The Fantasy of Exit: Campaign Use and Abuse of Exit in the UK’s 2016 Brexit Debate

Abstract

Many political theorists have associated exit with positive attributes, seeing it as crucial individual sovereignty and self-determination. However, the 2016 Brexit debate about whether the U.K. should leave the E.U. revealed ambiguous and worrying uses of exit, especially concerning the spike in hate crimes after the referendum. We need to understand better how the concept of exit is changing in political discourse. Through studying the Brexit debate, I found conceptual connections between a national, sovereign exit and nativistic violence, which suggests that exit can be a dangerous concept. I argue we should move past a one-sided, optimistic view of exit and be attentive to exit’s destructive potential in the future.