Sex, violence and nationalism

*This article is an updated and modified version of an earlier work, “The Sexual Life of Nations. Notes on Gender and Nationhood”, originally published in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2002, vol. 11, issue 2, pp. 52–65. The author thanks the Editorial Team of Kvinder, Køn & Forskning for the kind permission to re-publish his essay in this issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

ABSTRACT

This article is a commentary on Joane Nagel’s “Masculinity and nationalism”, which discusses differing cultural conceptualizations of gender and masculinity, critically interrogating essentialist conceptualizations of maleness, and – in the most empirical and engaged section of the article – relates conceptualizations of maleness to war. This commentary elaborates on and develops Nagel’s analysis by introducing new empirical examples and through its emphasis on symbolism, metaphor and kinship imagery in portraying nations in a gendered manner. It is also pointed out that nations at peace project different gender relations to nations at war.

KEYWORDS:

• Nationalism
• gender
• violence
• masculinity
• kinship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

*This article is an updated and modified version of an earlier work, “The Sexual Life of Nations. Notes on Gender and Nationhood”, originally published in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2002, vol. 11, issue 2, pp. 52–65. The author thanks the Editorial Team of Kvinder, Køn & Forskning for the kind permission to re-publish his essay in this issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.