Logo

Synopsis 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.