly fragmented, specific use of regional language show. Tverbatim voices thus make up the eleven parts following the opening scene ut despite all these visible differences, of arrival. The first of these, “The Six BBritannia tries to construct them Arias”, provides an overview of the state as one nation so that all join in the of the various regions through the eyes naming of important dates like the of their inhabitants, which shows the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, the country to be separated by class, gender, Inclosure Act of 1801 or the start of race and sexuality. It becomes clear that the Second World War in 1939. Along the United Kingdom is decidedly “not a with these events, 1975, the year when land of milk and honey” (14), especially Britain joined the Common Market, is with regard to the lives of migrants. The given prominence by being placed in next five parts are dedicated to the voices, the genealogy of monumental historical which go on to speak about Europe, watersheds. But instead of proceeding in patriotism, hardship, immigration, the collective voices of the regions, the listening and leadership. During these play cleverly shows these to be comprised parts many topics are touched upon of numerous separate voices who will and it becomes clear that the widening utter their perspectives on the European gap between rich and poor as well as Union and what it means to them. This the overall insecurity the people feel also makes for some humorous moments is not necessarily directly related to as the actors representing the respective the European Union but rather to the regions, who are, in turn, represented effects of neoliberal capitalism and the by the people’s collected voices, hold aftermath of the financial crisis. But the
Page 40 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Anke Bartels voices don’t realise this as it seems to terrorists - even in Wiltshire (24), women be much easier to put all the blame on with burkas who visibly do not want to membership in the European Union. This integrate because it is “not a burka, it’s is eerily summarised in Farage’s words a balaclava” (27) are repeated. A telling who “wants to put our own people first” example is Julie’s voice who relates how she (21), worded not dissimilarly from the wanted to claim benefits and was denied sentiment exclaimed by Cox’s murderer. help, only to witness accommodation and money being granted to a migrant from Somalia, leaving her “there in tears on crutches” (23). In these voices, a wide consent seems to be that migrants ruined an Arcadian Britain, which needs to be defended to honour the forefathers (all male, of course) who gave their lives for building it in the first place. At this point, it is happily forgotten that many people from the former colonies fought in the World Wars as well and were later encouraged to move to the ‘Motherland’ in order to help rebuilding it. © Image by David Holt (source) till, the voices quoted here would mmigration, one of the key topics Sdeny any accusation of racism. Thus, Iduring the campaigns of Leavers and South West muses that “[w]e grew up thi- Remainers, is also the title of one part thinking we were the best country in the of the play, but is tellingly also touched world, you know, were tolerant of gay, upon in all the other parts. It starts off we’re tolerant of um um race…” (19), with Britannia speaking in Nigel Farage’s while Northern Ireland (Niamh) ponders voice who proclaims that “people are about the worst insults in society and very upset, they’re very unhappy” (23) comes to the conclusion that the prize about the perceived impact that migrants won’t go to slut anymore but “the worst have on British society, in this instance insult that you can say to someone is you’re especially on the education and health a racist” (29), implying that tolerance systems. While there are also dissenting has gone too far but also denying the voices, the by now perpetually evoked structural racism at the heart of British stereotypes of migrants as “murders and society which is the unacknowledged rapists” (24), benefit scroungers (24), foundation of white privilege.
Page 41 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “Britain First” or White Privilege Reloaded?
fter venting their anger at all expressed through racism and the Aproblems beseeching the country, division surfaces again – and not only the voices are briefly silenced by Britannia’s between the regions but equally between attempt to emphasise the unity of the the people living in them. The play people in diversity by taking on her role just about ends with the stereotypical rallying call to “get on with it” (51) and a very quaint definition of Britishness:
Last night I felt more British than I’d ever felt. We were in a damp shed, brewing tea, pouring down rain, freezing cold. Committed to a project that is far too complicated for wa. That, that to me is Britishness (55f.).
fter this testimonial the regions start Ato leave with a strangely united, resigned reaction to Brexit and a move back to the very beginning of the play. The overall sentiment now is rather one of defeat as expressed by Britannia’s last lines asking an empty room to listen.
hile the idea of representing all © ‘Britannia’ by Richard Croft via geograph.org.uk Wthese voices as a document of popular sentiments is very laudable, the as mother of the nation. Her grief is effect is rather a cacophony of different beautifully rendered in Duffy’s poetry: complaints and contradictions that are only given voice in a fragmented I am your memory, your dialects, your way without trying to render the cathedrals,//your mosques and markets, arguments more comprehensible schools and pubs,//your woods, mountains, or placing them in a context rivers…//your motorways and railway lines, allowing for an ideological critique. your hospitals,//your cenotaphs with paper poppies fading in the rain.//[…] We are far more united…//We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us (39).
fter a feast, the vote is cast which Aexposes the fear of the other Page 42 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Anke Bartels
Brexit Shorts: Dramas from a Divided are all struck by how polarised opinions Nation – Different perspectives on are over this issue and, particularly in the change fallout of the referendum, how the artistic community seemed so surprised by the n July 2016, right before Article 50 was result. It seemed to me that people in the Itriggered, The Guardian had already UK, for a myriad of reasons, simply stopped commissioned one of the first plays to listening to each other (Wiegand, 2017). deal with the political implications of Brexit, James Graham’s A Strong Exit espite the different scenarios chosen (Graham 2016) set in the Department Dby the individual playwrights, for Exiting the European Union. In June all of the short videos start with a shot 2017, the paper collaborated with touring defining the setting, which gives the company Headlong Theatre and leading regions a well-known, stereotypical face. British dramatists to come up with Brexit Thus Scotland is represented by the Shorts, a series of nine short monologues dark alleyways behind George Square in directed by Jeremy Herrin, Amy Hodge, Glasgow, Northern Ireland by the peace Maxine Peake and Elen Bowman. They lines or the Home Counties by a well-kept deal with various issues prominent in the English garden. The short monologues, discussions about Brexit, but are above spoken directly to the camera, try to all aiming at giving voice to a divided represent different gender, race and nation. The first five of these were class perspectives while a multitude aired on 19th June 2017 to be followed of Brexit-related issues is pondered. by a second instalment on 26th June. Just like in the verbatim theatre of My Country, in the scripted plays white n a fashion not dissimilar to the privilege also comes across strongly. Iefforts of the National Theatre’s My Country, the Brexit Shorts also place a n three monologues, female characters special emphasis on the way Brexit was Iwere chosen as protagonists who are a discussed in the regions by Remainers mix of Remainers and Leavers. Thus in as well as Leavers, while at the same David Hare’s “Time to Leave”, Eleanor, time putting a focus on the need for a white middle-class woman, mourns further dialogue and listening to each the loss of her country. While using the other by means of addressing the past typical disclaimer that she is no racist, with regard to the causes as well as the she still believes that the EU was “bound future in terms of the consequences of to fail once the Mediterraneans flocked the referendum. Amy Hodge, associate in” (Hare 2017) because they changed director at Headlong, stated that they the quality of the union of allegedly white northern European countries. In
Page 43 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “Britain First” or White Privilege Reloaded? the same vein, she opts for a resurrection mother’s commitment during the miner’s of the Irish border, as “good fences make strike as well as to the activities of her good neighbours” (Hare 2017). Hare grandmother during the Second World tries to make visible that even middle- War. Her self-declared interest is to class people like Eleanor blame the EU produce chaos, but she does this from a for inner-British problems while not position of white privilege, which allows reflecting on the fact that they still partake her to set NF followers against migrants of white privilege. But the basically without being accountable for her actions. unchanged situation after the Brexit vote only leaves disillusionment behind. nother three of the short monologues Alook to Wales, Scotland and elen, the protagonist in Abi Northern Ireland as those regions who HMorgan’s “The End”, perceives constitute, together with England, the the state of the nation quite differently. United Kingdom. “Three Pines”, which Using the metaphor of a marriage which was performed in Welsh with English has failed after 43 years, we learn that subtitles, alludes to the role of British Helen’s door “is always open. You’d just farmers who apparently voted against the let anyone in” (Morgan 2017), putting EU despite the fact that they get their her in stark contrast to her husband who subsidies from Brussels. The nameless strongly objected to this and made it the dairy farmer in the video points out that main reason for leaving. By means of this people in his situation were not stupid metaphor, there is a clear indication that when voting to leave the European migrants (or people perceived as such) are Union, but are losers in the fight for a to blame, even if this is done indirectly, decent livelihood despite all subsidies. for the increasingly stress- and harmful relationship between Britain and Europe. he question of class is also prominent Unhappy about being left behind, Helen Tin A. L. Kennedy’s “Permanent decides to make the divorce as costly as Sunshine”, in which we listen to Chummy possible – just as the looming divorce ranting in a broad Scottish accent about bill of the EU is perceived in Britain. joblessness and the lack of opportunities, which killed his father, only to have our ames Graham’s “Burn” takes a slightly prejudices revealed when Chummy turns Jdifferent tack by exploring the role of out to be a sociology student. The short the social media. Geraldine, a Mansfield play highlights the divisions between mum, sets Remainers and Leavers Scotland and the rest of the UK but against each other as an internet troll. also takes a broader view in analysing She sees this kind of action as part of a social ills. Thus, Chummy, who feels larger genealogy, which is linked to her not represented by Westminster, claims
Page 44 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Anke Bartels that “Poverty makes you a refugee” becomes a strong symbol for a kind (Kennedy 2017). While it cannot be of unity that has been fought for with denied that the gap between rich and immense violence, while refugees remain poor is on the increase, being a refugee the other who have to be denied entrance. is quite different from being poor and white because white privilege still allows Finally, three monologues focus on for a different place in British society. Black British people and migrants, all
© Image by David Holt via Flickr (source)
tacy Gregg’s “Your Ma’s a Hard those who do not conform to notions SBrexit” deals with the specific of white Britishness. People who do not situation in Northern Ireland. A nameless own British passports, are at the centre protestant mother walking along the of Maxine Peake’s “Shattered”. Dalir, an peace lines separating Catholics and immigration lawyer in Manchester’s Moss Protestants is faced with the outcome of Side, tries hard to protect people’s rights the referendum dividing her family. Her after the Brexit vote especially in the face husband is applying for an Irish passport of an exploding racism. The vulnerability as he wants to go where the work is, of people like Ayesha from Pakistan is while her Unionist father still clings to demonstrated clearly but despite her his Britishness. The border in Northern hopeless situation, the play ends on a Ireland is an extremely sensitive issue and note of hopefulness with the choir of with Brexit looming it might reappear Women Asylum Seekers Together showing despite all negotiations because otherwise that solidarity and unity do exist after all. it might become “the only land border This is nonetheless a very stereotypical for immigration and terrorists (Gregg representation as the all-black choir 2017). The absence of a hard border indulges happily in African song.
