![]() ![]() Leaving the European Union would enable the country to redefine its ‘influence’ through scientific innovation that would ‘change the world’. The Vote Leave campaign exhibited an anti-nostalgic form of nostalgia, addressing Britain's post-imperial decline and adopting the language of world leadership and influence that suggested empire’s nostalgic remnantsĬampaign Director Dominic Cummings – a long-time advocate of science and technology – also argued that Brexit would address Britain’s post-imperial decline. Hints of empire also underscored proposals for reconnection with former colonies through preferential trade and migration deals facilitated by technology. This was the case in campaign plans that aimed to reinvigorate the country’s former status as an innovative global hub. But peering beneath the surface of these claims reveals how they are bound up in Britain’s imperial past. ![]() Vote Leave used these futuristic themes to signify its forward-looking and visionary credentials. This was a notable feature of the official Vote Leave campaign’s treatment of the post-Brexit promise of science and technology. Many of the images of the British nation and its prospects, which Brexiteers articulated during the 2016 European Union membership referendum, exhibited an anti-nostalgic form of nostalgia. Anti-nostalgic nostalgia, Brexit, & empire This nostalgic past perfect future is often present in political narratives that are apparently anti-nostalgic or forward-looking. But the emotion can also be interpreted as a longing to reconnect with a past that was never fully realised. Nostalgia’s conventional meaning therefore revolves around a desire to simply go back to the comforts of a lost time. Nostalgia offers comfort and inspiration, typically by generating images of a rose-tinted past that appear superior to a deficient present. Periods of crisis and disruption, in life or in society, prompt an emotional reaction. However, the emotion still responds to significant change. Removal from one’s homeland is no longer a prerequisite of nostalgia. Nostalgia offers comfort and inspiration, typically by generating images of a rose-tinted past (or a past that was never fully realised) that appear superior to a deficient present Such feelings corresponded not necessarily to a longing for a lost place, but for a lost time. Nostalgia’s meaning shifted accordingly, slowly diluting to describe a temporal form of homesickness. But advances in medical science meant that we eventually came to view these ailments as indications of meningitis or tuberculosis. Soldiers fighting overseas experienced nostalgia as homesickness, which supposedly manifested in physical symptoms. ![]() In the 17th century, it was thought to be a medical disease that could result in death. ![]() Nostalgia has a compelling history of its own. Francesca Melhuish explores this relationship as it relates to Brexit, and how it helps us to understand the emotional appeal of temporal narratives of the nation Future nostalgia But nostalgia’s relationship with time is more complicated. We often consider nostalgia – the emotional sense that things were better in the past – as the opposite of future orientation. ![]()
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