Post-imperial Britain’s declining status fostered collective melancholia and scapegoating of minorities

Evidence

Thence, the analysis moves to a broader consideration of the emerging problems of inner-city areas of this type, with their overcrowding and cultural heterogeneity, poor housing, and unemployment. Thus they develop the outlines of an analysis of what Paul Gilroy later called the forms of “postcolonial melancholia” characteristic of an ex-imperial society, bemused by its own declining status in the world and on the lookout for convenient scapegoats to explain away its problems. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 969

Categorization

• XREF: Gilroy’s ‘postcolonial melancholia’ connects directly to my ‘Grafting & Growth’ theme of societies dealing with decline, but more specifically it resonates with commentary on national identity and empire. — connects to: Trumpism and Brexit both exemplify postcolonial melancholia rooted in lost omnipotence fantasy — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2027