Page 45 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) “Britain First” or White Privilege Reloaded?
olidarity is at the heart of Meera 2017) and pleads for a dialogue in which SSyal’s “Just a T-Shirt”, too, while it all British people try and understand each also explores the paradox of Black and other in order to overcome the strong minority ethnic British people voting dividing lines. This monologue definitely Leave. The eponymous T-Shirt bears the further complicates the issue of reducing slogan “Send Them All Back”, an eerie the Leave campaign to racist arguments. manifestation of the all-pervasive racism The question remains, though, who is to erupting after the referendum. Priri, a be included in this dialogue and who will British-born Indian woman from the be left out as the unappreciated “other”. West Midlands played by Syal herself, voted “Leave” because she regarded he Brexit Shorts show the strong herself as one of the well-integrated, Tdesire to understand why so many good immigrants right down to the people voted to leave the European point at which she repeats the common Union without really trying to give stereotypes against Romanians and other answers. Still, Leavers and Remainers EU migrants. She feels to have a special alike stop to be an anonymous mass and standing in British society by virtue of become individual characters with an having “been here first” (Syal 2017). understandable story, which might just But the Nazi wearing the T-Shirt does turn into a first step to commence with a not attack her Polish neighbour who has dialogue in a divided nation. It remains, the privilege of being white-skinned, however, questionable if this dialogue but instead calls her a “Paki bitch” (Syal would include the question of white 2017) and spits her in the face. In the privilege or the exploding instances wake of this, she is left disillusioned and of racism, which don’t seem to be with the feeling of not really belonging, foremost on the agenda of most people while realising that she will always be dealing with the aftermath of Brexit. othered because of her skin colour. oth, My Country and Brexit Shorts, harlene James’s “Go Home” gives a Bcapture the disillusionment within Cvoice to the former industrial cities a British society divided by a multitude of the North where the feeling to be the of rifts created by neo-liberal capitalism losers of the globalised world of the 21st and an urgent desire for change. While century is very strong. Reece, a young membership in the European Union Black man from Wigan who went to serves as a scapegoat for internal problems study in London, claims that “52% of the and divisions, the exploding racism country can’t all be scum. They can’t all witnessed not only in the campaign of be idiots, racists or xenophobes” (James the Leavers but also in the aftermath of the referendum shows that white
Page 46 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Anke Bartels privilege has never been overcome and Virdee, Satnam & Brendan McGeever othering is still present in many guises, (2017). “Racism, Crisis, Brexit”. not least in targeting British people Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI who just don’t happen to be racialized 10.1080/01419870.2017.1361544. as white. This is not likely to change, either by leaving or staying in the EU. Wiegand, Chris (2017). “Brexit Shorts: Giving Voice to a Divided Britain through New Dramas”. The Guardian, 23 Jun. 2017,
Cobain, Ian, Nazia Parveen & Matthew Taylor (2016). “The Slow-Burning Hatred that Led Thomas Mair to Murder Jo Cox”. The Guardian, 23. Nov. 2016,
Duffy, Carol Ann & Rufus Norris (2017). My Country: A Work in Progress. London: Faber & Faber.
Eddo-Lodge, Reni (2018). Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race. London: Bloomsbury.
Graham, James (2016). “A Strong Exit”. The Guardian, 18 Jul. 2016,
Page 47 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Who Can We Laugh At? British Humour in Times of Brexit Aileen Behrendt (University of Potsdam)
ecause say what you like about the local pub. Naturally British humour “Bthe English, but our saving grace, extends beyond petty taunts and racist the thing we’ve always been famous for, jeers, but their pervasiveness has become is our ability to laugh at other people” more visible since the referendum. As (Finnemore S.2, Ep.6, 1:39-1:48). In Finnemore’s character points out, the the award-winning sketch comedy series country has always been renowned for John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, its sense of humour, but who or what John Finnemore takes on the role of an do they laugh at in Brexit Britain? elderly gentleman, who self-identifies as After all, Brexit is a political event that a member of the ‘silent majority’, which has deeply divided the nation. Can he paradoxically believes to be the last British humour smooth things over? persecuted minority. The cranky old man Or is British humour itself too divided? complains to an implied pub audience that political correctness limits his ability to tell his racist jokes and thus undermines o answer this, I turn to British his national identity. Through this Tcomedy with examples from character, Finnemore pokes fun at the radio, television, print and theatre and way British humour is often uncritically examine how they negotiate Brexit. One celebrated as a commendable national disclaimer: most examples chosen back trait. Though this sketch was broadcast Remain, but I want to show how this some years before Brexit, Finnemore’s is not without its ambiguities. Though xenophobic and paranoid character is there has been a lot of comedy, not all clearly modelled on the stereotype of intentional, on the political stage, most the UKIP voter or the would-be Brexit Brexit comedy can still be found in the supporter who gives rousing speeches at media. Even the comedy in and of politics
Page 48 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Aileen Behrendt often draws their inspiration from media (3:22-3:25). With this apt comparison, texts. Remember, for instance, the Oliver comments on the economic immortal image of Theresa May sharing repercussions of Brexit and disproves a literal political stage at the general many Leave campaign claims, such as elections of 2017 with Lord Buckethead, the infamous one printed on a bright red the self-described ‘intergalactic space bus about the £350 million Great Britain lord’, whose costume resembles that of presumably sends the EU every week. the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. With a similar – nother political satire in favour of and necessary – eye for the absurd, ARemain, written by Lucien Young, British comedy targets Brexit politics. recasts all the significant Brexit politicians as characters of Lewis Carroll’s children’s Brexit Humour classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Young retells the story of Alice who hether the comedians supported follows the nervous rabbit Dave down a WRemain or Leave, political rabbit-hole only to end up in the strange campaigns, along with their politicians, Brexitland, populated by characters like proved to be easy marks for comedy. In the Corbynpillar, Humpty Trumpty and the days leading up to the referendum Cheshire Twat (Farage) and governed by political figures like Nigel Farage, Boris “the terrifying Queen of Heartlessness, Johnson, Michael Gove (all Leave) who’ll take off your head if you dare and David Cameron (Remain), whose question her plan for Brexit”. The subtitle antics gave the comedians plenty of of Young’s satirical adaption, “You don’t ammunition, often found themselves have to be mad to live here, but it helps”, to be the butt of a joke. But along with humorously sums up the socio-political cheap jibes at politicians, like the posh climate felt by Remain supporters in David Cameron, the smug Nigel Farage the wake of Brexit. The lack of political or the unkempt Boris Johnson, came direction and rationale is constantly more serious political charges. Boris mocked by Remain comedies. The Johnson’s dishevelled appearance would satirical website The Daily Mash (similar lead to a discussion of his wild claims in to the German Der Postillon) ridiculed support of Brexit. Thus, US-based British May’s divisive politics, running headlines Comedian John Oliver, host of HBO’s such as: “Unite around my nutter’s successful news satire Last Week Tonight, version of Brexit, May tells Britain”. characterised Johnson as “a man with Chris Bryant and Bronagh Lagan put both the look and the economic insight Britain’s lack of political direction on a of Bamm-Bamm from the Flintstones” bigger stage – literally. Their Edinburgh
Page 49 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Who Can We Laugh At?
