Gendering the Nation and Empire: Anthropological Investigations in Retrospect

Abstract

Revealing the gendered dimensions of national experience is indispensible to any scholarly undertaking of nations and nationalism. Grand theories of nationalism often fail to speak to the specific and multiple discourses of nationhood, the intimacies of experience, and the symbolic imageries that undergird national endeavors. An anthropological cognizance of the gendered aspects of nationhood allows for analytic acuity and insight into the complexities of nationhood as it is imagined and experienced from below. A gendered analysis of nations alone, however, does not suffice. I contend that—in addition to gender—anthropologists must also acknowledge the intersection of ‘race’ and ethnicity, class, religion, and other categories of difference, for they are holistic to national experiences. Refracting the nation through prisms of gender, ‘race’, class, and religion better reflects the depth and intricacies of the interdependence of the nation and the subject. Secondly, I also argue that the politics of women have certainly challenged masculinist national dominance, but they have not substantially transfigured the patriarchal understructure of national projects.