Brexit and Otherness: A Modest and Unsystematic Reflection

Venue: Yasuko Hiraoka Myer Room, Sidney Myer Asia Centre

Presenters: Professor James Conroy

The EU Centre presents this lecture by Professor James Conroy, who will discuss how the decision of the UK to leave the EU was promoted by an exaggerated account of otherness.

This lecture analyses some of the ways in which this sense of British exceptionalism made itself manifest in the Brexit vote. From there, Professor Conroy will establish that the etatist impulses that gave rise to such an outcome, with their cultural particularity, are not uniquely British but are part of a broader reemergence of such ‘instincts’ and ‘discourse’ in a number of polities.

Moreover, they are a function of the dominance of a certain form of liberalism in education, which has in turn led to the emergence of a displaced and simplified reading of religious and cultural otherness, despite – or maybe because of – the compulsory nature of liberal religious education across much of Europe.

from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/9232-brexit-and-otherness-a-modest-and-unsystematic-reflection