Identity, Gender, and the History of European Nations and Nationalisms

Bibliographic Data

ID7931040
AuthorsGlenda Sluga (0000-0002-2481-3394, The University of Sydney, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume4
Issue1
Pages87-111
Publication date1998-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNations and Nationalism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1345-5078 • E-ISSN: 1469-8129
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1354-5078.1998.00087.x
OpenAlexW2076246624
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited22

The distinction between cultural and political nationalisms has become a commonplace in writings on nations and nationalism. In this article I analyse the relation of culture to politics in the history of modem European nationalist thought from a gender perspective. I argue that gendered forms of national identification and masculinist definitions of the body politic and the national citizen were mutually reinforcing. The article has three main sections. First, I draw on feminist historio–graphy to show that the central event of modem European nationalism, the French Revolution, involved a differentiation of masculine from feminine forms of national citizenship. Second, I use nineteenth‐century sources to argue that the ‘separation of spheres’ and an image of the bourgeois family effectively diminished the role of women in relation to the nation. In the final section I show that the history of changing perceptions of the sexed human body is implicit in the imagining of national communities and in the political legitimation of national boundaries and national identities

Aesthetics · Body politic · Bourgeoisie · Citizenship · Identity (music · Immigration · Legitimation · National Identities · National identity · Nationalism · Nationality · Political science · Politics · Relation (database · Sociology · Central European national history · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Law

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