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Women's bodies have been systematically used as metonyms of the land and the nation in patriarchal nationalist discourses since immemorial times. What are the consequences that such symbolic identification holds for women's real lives? What factual realities does such female imaginary of the nation produce in women's daily lives? This essay attempts to demonstrate that, whether we consider minoritarian nationalisms or think of hegemonic nationalisms that have the support of the state apparatus for their implementation, the symbolic exploitation of the female body as metonym of the nation brings nefarious consequences for a large number of women in the world. The paradox of the motherland is analyzed in a wide range of different cultural contexts where feminist interests seem to frontally clash with those of the nation, defined in masculinist terms. In this context, transnationalism emerges as an enabling concept that makes more room for women's multiple alliances across borders; without completely getting rid of the nation as a valid communal paradigm of imagined communities, transnationalism proposes a non exclusivist definition of the nation that allows simultaneous multiple belonging and fluid shifting between national identities.
Metonymized as nothing but the birth-canal, woman is the most primitive instrument of nationalism.
Gayatri Spivak ("Nationalism and the Imagination")
Women's bodies have been systematically used as metaphors of the land and the nation in patriarchal nationalist discourse since time immemorial. As Maria Donapetry has pointed out,
when men imagine their nation, as when they write their constitution and laws, they do so using female figures (Britannia), female functions (mother), or feminine appellatives (the Pearl of the Antilles); these representations, however, have mostly remained mere images and have not been translated into factual realities that could really affect women's lives positively.2 (13-14)
Much to the contrary, the factual realities that such female imaginary of the nation continues to produce daily are nefarious for a large number of women in the world, whether we consider minoritarian nationalisms or, even more so, we think of hegemonic nationalisms that have the support of the state apparatus for their implementation.
In this essay I intend to demonstrate the terrible consequences that such symbolic identification carries for women's real lives, from legislation that controls their potentially reproductive bodies with laws that limit abortion or...