“Just angry people”: broken Britain and counter-communities of desire in Gillian Slovo's The Riots

Drawing on a cluster of interconnected approaches, but privileging a cultural studies and postcolonial perspective, my presentation investigates cultural imaginaries and literary and political narratives of the current financial crisis with a special emphasis on racialized constructions of the London riots of August 2011, as represented in the statements of politicians and media discourse.Building on the verbatim play The Riots (2011), by the South African novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo, and China Mièville’s essay London’s Overthrow (2011), my paper explores also the way in which, although through violent, confused and contradictory means, the London rioters aligned themselves with wider communities of consumption and desire. Looting brought to the fore the inconsistencies and fissures of the ruling neo-liberal paradigm and its model of citizenship based on individualism, competition and consumption. The rioters’ bid for branded goods staged the enduring injustices of a system unable (and/or unwilling) to answer questions of poverty, exclusion and marginalization, and showed the intrinsic contradictions of an ideological and socio-economic mindset promoting affluence while increasing poverty.