"Aye means always": Scottish independence activism in a Time of Brexit

Abstract

In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Scotland, however, voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU. This caused renewed wishes to become an independent country, after the independence referendum of 2014 in which the country voted to stay with the UK. In 2019, it was still uncertain what the consequences of Brexit would be. This resulted in a situation of temporal disorientation (Knight 2017), which made it more difficult for the independence movement to imagine their future. We argue that renewed Scottish nationalism in this liminal Time of Brexit (Bryant and Knight 2019) functions as a way to escape this limbo situation. Futural temporality is not often looked at in anthropology, but the future is created today by the actions of local people. In this thesis, we bring frameworks on temporality and nationalism together and propose a new concept: liminal activism. This opens up the possibility to show that this liminal, uncertain phase is not only passive; it can also produce something positive and active.