Technologies of Governmentality and the Question of Feminist Politics: New Literature on the Relationships between National Narratives, Law, and Identity Formation

Abstract

Within the past two decades, feminist scholars have critically analyzed the gendering of nationalism and nation-state-building processes. On the one hand, they have explored how women were and are involved in nation-building and national processes (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989; Yuval-Davis 1997; Mayer 2000; Planert 2000). On the other hand, they have shown that national imageries are represented through gendered terms-for example, feminizing spaces of a territory (e.g., battlefields, soil, homes, landscapes, or boundaries) and masculinizing the movements (e.g., invasion, conquest, and defense) over these spaces-and that specific gender roles shape images of national icons or symbols (Mostov 2000; Ramaswamy 1998). But up to now, only little attention has been given to the question of how national identity affects personal identities or how national narratives motivate specific self-perceptions as well as forms of behavior and thus realize or engender the nation. The three books being reviewed here interrogate this question from different perspectives and academic disciplines. Furthermore, the authors not only provide a careful analysis of this connection, but also open up on the basis of their analyses the question of how feminist politics have to be drafted to redraw the intricate power relations between the self and the nation-state.