Memory, Emancipation, and Catalan Feminist Nationalism

Gendered metaphors are ubiquitous in nationalist discourse. While one’s own nation is strong and masculine, ready to defend itself, the enemies are deviant, overly emotional, weak—or, to simplify things, effeminate. Nevertheless, women participate in nationalist movements. This has puzzled scholars, who have argued for a long time that feminism and nationalism are incompatible. In my paper, I investigate feminist nationalism, which has thus far been neglected by scholarship on gender and nationalism. My theoretical contribution constructs a gender theory of nationalism that allows for multiple gendered nationalisms to exist within the same nation. Memory is crucial in this regard, as each part of the nationalist movement references its own historical mythology to construct a national identity and transmit national specificity. These different national memories are therefore differently gendered. I argue that feminist nationalists elaborate a national project that does not employ Enloe’s “masculinized memory” to construct its identity. Instead, feminist nationalists link their feminism to ideas of emancipation present in their national project. The language of national liberation oriented towards the future allows them to spearhead their project of a feminist transformation of society. I examine Catalan feminist nationalists to investigate the link between national emancipation and feminism. Catalonia is home to a nationalist movement with diverse ideological strands, but also a diverse feminist movement. The presence of feminists who are also nationalists allows me to investigate how nationalism is feminist. The presence of multiple feminisms meanwhile allows me to also outline what feminism is nationalist. From interviews with twenty-four activists from a range of different backgrounds and organisations I sketch the different strands of feminism in Catalonia. I then show how they relate to the concepts of nation and nationalism, as well as the concept of emancipation. This allows me to answer how feminist nationalists make their feminism compatible with their nationalism.