any Remainers have found some Msolace in this sudden abundance of political comedy, like John Ryan, professor at the London School of Economics, who applauds how “the desire to salvage some comic value from the Brexit negotiations, and the chief political players, has inspired plenty of satire – something the British have long excelled at.” Disillusioned by national politics, he relies on humour to boost his national pride. This move is very common in Brexit Britain – especially for Remainers. It seems that little else can be done when a country has made a disastrous decision and the political opposition is powerless to change it. In his review of Brexit, the Musical for the Guardian, Will Hutton goes so far as to pin his political hopes on comedy entirely, believing that comedy can do © ‘Alice in Brexitland’ by Lucien Young, Ebury Press what Remain politics couldn’t: to sway Festival Fringe success Brexit – The an audience by presenting political Musical frames the absence of a political arguments in an engaging manner. course as a satirical quest narrative, As political scientist Richard Bellamy advertising the musical on their website puts it: “The comparative failure of with the promise: “Somewhere out there, the Remain campaign to mount even a there’s a plan for Brexit. There’s just one negative political case against leaving, small hitch – its writer has amnesia and let alone to give positive political (or, no-one else knows where it is. It’s up for that matter, economic) reasons for to our hero, Boris Johnson, to find it. European integration, served simply to Devastated by his monumental cock-up further legitimise the Leave campaign’s of winning the referendum, this is the democratic argument for Brexit” (223). only way for Boris to gain redemption Hutton recognises this gaping political and save the nation from Brexit.” deficit and hopes that “Satire – showing how the project and people behind it are completely farcical – has the
Page 50 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Aileen Behrendt better chance of persuading millions They cite such reasons as the negativity in any imminent electoral or second of the Remain campaign (a dislike for referendum test that they have been sold the Easter rabbit/Cameron), through the a pup and must save themselves from likeability of the Leave politicians (like both the perpetrators and the wreckage.” the jolly Santa /Johnson), to the general While many Remainers resignedly political apathy and disenchantment. shake their heads and despair over However, Finnemore highlights that Britain shooting itself in the foot, this no matter the reasons or excuses given, counter-intuitive move is comedy gold. the outcome will be most damaging, especially for the large demographic that The Tragi-Comic Campaigns and the voted for Brexit/Christmas. Because this Voters vote is irreversible, Finnemore emphasises that political disillusionment is no lthough traditional British sketch excuse for political short-sightedness. Acomedy often shies away from direct political commentary, apparently an untenable position in Brexit Britain, ‘Excuse me, I’m interviewing turkeys about John Finnemore hilariously outlines the why they voted for Christmas’. self-sabotage of the Leave campaign and ‘Oh well they’re all the same really, aren’t its supporters by relying on an English they. You know, these holidays. Christmas, idiom and transforming the entire debate Easter, Valentine’s Day. So I just voted into a referendum about whether or not Christmas to send a message, really.’ Christmas should be a holiday. His 2016 ‘And what is that message?’ Christmas Special features a series of sketches in which an interviewer tries to ‘Well, that I’m cross.’ chart the motivations of pro-Christmas ‘I see, and if we do have Christmas this voters. But, one should note, the voters year, do you think your message will are all turkeys. And their pro-vote takes on get across?’ ‘Yeah, I think so. And if it an even more sinister twist. As one turkey doesn’t, I’ll just send another message next enthusiastically points out, the pro- Christmas.’ Christmas campaign has “consistently promised that if their holiday goes ‘Will you?’ ahead, everyone will get three days off ‘Yeah, why wouldn’t I?’ and a lovely big dinner.” (S6, Ep.1, 7:46- 7:51). The turkeys’ motivations sum up ‘No reason.’ (S6, Ep.1, 21:02-21:36) the Leave supporters’ general responses While pointing out the repercussions when asked why they voted for Brexit. of a protest vote, this sketch also
Page 51 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Who Can We Laugh At? highlights how the Remain campaign coming when it was right on top of them. had completely underestimated the Yes, now the media forgot this almost widespread distrust against politicians immediately, but the public didn’t. And and any institutions associated with them. perhaps the greatest revelation of this campaign has been the extent to which the economic and political establishment appear he BBC Radio 4 news satire The to have no credibility with a large chunk of Now Show, in their special issue, T the public at all. (10:20-10:40) “The Vote Now Show: EU and Yours”, analyses why. In their multi-voiced any comedians, including those sketches the series’ hosts Steven Punt and Mwho supported Remain, share this Hugh Dennis, along with other actors, distrust with the general public. In fact, humorously dissect the arguments that much Remain comedy shows an enduring have been circulating in the media to show ambivalence about voting Remain. Even how little is actually known about what politically astute and analytical shows a Brexit would mean for Britain. They like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver point out that Michael Gove seems to or The Now Show, which each devoted have nothing else to say than that Britain an episode broadcast shortly before the has to ‘Take back control’ to expose referendum to discuss the consequences that apart from their slogan, the Leave of Brexit, couldn’t fully convince campaign’s arguments are limited, false themselves or their audiences about the and repetitive. But they also demonstrate benefits of a continued EU membership. why the valid Remain argument about The reluctance is encapsulated by the severe financial repercussions falls closing song of each show – a British on deaf ears with Leave supporters: comedy tradition that goes back to the music halls (Alexander 65). These songs so none of these predictions of economic highlight not only how difficult it is to doom seem to have worked because of the break out of the negatively framed Remain many chickens coming home to roost in this arguments, but also implicitly how the referendum, the biggest and juiciest fowl binary choices left by the referendum striding confidently back into the hen house failed to fully represent the relationship is this: between the EU and Britain. While (fanfare) Nobody trusts anything economists Oliver clearly spoke out for Remain, his say! Last Week Tonight closes with “Ode to Joy”, rewritten to express Britain’s dislike Because? of the EU with the chorus: “Fuck you, Because none of them saw the financial crisis European Union”. Oliver suggested this
Page 52 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Aileen Behrendt song would serve to scratch the itch of many British citizens to tell the EU off if we’re gonna stay, how’s about we do it so that they can eventually follow their properly this time? […] And if we’re gonna sanity and vote Remain. Had this been leave, can it be for a good reason please? Not an actual political gambit, the outcome just because little England thinks of things of the referendum would be puzzling foreign as sinister. […] And whatever we to no one. However, though only a do, how’s about we chill the heck out? And crude comic relief at first glance, it still if this is about being proud to be British, mirrors the attitudes of many Remain I’ve always been proud we get along. And supporters. From its inception Britain’s if this comes between us, then it would be relationship with the EU had been a desperately sad.” (26:50-28:13) rocky one. Oliver, in his ironic bid for Remain, does not attempt to disguise What many who use or insist on the the persisting scepticism and animosity: British sense of humour to deal with Brexit seem to conveniently forget:
but here is how I feel about the EU: it’s Britain has never been a country where a complicated, bureaucratic, ambitious, everyone ‘got along’. Let’s not forget overbearing, inspirational, and consistently that only two years prior to the Brexit irritating institution. And Britain would be referendum, Scotland held one to absolutely crazy to leave it. Especially because, decide if they should leave the UK. The if it stays, it can reap all the benefits, while Irish comedy team Foil Arms and Hog still being a total dick about everything. comments on the conflicts of interest And that is the British way. (13:02-13:25). of the individual nations in the United Kingdom. In a sketch set at the urinals, Whose Brexit is it anyways? a symbolism that chiefly adds to the political joke, the character portrayed ne of the paradoxes surrounding by Sean Flanagan tries to bring his OBrexit was that Britain never colleague, Sean Finegan’s character, up fully considered itself as part of the to speed for their meeting about Brexit EU and comedians swiftly pointed and the UK. Only problem is: Finegan’s out the political hypocrisies of the character remains hopelessly confounded Remain campaign, and especially its by the whole concept of the UK. In an representative David Cameron. In his attempt to alleviate his confusion, they closing song for The Now Show, Mitch discuss how the nations work together Benn, tentatively supporting Remain, in sports events, such as the Olympics, builds on this ambiguity and attempts a the European Championship and reconciliatory note for a divided nation: Rugby, only to realise that the teams
Page 53 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Who Can We Laugh At?
