The Invisible Empire

White Discourse, Tolerance and Belonging

This book offers a significant and original contribution to critical race theory. Georgie Wemyss offers an anthropological account of the cultural hegemony of the West through investigations of the central and pivotal constituent of the dominant white discourse of Britishness - the Invisible Empire. She demonstrates how the repetitive burying of British Empire histories of violence in the retelling of Britain’s past works to disguise how power operates in the present, showing how other related elements have been substantially reproduced through time to accommodate the challenges of history. The book combines ethnographic and discourse analysis with the study of connected histories to reveal how the dominant discourse maintains its dominance through its flexibility and its strategic alliances with subordinate groups.