Re: <nettime> Its a Language thing

just a small correction to david's post: "The UK doesn't have a market of hundreds of

millions of people," he writes: "it did once but we voted to leave".

In fact the vote was over leaving the European Union. Mad King Boris decided that meant also quitting the common market, which wasn't on the ballot, largely because it would have swayed an already narrow majority towards defeat. The method in this madness was entirely internal to the Tory Party; and this may have lessons for all two-party systems where any chance of power has to be fought in faction wars within big parties, unlike European systems that encourage minor parties. (Anglophones describe these systems as 'unstable', despite the notorious instability of large parties like the demented Republicans or the splintered Conservatives)

Boris made the extremist call on total Brexit from sympathy with and succumbing to the power of the faction known as the Tory backwoodsmen. Nietzsche punned on the equivalent (Hinterwäldler) when he described metaphysicians as 'backworldsmen', people who believed in an invisible world behind this one that was truly real and permanent. Tory backworldsmen believe in an essential, unchanging 'real' England (rarely the Celtic fringes) which it is their obsession to reveal. It was this cult – a minority which holds some crucial voting power – which demanded the referendum, fuelled the propaganda machine surrounding it, and demanded an extremist interpretation of the result - there was no "we"

Seán Cubitt | He/Him

Professor of Screen Studies
School of Culture and Communication
W104 John Medley Building
University of Melbourne
Grattan Street
Victoria 3010
AUSTRALIA

I acknowledge the Boonwurrong and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin nation on whose unceded lands I live and work

New publications:

Art in the Age of Ubiquitous Media special issue Visual Cultural Studies (Rivista semestrale di cultura visuale). 2022. https://vcsmimesis.org/

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