© Foil Arms & Hog (source) are formed differently at each event. A day after the referendum, the tabloid The Mirror titled “Brits are managing he Brexit referendum triggered to poke fun at Brexit - and the results Tan identity crisis for an already are surprisingly uplifting – Post Brexit fragile national construct. And humour life in the UK may look uncertain, but became an anchor point. Facing an hey, let’s try to see the funny side”. In uncertain socio-economic future on this article, Zahra Mulroy assembled top of a rekindling of debates about the humorous twitter responses to the results Northern Irish border and Scotland’s of the referendum, largely from Remain hopes for independence from the UK, supporters. The news website Quartz ran not to mention the deep rift apparent in a similar article “‘Pub?’: Brits respond the narrow margin with which the Leave to Brexit with typically British gallows vote won, the British media scrambled humor”, in which Olivia Goldhill to offer a silver lining. Like the LSE quotes from the twitter accounts of professor John Ryan who delights in mostly high-profile British comedians the many new political satires, several like David Mitchell, Jake Whitehall, newspaper and news websites rejoiced at and Ricky Gervais, the latter tweeting: the stiff upper lip and the British sense “I can’t believe that it took a referendum of humour in times of national crisis. for Britain’s youth to find out that old
Page 54 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Aileen Behrendt people hate them”. Here, Gervais tries vented for the world to hear, that is the to make light of how the different age most embarrassing” (Williams). But isn’t demographics voted and that the age the insistence on the wonderful British group that favoured Remain will be the sense of humour, the apparent staple one most affected by the Leave vote. of British identity, one of the pillars of the nation’s exceptionalism? In times of Brexit, this pillar has been shaken. While Brexit – the Flip Side of British many are quick to insist on it, others are Humour? uneasily reminded that the institution of British comedy has a long and unsavoury hile many subscribe to “the tradition of laughing at minorities. Its Wage-old adage and widely held, yet empirically unfounded, belief that ‘laughter is the best medicine’” (Longo 113), others remain sceptical that British humour can exist in times of Brexit. Zoe Williams, writing for the Guardian, alleges that British national identity centred first and foremost on irony, © Image by Duncan Hull via Flickr (source) a trait which seems to have become obsolete: “I cannot, however, power, which so many believe to be a reconcile myself to this post-English force of salvation, is therefore limited. politics, pumped-up, self-regarding and As Richard Alexander puts it, “The humourless. If our national identity predominantly right-wing orientation meant anything, Brexit is its opposite”. of British humour is a barrier to those Her central argument runs thus: any who would wish to promote change expression of national pride before Brexit through comedy” (82). Especially in had been checked by the British sense of times of Brexit, with hate crimes against humour that generated an ironic self- minorities on the rise, comedians have deprecation so that nationalism would become more and more self-aware of this. not run rampant. However, now, she laments “it’s the exceptionalism, freely
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his article included mostly Remain Works Cited Tcomedians who self-consciously oppose the notion that humour is Alexander, Richard. “British Comedy beyond reproach. They often do not and Humour: Social and Cultural subscribe to the saving grace of the Background.” AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik British sense of humour, but see it for und Amerikanistik, 9.1 (1984), pp. what it is: part of the problem. After 63-83. Jstor. April 17, 2018. Bellamy, all, the long tradition of racist, sexist, Richard. “Losing control: Brexit and homophobic, ableist comedy nurtured the demoi-cratic disconnect.” Brexit many resentments that have risen to the and Beyond – Rethinking the Futures of surface in the debate about Brexit. The Europe, Eds. Benjamin Martill and Uta xenophobic implications of Brexit make Staiger. London: UCL Press, 2018. Pp. the debate about what is and what isn’t 222-228. Jstor. April 17, 2018. funny in British comedy more urgent. “Brexit: Last Week Tonight with John John Finnemore’s ‘silent majority’ Oliver.” HBO. YouTube. Uploaded character quoted at the beginning by LastWeekTonight, 19 June parodies the ignorant attitude that uses 2016, https://www.youtube.com/ the British sense of humour as an excuse watch?v=iAgKHSNqxa8. to be a bigot who can only applaud Britain’s isolationist strive: “Shall I tell Bryant, Chris and Bronagh Lagan. you the sixth worse thing about political Brexit – The Musical. 2017. http://www. correctness? (…) It is the erosion of the brexitthemusical.com/. great British sense of humour. I don’t mind telling you that I’m renowned in Finnemore, John. John Finnemore’s my circle for my jokes, my three jokes. Souvenir Programme, Series 2, Episode The one about the gay terrorist, the one 6. BBC Radio 4. 9 Aug. 2012. about the Irishman with a wooden leg Finnemore, John. John Finnemore’s and the one about the octopus. And Souvenir Programme, Series 6, Episode now, under the suffocating, nanny PC 1. BBC Radio 4. 27 Dec. 2016. regime, I can’t tell any of them. – The octopus is Jewish.” (S2, Ep.6, 1:00- Foil Arms and Hog. “WTF is Brexit?.” 1:39). Unfortunately, Brexit seems to YouTube. Uploaded by Foil Arms and revive and legitimise that interpretation Hog, 30 June 2016, https://www. of the British sense of humour. youtube.com/watch?v=daB7np-RtOM.
Goldhill, Olivia. “‘Pub?’: Brits respond to Brexit with typically British gallows
Page 56 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Aileen Behrendt humor.” Quartz, 24 June 2016, https:// Classic ArchivesNS, 27. July 2016, qz.com/716531/pub-brits-respond-to- https://www.youtube.com/ brexit-with-typically-british-gallows- watch?v=3JEKoivOMDU. humor/. “Unite around my nutter’s version of Hutton, Will. “Brexit the Musical: in Brexit, May tells Britain.” The Daily Mash, Edinburgh, I understood how farce can 3 Feb 2018, http://www.thedailymash. be more persuasive than argument .” The co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/unite- Guardian, 27 Aug. 2017, https://www. around-my-nutters-version-of-brexit- theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/ may-tells-britain-20180302145241. aug/27/brexit-the-musical-satire-can- save-us. Williams, Zoe. “Irony used to define the English. In Brexit Britain, it’s self- Longo, Michaelina. “Humour-Use and importance.” The Guardian, 30 Oct. Knowledge- Making at the Margins: 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ Serious Lessons for Social Work Practice.” commentisfree/2017/oct/30/irony- Canadian Social Work Review / Revue english-brexit-britain-identity-politics. canadienne de service social, 27.1(2010), pp. 113-126. Jstor. April 17, 2018. Young, Lucien. Alice in Brexitland. London: Penguin, 2017. https://www. Mulroy, Zahra. “Brits are managing to penguin.co.uk/books/1114595/alice-in- poke fun at Brexit - and the results are brexitland/. surprisingly uplifting – Post Brexit life in the UK may look uncertain, but hey, let‘s try to see the funny side.” The Mirror, 24 June 2016, https://www.mirror.co.uk/ news/weird-news/brits-managing-poke- fun-brexit-8274213.
Ryan, John. “If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry… Brexit and the Renaissance of British Humour.” LSE, 4 Oct. 2017. http:// blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/10/04/if- you-didnt-laugh-youd-cry-brexit-and- the-renaissance-of-british-humour/.
