Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Söylem 5. Uluslararası Filoloji Sempozyumu, Isparta, Türkiye, 7 - 09 Mayıs 2026, ss.1, (Tam Metin Bildiri)
The Border Is Everywhere: Everyday Nationalism and the
Diffusion of Brexit in Ali Smith’s Autumn
Abstract
This
article examines how Ali Smith’s Autumn (2016) reconceptualizes Brexit
as an everyday experience of bordering, in which nationalism operates not only
at the level of political discourse but also through routine interactions,
bureaucratic procedures, and affective atmospheres. Drawing on Michael Billig’s
notion of banal nationalism, Étienne Balibar’s theorization of dispersed
borders, and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of liminality, the article argues that Autumn
reveals the diffusion of the border into the fabric of everyday life. Rather
than representing Brexit as a singular historical rupture, Smith’s novel
portrays a fragmented social landscape in which national belonging is
continuously negotiated, contested, and enforced through ordinary language and
institutional encounters. The analysis focuses on three interrelated domains.
First, it explores the circulation of polarized and exclusionary public discourse,
demonstrating how everyday speech acts reproduce and normalize forms of
national division. Second, it examines bureaucratic spaces—particularly mundane
institutional settings—as micro-sites of bordering that regulate recognition,
legitimacy, and access. Third, it considers the novel’s formal fragmentation
and its engagement with media saturation, arguing that these narrative
strategies mirror and intensify the affective divisions shaping post-referendum
Britain. At the same time, Autumn resists the closure of nationalist
logic by foregrounding liminal subjectivities and alternative modes of
relationality. The intergenerational dynamic at the center of the novel, along
with its sustained engagement with artistic production, opens up spaces that challenge
fixed notions of identity and belonging. Ultimately, the article contends that
Smith reimagines the border not as a fixed geopolitical line but as a dispersed
and everyday condition, thereby offering a critical intervention into
contemporary debates on nationalism, belonging, and cultural identity in
post-Brexit Britain.
Keywords: Brexit literature, everyday bordering,
liminality, banal nationalism, Ali Smith, Autumn.