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.