“The Vote Now Show: EU and Yours.” The Now Show. BBC Radio 4, 19 June 2016. YouTube. Uploaded by
Page 57 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Fiction in Dark Times: the Brexit Novel and Ali Smith Harald Pittel (University of Potsdam)
he 2016 vote to leave the European Does Brexlit mean Brexlit? TUnion has incited many tormenting questions regarding the present state and o begin with, there have been future development of British society. Tboth broader and more narrow Contemporary novelists are reacting assessments of what qualifies as Brexlit in differently to this situation, giving rise the first place. Overviews include books to what some reviewers have labelled that appeared before and after the vote, “the post-referendum novel”, “Brexit and which were written in various cultural fiction” or simply “Brexlit”. It seems well and political contexts. For example, in worth investigating what constitutes his detailed account of the new literary this emergent strand of literature in landscape published in Financial Times, terms of common themes and shared Jon Day also includes Howard Jacobson’s prospects. How do authors with different anti-Trump satire Pussy (2015).1 A backgrounds approach the referendum reviewer for the Guardian, Danuta and its implications? To what extent Kean, draws attention, among others, can such fiction be understood as a new to Heinz Helle’s Eigentlich müssten wir phenomenon, or even genre in its own tanzen (2015, translated into English right? And which are the strategies chosen as Euphoria)2, an apocalyptic vision of to make literature function as political (German-yet-generalisable) consumer engagement? After a general survey of the society. However, what most approaches field, this article will have a closer look to Brexit fiction have in common is that at Ali Smith’s Autumn and Winter, often they are indeed centred on contemporary hailed as the landmarks of Brexit fiction. Britain, and while some of these books take issue with its political elites and governmental system, such as Andrew
Page 58 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Harald Pittel
Marr’s farcical thriller Head of State back cover of Jon McGregor’s Reservoir (2015) and Douglas Board’s dystopian 13; see below). It should be stressed satire Time of Lies (2017), the more that in most Brexlit not only “Europe typical pre- and post-referendum novels – as a geographical reality and political
© Image by Matt Brown via Flickr (source) focus on the larger society as such. idea – is largely absent from its pages”3 t is here that a somewhat problematic (save an EU-funded flowerbed here and Itendency becomes manifest. Most there), but so are the inhabitants from Brexit novels are more specifically Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, written from an English perspective; not to speak of the larger history of they are concerned, like Paul Kingfield’s immigration entailed by Britain’s historical novel The Wake (a 2013 colonial past that would fundamentally Joyce-inspired experiment in pseudo- complicate the idea of indigenous archaic language to probe into the Englishness. In all these books, there past levels of collective consciousness), can be no doubt, this is England in with “English identity”, and their times of crisis, “England divided” (as proceedings are located geographically in Benjamin Myers’ The Gallows Pole somewhere between London and “the (2017), which envisions the precursors heart of England” (as indicated on the of that division in history). Brexit
Page 59 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Fiction in Dark Times: the Brexit Novel and Ali Smith fiction thus privileges England in order publisher. Advertised to offer “a fictional to expose it in fractured state, typically response to a complex issue” on the back centred around a more or less complex, cover, The Cut is centred around the and more or less fictionalized, though chasm of understanding between Grace always threateningly deep, social conflict. Trevithick, a successful London-based documentary film-maker, and Cairo n some cases, as in McGregor’s Reservoir Jukes, an ex-boxer from Dudley (at the I13 or Adam Thorpe’sMissing Fay (both centre of the formerly industrial Black 2017), Brexit fiction shows similarities Country) who is down to collecting with the crime novel. Both stories, as metal from defunct factories on zero- Jon Day adequately summarizes, revolve hours contracts. Grace meets Cairo for around a missing girl which functions an interview; their mutual attraction as “a void at the heart of a novel that leads up to an affair in which the social is really about our prejudices and how and cultural distance is for a short time we fail to communicate them to one overcome, but when Cairo is unable to another”4. However, whereas the most bear the difference, he feels driven to a recent instalment of Mark Billingham’s most melodramatic (self-)destructive successful Tom Thorne novels, Love Like response. The gendered and class-marked Blood (2017), immerses the detective in divide thus evoked brings up several key a post-referendum setting, Thorpe’s and issues in which, dramatized and distorted McGregor’s books feature yet another as they are under the fatal influence of void as they also leave empty the detective’s the populist right, one can see the extent place. Unlike the traditional trajectory of social alienation, financial hardship that is arranged around the detective and lack of solidarity that has marked as an agent restoring a certain sense of pre- as well as post-referendum England. order to a world otherwise out of joint, in But to analyse social division in this Missing Fay and Reservoir 13 it is mainly clear-cut way has arguably little to offer for the reader to bridge the clash of widely for a more profound understanding why diverging perspectives, thus encouraging so many voted for Leave, which was by the reading subject, as it were, to no means just a provincial or lower-class overcome society’s communicative gaps. phenomenon.5 While there seems to be considerable interest in holding up a his bridging approach is most mirror to contemporary society, only a Tconspicuously conducted in handful of Brexit novels make a serious Anthony Cartwright’s The Cut (2017), effort at exploring the wider cultural the one book that was explicitly dimensions of the present crisis, and there commissioned as a “Brexit novel” by its are only few examples suggesting that a
Page 60 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Harald Pittel more complex approach to social critique, owever, these social pathologies beyond the reduction in terms of country Hare also evident in the absurdity vs city or the like, might be in order. of rather harmless everyday situations. Thus when Elisabeth Demand, a 32 From Autumn … year-old art history lecturer, goes to the downsized post office to renew her li Smith’s Autumn (2016), highly passport using the practicable Check & Acelebrated by the press and Send service, she is told that her head is shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker the wrong size and that her eyes are too Prize, should be considered as an small (on the photograph she intends to exception in this respect, one that also submit, that is). That uneasy impression resists any facile categorization in terms about her is very much in tune with the of existing genre markers such as satire or reservations shown by her mother who dystopia. The first to appear in a planned has been thinking that something is quartet that follows the seasonal cycle, wrong with her daughter since childhood Autumn is out to exhibit a vibrant ideal, days, when Elisabeth became friends with the rich potential of love as inspirational Daniel Gluck, their aging neighbour. connectedness, provocatively pinned Elisabeth’s friendship with the thin and against the reality of present-day British cultivated man of unclear (German- society that has lost all its belief and French-English) descent intensifies over hope save narrow-minded framing, the years, much to her mother’s disdain, compartmentalization and privatization, who finds such a relationship “unnatural” in short: the drawing of lines and borders and “unhealthy”8, suspecting that Daniel for its own sake, amounting to “a new must be a pervert or gay (or both). kind of detachment”.6 While there is However, Daniel’s desire is really much little resistance against this predicament, more sublime. While it remains unclear the commodified culture of meaningless what exactly he did during his life – aside delimiting and measuring exerts a from once having written the song lyrics severely alienating effect on individuals. for a one-hit wonder – he is certainly Such ‘unculture’, the novel suggests, is an artist of sorts, highly receptive and what’s behind the aggressive mentality expressive of what art has to offer, of distrust and hostility that sometimes always intensely engaged in inspirational leads to outbursts of hatred, such as relations. It is this friendship in creative habitual racism, anti-immigration dialogue and joint story-making that campaigns or the murder of Jo Cox.7 gives Elisabeth an idea of who she actually is, as Daniel reveals to her what is really relevant about art, truth and
Page 61 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Fiction in Dark Times: the Brexit Novel and Ali Smith life itself. Her congenial friend is always stifling traditionalism in academia. But on her mind as Elisabeth gradually unlikely as it might seem, her mother, discovers a voice, sexuality and love-life too, is eventually able to go beyond of her own, and arrives at an aesthetic the conventional frames of thinking in ideal animated by a sense of feminism which she was stuck for so many years.
