CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
The Gendered Dimensions of Nationalism
Organiser: Elif Gozdasoglu Kucukalioglu
Gozdasoglu, Elif (University of Bilkent,
Turkey) THE REPRESENTATION OF GENDERED NATIONAL SUBJECTS IN THE TURKISH NOVELS
The idea of nationalism cannot be only analysed as a political form based on the
idea of self-governing of the nation or as a political ideology built upon the
central theme of identification with the nation. It is suggested that the most
significant thing about the nation state is not its dissemination as a political
form but its infusion as a deeply held consciousness, a way of thinking and
acting. People are not national by birth but they are thought to be national, to
be members of a nation, in Carey Web's terms, they are made national. Carey-Web
mentions that this making is a complex activity of collective naming, of the
inclusion of national selves and the exclusion of cultural and political others.
In this sense, the making of national subjects is a kind of discourse which
invlovelves an enourmous diversity of cultural and linguistic processes. This
presentation seeks to explore to understand the making of the gendered national
subjects in the early Republican Period between 1908-1936. In the first part of
the presentation, I would like to elaborate the construction of the gendered
national subjects in historical terms. In the second part, my main concern will
be to illustrate the representation of women's national identity in the Turkish
novels written in that period.
Sampaio, Paula (Higher School of
Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Portugal) OLD
MAIDS OF OLD ENGLAND'?: WOMEN AND THE NATION IN GEORGE ORWELL'S WORK
The recent reassessments of our understanding of nation and
nationalism, particularly in the light of (de)constructionist and
representational theories, have for the first time devoted serious attention to
questions of gender. Because I believe these questions to be at the centre of
any study involving the concept of 'nation', I propose to look at the work of
George Orwell, whose insights on the nature and perils of the modern
nation-state remain potent and influential to our days, and discuss some of the
ways in which he tackled (if only in passing, or in a naive manner) the role of
women in his fictional and political readings of 'nationhood'.
Gordon,Tuula (Helsinki Collegium for
Advanced Studies, Finland); Komulainen, Katri (University of Joensuu, Finland)
and Lempiäinen, Kirsti (University of Tampere, Finland) PERFORMATIVE
NATIONALITY: UNITY, YEARNING AND AGENCY
Nationality is a historical configuration that socially, culturally and
emotionally defines what is shared , and what divisions intersect the shared.
Unity is gendered, 'raced' and heterosexual. These differences are constructed
for and within boundaries of nationality. In this process it is as if
nationality is an active agent, a doer and a performer. It performs when we
imagine, it performs when we yearn, it performs when we fear: nationality seems
an endless source (fountain) of emotions and actions. In this paper we analyse
the complex character of nationality as an agent and an actor. Our central focus
is on ways in which gender and nationality intertwine in performances of unity
and difference. The presence of nationality is never innocent or insignificant;
it imbues ideas of 'them' and 'us' with emotions, even when 'them' and 'us' are
in a dynamic flux. We explore these questions in relation to three sets of data:
educational narratives of Finnish adult women, ethnographically grounded life
history interviews with Finnish young women and men. We compare and contrast
ways in which gender and nationality is evoked in their narratives to
constructions of gender orders and nationality in sociological texts.
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