“Time(x) Out of Joint”

Abstract

The prolonged and acrimonious industrial dispute and subsequent closure of the Timex Electronics plant in Dundee, Scotland, in 1993 is a key marker in U.K. manufacturing and labor relations history that was extensively covered in the media at that time. A discourse analysis of U.K. print-media representations of the dispute reveals both vivid accounts of the labor relations collapse and evocative imagery reaching beyond this particular event. Newspaper accounts were found to be laced with dark images including those of death and specters from the past, symbolizing the continuing expiration of much of British manufacturing and ghostly ever presence of Thatcher-era industrial relations. This leads us to a deeper interpretation, drawing on Derrida’s Spectres of Marx, exposing the dark shadow lurking within the post-1989 neoliberal capitalist ebullience present at the time of the strike, and presaging the present global crisis in capitalism and regret over the closure of such manufacturing plants.