© Image by Polyrus via Flickr (source)
(centred around the female 1960s She discovers a new way of loving when pop artist Pauline Boty, whose artistic she meets Zoe, a former child-star, now vision Daniel once fell in love with and a psychologist and generally an open- which he manages to communicate as minded and understanding woman (such an original experience to Elisabeth). love is “unnatural” and “unhealthy”, Elisabeth mockingly remarks)9. On top aving experienced the full of that, her mother turns into a political Hand unrestricted potential of protester of sorts as she desperately inspirational connectivity, Elisabeth is attacks an ominous electric fence that thus empowered to resist, at least partially, is installed in open nature to usurp a the overall conformism of the detached piece of common land for an unclear – unculture, reacting emotionally and yet probably detrimental – purpose, its critically to empty conventions when mere presence bringing up associations facing narrow-mindedness in outsourced with detention camps for refugees. The (formerly) public services as well as fence is heavily guarded by security
Page 62 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Harald Pittel and Elisabeth’s mother is immediately literature is far removed from mere arrested after the attack; however, she is dystopianism, which is implied as firmly determined to extend her protest, Elisabeth, sitting at Daniel’s deathbed, planning to unrelentingly bombard the comes to swap her reading from Brave fence with a pile of desirable antiquities New World to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. that previously were on her mind before she ‘got political’. The fence, introduced hat makes Autumn more as a key symbol of the ‘new detachedness’, Wconvincing than other approaches thus transforms into a sign of hope and to Brexit fiction, then, is that it avoids resistance, and it is in this sense that being lured too much into the discursive the novel’s final lines encourage the arena of Leave and Remain camps, while reader to see the roses that still exist positioning itself nonetheless clearly on in the all-encompassing autumnal rot. the latter side by capturing the mentality, or structure of feeling, of the new he hope the novel invests in detachment and by animating the belief Tovercoming the deplorable state of in the richness and intensity of life that society is also formally enacted. Evoking comes with removing rather than erecting life in its full and shared intensity, borders. It would hence be too simple reality in Autumn principally eludes to dismiss Autumn for ‘merely’ offering any endeavour to fix it to one particular a general critique of (post-)modern point of view, as is made clear by the alienation, of too much abstracting from non-linearity and multi-perspectivity the particularity of the contemporary of Smith’s narrative, which, indebted to crisis. At the same time, the novel’s Virginia Woolf in its proclivity for free focus on England serves mainly to reveal indirect discourse and also inspired by the constructedness of English identity Shakespeare’s Tempest, takes the reader and the questionable limitations thus from dream to the everyday, a collage maintained. While the multiple French oscillating between past and present as and German connections around Daniel well as life and death, amounting to a implicitly expose the idea of separating world in which memories and empathy British from European culture as utter are as real as any other experience. In the nonsense, it is for Daniel to point out days of post-truth, Smith’s imaginative that the roots of Elisabeth’s surname, realism seems to encourage, in a way, “Demand”, are probably French, “du a return to facts – the deeper facts, that monde”. To be really demanding, then, is, reflecting an intersubjective sense is to be a citizen of the world, resisting of truth that is not simply arbitrary the facile coding of identity in terms of but authentic and solidary. Such national boundaries. Thus while Smith’s
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novel implicitly advocates a climate of a few other issues. No wonder that the openness regarding the ‘refugee crisis’, sisters have not spoken to each other for and casually registers immigration nearly three decades. But a connection from Eastern Europe (as reflected in remains, as Sophia has bought the the staff of care assistants responsible sixteen-bedroom country-house in for Daniel), it should be added that Cornwall that was previously inhabited the Scottish writer questions more by Iris and her commune of political deeply the idea of an indigenous ‘core’ friends. In this atmosphere of stifled of the British population, exposing it as nostalgia, Sophia continually drifts into always already constituted by migration. memories of her youth spent with Iris and feels haunted by a childlike ghost. … to Winter … he Cle(a)ves also get a generational inter (2017), the second Tdimension as Arthur (called Art), Winstalment in Smith’s seasonal Sophia’s son, has been left somewhat cycle, takes a more domestic approach at disorientated between his mother’s and addressing the specific mood of Britain’s aunt’s diverging outlooks. Recently divided society. Loosely connected dropped by his girl-friend, Charlotte, to its predecessor via shared themes for his indifference regarding the crises and similarities in characters, Winter of the present, Art in fact prides himself transforms Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for bringing a political dimension into a subtly crafted post-referendum into his blog on nature observation allegory. The novel is centred around (“Art in Nature”), which, however, is the Cleves family, the name evoking exactly what makes Charlotte furious, social cleavages against the backdrop of dismissing Art’s project as his “irrelevant the deeper connections of kinship. At reactionary unpolitical blog”.10 Joining first sight, the two elderly Cleves sisters, his Scrooge-like mother for Christmas, Sophia and Iris, could not be further Art visits her in her (otherwise empty) apart regarding their world-views. The house, picking up Lux on the way, a introverted Sophia is a former art student young and witty immigrant woman, and a once successful, now bankrupt and beautiful and pierced, from Croatia but socially isolated entrepreneur, having just extraordinarily fluent in English. Having lost her own chain of stores specialized just run into her at a Bus Station, Art in home decoration, whereas Iris is a gives Lux the weird sum of 1008 pounds socialite and left-wing political activist, for pretending to be Charlotte during her life-long engagement ranging from his stay with his mother. Surprisingly, anti-war to environmentalism and quite skinny and homeless Lux turns out to be
Page 64 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Harald Pittel a catalyst par excellence. Not only does ut the novel’s meticulous allegorizing she easily connect with the otherwise Bgoes far beyond dramatizing the uncommunicative Sophia, but she also perceived and actual social divides, as encourages Art to invite her sister, Iris, it reaches out for a discussion about to come over as well. An unexpected the deep, intricate and precarious get-together unfolds between the four of relations between art and politics, or them, Sophia, Iris, Art and Lux – between individualism and solidarity. Within the
© Image by Tim Jokl via Flickr (source) people who would otherwise have been ‘logic’ of this set-up, Sophia, the ‘fallen fixated on their separate ways. Smith artist’, would embody an understanding impressively demonstrates her skills of of art as a contemplative ideal that is sketching out quirky yet to some extent removed from the everyday, amounting plausible characters, and it is only when to a detached ideal of self-cultivation a general impression has been evoked that is seemingly hinted at through Iris’ regarding these individuals’ overall long-standing habit of nicknaming her outlooks, their divergent mental worlds, “Philo”. However, Iris later undercuts how they became what they are, that the this lofty association with philosophy, contrary positions of the Brexit divide, suggesting that seeing art as a separate the Remain and Leave camps, come to be sphere has led her sister not to higher attributed to Iris and Sophia respectively. levels of insight, but towards sophistry and the market-place. Epitomizing the opposite position, Iris emphasizes that
Page 65 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Fiction in Dark Times: the Brexit Novel and Ali Smith art and politics are in fact identical underscored as it is set – in a surprising in that they both aspire to bring out conclusive shot at Donald Trump – “THE HUMAN” [sic!].11 It seems that against the shallow praise of Christmas Iris’ incessant engagement for a variety spirit in a recent public statement of political causes and movements that once more reflects the wintry have not helped much to form an idea bleakness of the POTUS’s mind/heart. of art that goes beyond such clichés. … and beyond t is for Art now to explore new ways Iof connecting art (which is, in a li Smith has been accused of not way, himself) and politics. Inspired Aknowing where to end, meaning and animated by the light-bringer Lux that Winter is more on the lengthy who acts as a fascinating-yet-evanescent side compared with its predecessor.12 embodiment of change, Art discovers that However, to write a novel that could go his interest in nature must be thoroughly on and on is very much in the ‘nature’ transformed so as to quit regarding nature of Smith’s writing, her playful and as a place beyond politics. He relaunches pleasurable endeavour of unpacking his “Art in Nature” blog, turning it into values, beliefs and standpoints to present a collaborative project to which even his the stories, the twists and turns as well former girl-friend Charlotte contributes. as the still underexplored levels of social The family reunion on Boxing Day, interconnectedness that constitute such as made possible by Lux, also brings positions. Recently, the novel has been Sophia and Iris closer to each other, shortlisted for the Orwell prize for against all odds. The novel thus ends books, which is awarded for outstanding on a reconciliatory note, demonstrating political literature, following George that conflict between (seemingly) Orwell’s ambition to “make political incompatible outlooks, unavoidable as writing into an art”. Winter is just it is, should neither be exaggerated nor the sixth novel ever to be nominated repressed. Rather, the divergence between for the prize which is usually given standpoints and worldviews should be to non-fiction.13 The judges are quite accepted, frustrating as it might be, so right to recognize that the scope and as to condition higher levels of harmony quality of Smith’s recent writing makes in a culture that is enlightened enough it a remarkable and valuable antidote to combine empathy with arguing. It is for anyone frustrated by present-day in this way that Smith responds to the societies, disorientated and torn as present crisis by giving a new, political they are between all kinds of actual meaning to Christmas, a point that is and imagined crises and the respective
Page 66 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Harald Pittel populist and right-wing responses. One 6 Ali Smith. Autumn. London: can hardly wait to see how Smith’s seasonal Penguin, 2017, 52 cycle will blossom in spring and summer. 7 Helen Joanne Cox was a Labour MP who was murdered on 16 June Endnotes/References 2016 by Thomas Alexander Mair, an adherent to far-right ideology. In Mair’s 1 Jon Day. “Brexlit: the new eyes, Cox was a danger to Britain and landscape of British fiction”. Financial a “traitor to white people” due to her Times, 28 July 2017, 11.
