Cultural Geography

There is here a clear sense of what women and

men can and should do, and these are separate.

When women transgress these boundaries the

response is an attempt to get things back to

normal as quickly as possible. This is not an

unusual response. Various commentators dis-

cussing diverse national movements including

India and countries of formerly Soviet eastern

Europe highlight the perceived importance of

preserving or recovering ‘traditional’ (meaning

patriarchal) gender relations in an attempt to

regenerate national character (see Chatterjee,

1993; Molyneux, 1991; Todorova, 1993). Dowler

(1998)also uncovered alternative forms of resis-

tance and conflict enacted by women in the IRA

but again this was not recognized as a legitimate

form of political action in the nationalist struggle.

For example, although not actually jailed them-

selves, some interviewees explained that their

long years visiting first husbands then sons in

prison, and coping alone with raising a family,

might as well have been a prison sentence for

women like themselves who could never escape

these responsibilities (1998: 165).

In other cases it could be argued that the inte-

gration of women and women’s concerns into the

military might start to work changes into this insti-

tution and the nature of masculinity. Pettman

wonders whether, with changes to the nature of

modern war, different forms of masculinity might

be required: in addition to the ‘brute force of the

footsoldier’ the military might now also require

‘the rational planning of the military strategists

and commanders, the intellectual and scientific

masculinism of defence researchers’ (1996: 95).

This points to the existence of more than one

version of masculinity: on the one hand the phallic,

erect and strong embodiment of the son, on the

other the objective and calculating brains of the

father (see Nast, 1998: 193). It is interesting to note

however that although it is increasingly acceptable

that women play an active role in the military, the

reverse process is not so clear: there is little

evidence of men taking on the feminized roles of

nurturers and carers of national populations.

On the other hand, many feminists have drawn

power from a pacifist stance which rejects milita-

rized and divisive national borders. This approach

would avoid national boundaries, loyalties and

practices altogether and seek alternative forms of

community relations and governance.

CHALLENGING BOUNDARIES

Many postmodern theorists have argued that the

world is becoming ever smaller, that the globe is

deterritorializing, becoming ever more connected

and more fluid. Borders and boundaries are

dissolving, according to this narrative. At first

glance this might seem to be conducive to a

feminist political geography that resists the

inherited patriarchal images of international

and national politics. Continental feminists,

most prominently Luce Irigaray, have argued

that femininity is constructed as ‘that which

disrupts the security of the boundaries separat-

ing spaces and must therefore be controlled by

a masculine force’ (Deutsche, 1996: 301). A

major project of which masculinity is the effect

is the ability to re-establish and reinforce such

boundaries. In his influential work, Theweleit

(1987) suggests that masculinity has a great

deal to do with purification of both borders and

peoples so that control and bounding are inher-

ently entwined with hegemonic projects of

masculinity. Nast argues that this has a sexed

dimension:

In the context of transnationalism and the emergence of

megastates and/or supranational organizations, we have

all kinds of contemporary, ‘unconsciously’ registered

anxieties over the heterosexualized pure and solidly

bordered body of the nation being penetrated, threat-

ened, overcome, and/or dissolved by a plethora of

frightening foreign microbes and dangers. National hys-

terias have emerged over various kinds of ‘transgres-

sive’ movements: from illegal immigrants in the USA,

to (carriers of) AIDS globally, to legal but now eco-

nomically redundant foreign workers in western

Europe; all transgressors are denigratorily racialized

through constructions of associational (for example,

metonymic and metaphoric) links with disease, death,

floods and filth. (1998: 195)

This can be seen in recent anti-immigration

legislation in the USA and ‘fortress Europe’, in

anxiety about the breakdown of family values in

Britain and the US, and in the rise of reactionary

forms of national identity in eastern Europe,

amongst other examples. In the UK this can be

seen particularly clearly in debates over the scrap-

ping of Section 28, the bill that prevented the

‘promotion’ of homosexual values in schools.

This led, in Scotland, to a referendum funded

privately by millionaire businessman Brian

Souter about whether or not homosexuality could

be discussed in schools as a normal form of

human relationship. This provoked highly

charged debates in the tabloid press about the

threat of certain groups who, they claimed, sought

to destroy family values and social cohesion.

If it is indeed a masculinist urge to contain and

bound, it might be argued that a feminist political

geography would necessarily embrace fluidity

and borderlessness. Some feminists have

478 GEOPOLITICAL CULTURES

3029-ch25.qxd 03-10-02 11:04 AM Page 478