About Me…

Hello there! Welcome to Open to England, my own blog about my attitudes towards England, what it means to be English and what others may perceive of England.

The importance of my work:
I think it is important to engage with national and cultural ideas in order to learn more about ourselves and to discern how we view the rest of the world. Identifying with a nationality is just one way we can describe ourselves, others may also include their sexuality, historiography or economical standing as ways in which to define selfhood.

My own sense of being:
For me to say my home is England is increasingly totalising. I have a specific sense of place, a part of England I call home. However my notions of home become complicated when taking into account my economical and educational status. It is because I am a student and I study away from home that in a sense I have two ideas of England, one that belongs to my birth and childhood and one that belongs to my present, my early years of manhood. These two places are Swindon and Brighton. Both these names will forever form part of my personal identity; they have been forged by fate into my own history. When I think of England, I will think of these places and I will refer to the people I have met in these cities. However, there is also a multitude of settlements, towns and cities in which I will always subconsciously refer, those impressions of England that have been made on me in passing. These places will be called upon in my evocation of the many vicissitudes of England. In many ways to define one in nationalistic terms is a wary pitfall in which to fall victim to. No experience of nationhood can be essentialised and made into a representation that speaks for all subjects of that place. What of those on the margin, those that are in between nations and have suffered a sense of cultural displacement in being unable to fully define themselves in the nationalistic terms of one place?

Me in definitive terms:
I am English (but what does it mean to be English?), I have lived in America for a long period of time and visited numerous countries in Europe. I am now a final year University Student eager for new experiences, constantly learning and always questioning. I hope to bring to the world some crass cynicism.