Page 67 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Make English Sweet Again! Refugee Tales, or How Politics Comes Back to Literature Dirk Wiemann (University of Potsdam) he UK is likely to leave the European had to face charges of sexual abuse, TUnion as the only (ex-)member state unlawful detention of minors and that practices the indefinite detention of children, and numerous cases of suicide. non-nationals, i.e. immigrants. What is impossible even in Hungary or Slovakia ince indefinite detention is a gross is indeed daily routine in the land that Sviolation of international laws, boasts of having given the world habeas including human rights laws, it should corpus: in Britain, and only in Britain, not come as a surprise that the Tory is it possible to lock away refugees, government have repeatedly been migrants and asylum seekers without obligated and pressed to justify their time limit, sometimes for periods of policy – which they habitually do by years, with no indication of when they outrightly denying that indefinite will be released or when their case will be detention is taking place in Britain at decided. More often than not, detainees all. Thus when called on by the United are held in centres profitably operated Nations in 2016 to ensure that cases of not by the state, but by multinational indefinite detention be avoided in future, corporations, with little transparency or the Home Office responded by seemingly meaningful accountability. The Brook accepting the recommendation on House “immigration removal centre” at the basis that indefinite detention Gatwick Airport, for instance, is operated doesn’t happen anyway in the country: by the multinational G4S corporation although there is no fixed time limit on on behalf of he Home Office, while Yarl’s immigration detention under UK law or Wood, arguably the most notorious of policy it operates in line with the established Britain’s ten detention centres, is run by principle that it must not be unduly the Serco Group who have recurrently prolonged and must last for no longer than
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is reasonably necessary for the purpose immigrant/refugee self-help groups. for which it was authorised. (Ben 2015) t has also triggered the Refugee Tales uggesting an ostensible consensus Iproject – a remarkable initiative that Sof what is a ‘reasonably necessary’ aims to raise awareness and combat the time period for ‘the purpose’, these practice of indefinite detention with the conspicuously imprecise wishy-washy means of literature, thereby re-asserting formulations deviate widely from the the time-honoured but also threadbare internationally standardised practice claim of literature’s immediate political of limiting detention without trial to a impact. Refugee Tales offers a forum maximum of 28 days. By contrast, the to rethink and practice literature as British regulations enable and indeed active intervention: not just by way encourage authorities to keep individuals of producing politically committed in suspension indefinitely under the texts but by making the mode and pretence of ‘necessity’. And while this process of the text’s production itself practice on one hand tends to render a political statement. In that sense, asylum seekers invisible (detention and/ it could be argued that Refugee Tales or removal centres are highly securitized marks a veritable return of politics to enclosures far removed from urban or the field of literature as a social practice. even rural centres), it is as such a highly visible component part of the ‘hostile A Politics of Walking (and Talking) environment’ policy that then home he Refugee Tales project is the secretary Theresa May programmatically extension of an outreach event implemented in 2012 - a policy whose T annually organized by the Gatwick most recent outcrop, at the time of Detainees Welfare Group since 2012, writing, was the Windrush scandal namely a three-days group walk culminating in the resignation of Tory intended to publicly express solidarity Home Secretary Amber Rudd in April with migrants and refugees, those who 2018. Needless to state, the ‘hostile either are involuntarily living a life environment’ programme and especially en route, or worse, incarcerated in the the practice of indefinite detention have limbo of indefinite detention. It is not been exposed, criticized and combatted for nothing that the organized annual by the parliamentary Left as well as walks habitually take place in the by a wide spectrum of civil society neighbourhood of the infamous Gatwick organizations and pressure groups, Detention Centre. In close collaboration including the major religious institutions with the Gatwick Detainees Welfare of the country, numerous NGOs and Group and the Kent Refugee Help
Page 69 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Make English Sweet Again! initiative, literary critic-cum-poet David that will tell us everything we need to know Herd and activist Anna Pincus developed about the contemporary world. Story has the idea of the public solidarity walk always been a welcoming-in, is always one further and added a literary dimension way or another a hospitable meeting of to the walking manifestation. Modelled the needs of others, and a porous artform on the mythical founding text of EngLit where sympathy and empathy are only the – Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – beginning of things. The individual selves we the newfangled event combines walking all are meet and transform in the telling into with storytelling and is meant to thereby something open and communal. (Smith 2018) re-enact and re-appropriate Chaucer’s etting out from Southwark in a poem for the immediate present; series of walks to Canterbury, a and perhaps more fundamentally, to S group of participants including asylum reclaim literature as such as an act of seekers, pressure-group activists, writers sharing and conviviality. In the words and sympathisers from all walks of life of Ali Smith, patron of Refugee Tales: rehearse the pilgrims’ progress as laid the telling of stories is an act of profound down in Chaucer’s poem. By the mere hospitality. It always has been; story is an act of walking, they produce a public ancient form of generosity, an ancient form and political performance in its own
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Page 70 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Dirk Wiemann right, “crossing part of the country that can be told and heard in a respectful manner. It is integral to a certain sense of English is out of such a space, as the project imagines, cultural identity, and that is also now that new forms of language and solidarity the first sight of the UK for those who can emerge. (Herd & Pincus 2017, 115) arrive via the road, rail and ferry routes t is important to point out that these between Calais and Dover” (White ‘stories of people who have been 2017). Clearly the idea is to not just I detained’ are presented not by these raise awareness about the outrage of experts-by-experience themselves but indefinite detention but to symbolically by established writers, many of them and performatively instantiate a solidary leading figures on Britain’s literary and hospitable Britain ‘to come’ as scene. Therefore it would be misleading an alternative to Theresa May’s vision to call any of these literary celebrities of a ‘hostile environment’: “As the the authors of these stories; for these project walked [recalls David Herd] stories are not theirs at all. They have it reclaimed the landscape of South instead been told to them beforehand England for the language of welcome in extensive dialogue by a person and everywhere it stopped it was greeted immediately affected by or involved with hospitality and enthusiasm” in the issue of refuge and detention in (“About Refugee Tales” 2018). Britain: former detainees, asylum seekers, he general principle of the project immigrants, lawyers, clergymen, support Tconsists of a tandem structure in workers, etc. The tales are in that sense which the “walk in solidarity” is two the outcome of a close collaboration things at once: first, a publicly visible between the person whose story it is, manifestation of a community underway and the writer they are working with not just towards Canterbury but a more and who gives that story a specific shape. welcoming Britain, towards “a better Walking in Solidarity imagined” one as the slogan of the project has it (Refugee Tales 2018); and secondly n route, lunch breaks and evening the occasion to tell and listen to tales en Emeetings are devoted to events route. It thus is both ‘real’ and ‘symbolic’: reaching out to the respective local public. These include presentations by experts, real as the walk is, and acutely real as are the concerts by committed sympathisers, experiences presented in the tales, there is a scenic readings, or performance lectures, significant sense in which Refugee Tales is also but it is the refugee tales themselves symbolic. What it aims to do, as it crosses the that take centre stage here: modelled landscape, is to open up a space: a space in which on Chaucer’s pre-text (without the the stories of people who have been detained
