Merle Tönnies – författare

This volume brings together historical, cultural and social science viewpoints on how Britain and Britishness have been ‘imagined’ in different times and media. The book emanates from the constructivist understanding that nationhood is imagined. Yet, it goes beyond established research on national identity by highlighting the temporal embeddedness of national imagination and the entangled time horizons of Britain’s present, past and future. Against the backdrop of Brexit and its aftermath, it explores how (re)constructed pasts shape perceptions of British loss and continuity as much as anxieties and promises for the future – and how, vice-versa, present experiences and imagined futures induce sentiments of nostalgia and guilt about the past. Drawing on diverse material such as soldiers’ memoirs, conversations in slaughterhouses, political speeches, novels, TV series or modern artworks, the interdisciplinary contributions reveal the diverse formats in which Britishness is continuously contested and re-imagined.

The volume uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how 21st-century British theatre increasingly intercuts dystopian and utopian elements to create innovative strategies for addressing current social and political concerns. In the case studies, a key role is given to the ways in which the selected plays use real and fictional spaces on stage and thereby manage to construct interactional spaces which the spectators are invited to share.