HOMONATIONALISM

The term critically refers to the cooptation of women and gay agendas within the discourse on US nationalism, anti-immigration, and the War on Terror against the “barbarian” attacks that in 9/11 and every day “the enemy” engages against US way of Life, democracy and society. Although homonationalism was already present in many Western countries’ far right and conservative gay parties and movements, as a term it was coined in 2007 by US gender studies scholar Jasbir Puar. Generally, in homonationalist discourses, the enemy is the immigrant other, especially Muslim migrants and nationals (ejected from the democratic and white national imagined community) together with their societies, state institutions and history at home. They are labelled as inherently homophobic, sexist, transphobic and illiberal and, as such, in need to be contained at the frontier as well as fought against in their countries of origin. Over time, the enemy category it has been expanded to include all racialized immigrants who are characterised  as bringing ‘chaos’ into the safe space of a nation, which is, in turn, construed as progressive, equal and just, regardless of its internal social divisions brought by the enduring legacies of colonialism, slavery, and state violence. Since 2001, these discourses have been appropriated by many political actors far beyond the United States, right and left-wing alike. Critical scholars have highlighted how homonationalist discourses are often paired with moral panic against an alleged “race replacement,” equating the threat of terrorism, social and economic depauperation, and migration driven cultural change, with racial decadence. Although often not openly, homonationalist discourses are intrinsically white supremacist. By white supremacism international scholarship means systemic and structural racism functional to cultural, social, political and economic dominance of the white component of the society. More recently, echoing Puar’s elaboration of homonationalism and Gayatri C. Spivak’s seminal work on anti-brown men colonial racism, Sara Farris has coined the term “Femonationalism” to highlight the nationalist, colonial and racist implications of Eurocentric conservative and white feminist discourses on Muslim migrant women as welcomed caregivers, discourses mobilized against Islam and Muslim men in contemporary Europe. 

Dagistanli, Selda and Kiran Grewal. 2012. “Perverse Muslim Masculinities in Contemporary Orientalist Discourse: The Vagaries of Muslim Immigration in the West.” In Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West, edited by George Morgan and Scott Poynting, eds. Routledge.  

Farris, Sara. 2017. In the Name of Women’s Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism. Duke University Press. 

Grewal, Kiran. 2012. “Reclaiming the voice of the ‘third world woman’.” Interventions 14 (4) 569-590.  

Haritaworn, Jin. 2015. Queer Lovers and Hateful Others. Regenerating Violent Times and Places. Pluto Press. 

Mohanty, Chandra T. 1988.  “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review 30: 61–88. 

Puar, Jasbir. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press. 

Puar, Jasbir. 2013. “Rethinking homonationalism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies. 45 (2): 336–339. doi:10.1017/S002074381300007X. S2CID 232253207. 

Sayyid, Salman. 2010. Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives. Columbia University Press, 2010. 

Spivak, Gayatri C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg. University of Illinois Press.