Page 71 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Make English Sweet Again! competitive idea inveigled by the host like a who is who of contemporary in the Canterbury Tales), at each stop progressive British writing in the age during the solidarity walk a tale will be of transnational postcolonial globality, told. True to the etymological derivation including, among others, such leading of the noun ‘tale’ from the verb ‘to literary figures as Ali Smith, Jackie Kay, tell’, these stories take place and shape Bernardine Evaristo, or Kamila Shamsie, as orature long before they reappear as along with bestseller authors like Helen literature in the conventional sense of Macdonald, Chris Cleave or Marina that term, i.e. as a fixed written text Lewycka, high-profile newcomers like that can circulate beyond the here and Patience Agbabi and Neel Mukherjee as now of the situation of its performance. well as such grey eminences as Marina Warner or Abdulrazak Gurnah. A regular n this latter shape, a sample of 25 presence is Iain Sinclair, who has so far Irefugee tales have been collected and on each of the solidarity walks acted as published so far in two anthologies on-site guide luring the ‘pilgrims’ into (Refugee Tales [2016] and Refugee Tales II the psychogeography of some eerie [2017], both edited by David Herd and sub/urban unknown. In addition, a Anna Pincus for Comma Press). In these wide range of writers, artists, actors, volumes, the writer will ideally step back musicians and journalists – from Bidisha as a mere scribe who records the story to Billy Bragg, Jeremy Irons to Ben Okri told to them by some anonymous but – have in one way or other contributed ‘typical’ informant. Hence, Refugee Tales to the solidarity walks as moderators, comprise stories with such Chaucerian hosts or entertainers and enlarged the titles as “The Barrister’s Tale”, “The impressive (to some: overwhelming, Appellant’s Tale”, “The Deportee’s Tale”, if not forbidding) list of participants or “The Lorry Driver’s Tale”. While the archived on the project homepage. informants’ individual identities thus dissolve into some generic generality s the Refugee Tales project, then, an (or protective anonymity), the names of Ioccasion for literary and artsy celebrity the authors/scribes remain all the more to indulge in and promote their own do- visible: each story’s title is complemented gooding? Why else, it could be asked, with the identification of the person should the author/scribe become so who processed it into literature: thus, prominent while the informant tends to e.g., “The Witness’ Tale as told to Alex disappear in the generic anonymity of ‘the Preston”, or “The Unaccompanied refugee’, ‘the deportee’, ‘the abandoned Minor’s Tale as told to Inua Ellams”. person’ etc. One obvious reason is The list of contributing scribes reads certainly the specific vulnerability and
Page 72 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Dirk Wiemann precariousness of many of the informants After all, Ms Kay (like any other of the who present their experience. As David writers involved in the project) only has Herd puts it in a recent BBC interview: to stand up to the obligation to faithfully record and process a narrative for whose right from the beginning, the issue that we accuracy and veracity she is in no way faced was that a person who has experienced whatsoever accountable. I would wish indefinite detention very much wants that to twist this suspicious and diffident story to be got out and told, but in a good projection against itself and ascertain number of cases it’s not straightforward for that, on the contrary, the naming of them to be the person to stand up and tell that the scribe has at least three important tale because they are worried about what that might mean in their home countries, and frankly they are worried about what that might mean in relation to the Home Office.
his, to be sure, goes a Tlong way to explain why it is important that the protagonists of the tales should remain anonymous; it does not, however, © Image by EYE DJ via Flickr (source) actually give a reason as dimensions that are indispensable to why the writers of the tales should for the entire project’s productivity, be so highly visible. Is it not an act of especially for the underlying aspiration appropriation when an author like, say, to repoliticize literature as such: Jackie Kay not only tells the story of an unnamed ‘smuggled person’ but figures irst, by signposting their names, the as the author of that story? It should not Fcontributing writers make themselves be forgotten that for many the author accountable not for the empirical veracity remains the original creative source of the story told but for the accuracy of from which the text at hand has sprung. the telling of the story. This responsibility, And is not the slightly antiquated title- to be sure, is of a tiny scale when subtitle combination, “The Smuggled compared to the task of the person whose Person’s Tale, as told to Jackie Kay”, testimony the writer processes. And yet, a most convenient disclaimer to that by doing so the writer makes herself individualised author’s responsibility?
Page 73 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Make English Sweet Again! vulnerable to precisely those kinds of is in most cases not restricted to the accusations that I have anticipated above. paratextual function institutionalised in the author’s name: given the first two econd, the visibility of the writer’s layers of this discussion, the scribes of Sname may be read as an act of speaking the refugee tales are prone to appear in in somebody else’s stead when that other these stories themselves as the narrators’ person is structurally barred from the act interlocutors. This does not happen in all of speaking. In this context, the author’s the texts but there is a strong tendency name would function in a similar way towards this kind of dialogism, in which to that of a guarantor who declares: “By not only the testimony but also its telling letting this narrative circulate under and its effect on the listener/scribe gets my name I assume responsibility for thematic. Thus, the “Student’s Tale as told it”. This is not to be confused with to Helen Macdonald” is crucially about the horrific ride as a stowaway in the back of freezer truck; but it is also to some extent an account of the strong inhibitions with which the author/scribe encountered that young refugee. Likewise, the “Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith”, is both about the outrageous, arbitrary detention-release, re-detention- re-release first-hand experience the storyteller recounts and the © Image by Iker Merodio via Flickr (source) baffled author’s dwindling faith in the complacency of ‘speaking for’ that the common-sense mantra that “it can’t feminists, racially othered, working-class be that bad”. In other words, the brief subjects or other marginalized groups interview is also a lesson: “I am an idiot. have forcefully derided as patronizing; But I’m learning. A mere hour or two it is exactly in order to prevent such with you in a room and I am about to paternalism that the author has to take find out that what I’ve been being taught the risk, however tiny, of exposing herself is something world-size” (“Detainee”, and her text to personalised scrutiny. RT1, 55). “Something world-size” is something so big that it can’t be learned hird, the visible author becomes an even when it is taught; something that identifying device for the average T all the same urges to be learned lest we reader. The presence of the author
Page 74 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Dirk Wiemann remain ensnared in the provinciality it turns out that the self-declared racist and insularity of those simplistic – colleague in the pillion seat is in fact a victimizing or demonizing – narratives Syrian refugee, and that our ostensibly that produce “easy pigeonholes to fit xenophobic narrator regularly smuggles people who have been forced to take refugees into the country. These acts wing” (“Student”, RT2, 8). In such of border crossing service, we further passages, I argue, the self-exposed author learn, are strictly non-profit, ubiquitous acts as surrogate reader, unpacking and unspectacular. When asked by the the multifarious tissues of complexity journalist about his motivation, the lorry into which the problematic of refuge driver gives a surprising explanation: “It’s and asylum appear to be enfolded. the kick, isn’t it? To be different inside. Last freedom we’ve got” (34). Helping Making English Sweet Again refugees to cross the border, then, is an act not of charity but of solidarity: not uch reflexivity and self-absorption, only a support of the imperilled fellow however, is only half of the story. S human but also an act of defiant self- The collection also includes tales about assertion and even self-emancipation in the immediate pragmatics of refugee a resilient fidelity to ‘the last freedom support work. Among these stories, we’ve got’. A particular strength of this “The Lorry Driver’s Tale as told to Chris story lies in the way in which its diction Cleave” takes pride of place as a text that itself enacts the kind of trajectory that simulates the worldview and diction of a is its subject matter: it is a move from hard-nosed trucker with a UKIP flag on the language of racism and stereotype the back wall of his cab, and a taciturn to the discovery of the matter-of-fact co-driver who claims: “I am a racist, I simplicity of a rhetoric of solidarity hate illegals because I love the UK” (29). and irreducible kindness: “You realise if The tale begins when a liberal journalist they [the refugees] have to carry all that, (no doubt the identification figure for maybe you can take some of the load. the average reader) joins the two drivers You might as well help – life’s over so fast” in their cab a hundred kilometres away (“Lorry Driver”, RT1, 34). In the same from Calais. The journalist’s idea is to go it is a progress from the degrading collect first-hand material for a feature representation of the narrator as a dumb on the experience of those who navigate chav to his rehabilitation as the political the highly policed border to the UK and working class subject he actually is – the crowds of refugees stranded on the ‘different inside’. In this sense, “The Lorry Channel coast, to whom the narrator Driver’s Tale” is tied in very neatly with invariably refers as ‘zombies’ to be the programmatic claim of the Refugee fended off. Yet in the course of the story
Page 75 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Make English Sweet Again!
Tales project at large as announced in Action.
Works Cited
“About Refugee Tales” (2018). Refugee Tales.
Ben (2015) “Indefinite Detention? We Are in the World of Kafka”. Detention
Page 76 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) H a r d T i m e s A h e a d Eds. Sebastian Berg andLuke Martell Eds. AnkeBartels, Irmgard Maassen The State oftheLeft and Ingrid von Rosenberg Gender Today Issue 102 Issue 103