Fertile Ground: The Biopolitics of Natalist Nationalism

• In Event: Gender, Sexuality, and Politics

Abstract

In the last decade an increasing number of political figures, mostly on the right, have decried the rise of “gender ideology,” a discourse linking feminist critiques of gender norms with queer critiques of heteronormativity. Leveled by everyone from the Pope to Viktor Orban, the term has been wielded to shut down gender studies programs, critique the Colombian peace process, and to condemn drag queen story hours. This paper considers the usage of the critique of gender ideology as deployed by right-wing movements who link together the reproduction of racial and sexual hierarchy through a rhetoric of family values that, far from being strictly about cultural values, is about the economic and political power of whiteness. Drawing from feminist, critical race, and queer engagements with the idea of futurity I look at the ways the idea of the nation, premised on the proper passage of values and race, is used to stigmatize non-normative structures of kinship. These nationalisms, rooted in ideals of “blood and soil” are not only—or even primarily—rooted in a specific place but are instead located in the (re)productive capacity of the family and, specifically, control over the bodies of women. I explore several examples including the idea of “the great replacement,” popular among nationalists who critique immigration, the most recent proliferation of highly restrictive anti-abortion laws in the United States, policies of family separation at the U.S./Mexico border, and finally in the anti-transgender politics of the last two years. From these examples I suggest a biopolitics of reproduction that is highly racialized and gendered.

Author

• Claire Rasmussen, University of Delaware