‘Femonationalism’ as a Violation of Identity Categories: The Renewed Face of the European Far-Right' - Submission ID= 3880
Event Title
IAMCR - Gender and Communication Section
Year (definitive publication)
2020
Language
English
Country
Finland
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Abstract
Abstract
Positing a certain tendency to treat right-wing women as anomalies (Downing 2018), this article
analyses the recent reappropriation of feminist discourse by the far-right in Europe, with the
prominence of female political leaders such as Marine Le Pen from the Le Rassemblement National,
Anne Marie Waters, leader of anti-Muslim party, For Britain, and Alice Weidel, co-leader of the
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). It is claimed that this ‘femonationalist’ (Farris 2017) discourse
destabilises the intersectional dilution of frontiers among ‘oppressed’ categories (cf. Crenshaw
1989), combining anti-immigrant and anti-misogynistic rhetoric, generally framed according to an
anti-Islam organising principle. By violating the categories of political identity, according to which
an individual’s identity – be it gendered, sexual, racial or class-based –, determines his or her
ideological preference, female far-right leaders are strategically contributing to reinscribe the
genealogy of feminist mobilisation, traditionally connoted with an intellectual and activist leftist
tradition.
A selection of Facebook comments published by Marine Le Pen, Anne Marie Waters and Alice
Weidel on 2015-16 New Year eve events in Cologne will constitute the analytic corpus which will
allow us to explore the ways that misogyny is used to justify a discriminatory politics that, more
than openly racist, is above all anti-Muslim.
Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.’ University of
Page
Chicago Legal Forum Vol. 1989, Article 8,
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 (accessed 26.09.2019).
Downing, Lisa (2018) ‘The body politic: Gender, the right wing and “identity category violations”.’
French Cultural Studies 29(4): 367-377.
Farris, Sarah (2017) In the name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham, USA:
Duke University Press.
Acknowledgements
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Keywords
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