Representing the Nation—Gender and Claims to National Self-Determination

Abstract

A nation’s claim is to its own distinctiveness. Borders are the physical representation of this distinctiveness, marking off the territory of one nation from another. Beyond borders, nations also represent themselves as distinct through a range of characteristics—national language, customs, character. We take these aspects for granted in nation states. At most, they become salient in times of heightened migration. Nations without states visibilise this struggle towards distinctiveness, as their distinctiveness from the host state is constantly under scrutiny. They therefore allow us to see by what means national distinctiveness is produced. Oftentimes, this is by reference to emancipation. In our panel, we present a research agenda for a renewed study of nationalism and gender, following Vickers’ (2016, p. 271) call to explore the varying relationships of gender and nationalism in their different contexts. By using gender as an analytical category to better understand instances of nationalist mobilisation, we show how nationalisms draw borders between themselves and others, and trace the ways in which they explain their nationalist project to the world. Claims to certain gendered images and positionalities supply legitimacy to one’s own struggle, or deny the legitimacy of the host state.

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