The Uses of (An)other History: A digression from Linda Colley's Britishness and Otherness: An Argument

The question that animates this paper is deceptively simple: what is brought into �play� in the conjunction of the signifiers �Britishness� and �Otherness�? Is the coupling of these two terms merely a taxonomic convenience, a way of marking out apparently fixed, mostly immutable categories such as �nation�, �cultural practice�, �ethnicity� and �Empire�? Or, conversely, is the opposition of �Britain-as-subject� and its panoply of archipelagic and colonial �objects� essentially a tactical manoeuvre driven by ongoing investments in a particular kind of narrative economy?