Author: Eminent Contributors
Editor(s): Rada Ivekovic /Julie Mostov
Publisher: Kali/Zubaan
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 229
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8186706682
Description
The gender/sex difference, as the oldest known difference inscribed into language, is seen as basic, unquestionable and unproblematic - a condition of life. Gender and nation are social and historic constructions which intimately participate in the formation of one another. This volume examines the significance of nation and gender.
The essays in this volume consider the significance of nation and gender in the context of post 1989 transitions in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and in the context of post partition India.
The texts critique the way in which narratives of nationhood and womanhood naturalize and essentialize difference and hierarchy. The authors explore uses of sexualized/gendered imagery in defining the space of the nation (e.g. feminized landscapes and battlefields) and sexualized/gendered metaphors of state fatherhood and motherhood in defining the distribution of power within that space.
The particular histories of nationalism and partition are different in the countries involved, but commonalities in the narrative structures, state and nation-building strategies, patriarchal patterns of control, and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion are striking. This is particularly so with respect to the ways in which exclusive national identities are constituted through gendered representations of the nation and its members.
Contents
Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov
Introduction-From Gender to Nation
ELISABETH LIST
Selfhood, Nation and Gender : The Psychic Roots Of Sexism, Racism and Nationalism
RITU MENON
Do Women Have a Country?
VESNA KESIC
Gender and Ethnic Identities in transition
ELENA GAPOVA
Reinventing Men and Women Within the Belarusian Nationalist Project
PART TWO
URVASHI BUTALIA
Gender and Nation : Some Reflections from India
DASA DUHACEK
Gender Perspectives On Political Identities In Yugoslavia