We hope to give shallow answers to that first ‘deep’ question; to slight the question of ‘value’ as mainly ‘interested commodities’, and to throw darkness rather than light on the now increasingly troubled question of ‘British’ identity. Our approach is not to define ‘fundamental British values’ (as we will show, that proved impossible) but to represent the multiplicity of contradictory contents that invest its form. In such a ‘performative agonistics’ (Blyth, Chapman, Stronach, 2016; Toscano, 2016; Frankham and Tracy, 2012), we anticipate a dissemination rather than an insemination of meaning, in contrast with the ongoing neoliberal ‘rage for certainty’ (MacLure, 2005; Badiou, 2013). ‘Fundamental British Values’ in Badiou’s terms, is a polysemous ‘event’, whose performances and contexts should be regarded within a series of theatrical metaphors – an ‘amphitheatre’ of meanings, perhaps, in a ‘post-truth’ world (Trapido, 2016: 57). Thus these deconstructions should be seen as part of a more generic critique of neoliberal enclosures that seek for definitions, essences, identities and quantifications (Zuboff, 2019)
