of men. Women writers, in particular, have drawn
attention to the ways in which the illiterate partici-
pate in and reproduce nationalist thought. Other
cultural materials are important; hence the analysis
of rituals, sermons, symbols, and forms of oral
expression, including poetry and song, and visual
media including film and art/craft works.
Conclusions and further
questions
An important task is the revisiting of nationalist
discourse in regard to the translation of terms
employed in familist and gendered metaphors.
Have colonial stances in regard to families, gender
regimes, and law impacted on familist and gen-
dered tropes in nationalist thought? What are the
continuities of political thought from European
traditions, including the French and American rev-
olutions, and in what ways do they involve familial
metaphors? What have been the impacts of these
transformations in bourgeois thinking for other
social spheres? McClintock reminds us that “nations
are not simply phantasmagoria of the mind, but are
historical and institutional practices through which
social difference is invented and performed” (1993,
61). The Feminist Review(1993) raises the question
of the ways in which narratives of national identity
become forms of individual subjectivity. How is
affect mobilized on behalf of the nation? This ques-
tion is especially important when investigating the
emotive issues of motherhood, family, and honor
and their relationship to issues of national identity
and citizenship. What is required to achieve ideals
of citizenship that are not gendered, notions of dif-
ference that do not imply/invoke inequality?
Islamic nationalism (in the sense of anticolonial
and liberation struggles) can become caught up in a
broader conceptualization of the struggle across
national borders for the achievement of a united
Islamic ummathat transcends national boundaries.
The limiting intimacy of the family trope is at odds
with this. Is there an inherent tension between non-
fundamentalist modes of Islamic political thought
and the power of the (inherently authoritarian)
family metaphor?
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