Hegemonic femininity, femonationalism and the far-right

Abstract

Abstract The burka has become a key symbol of the supposed ‘Islamification’ of Europe and has led to a series of ‘burka bans’ ( Bouattia 2019 ; Bracke 2012 ; Hancock 2015 ). In the debate surrounding these bans, a ‘femonationalist convergence’ has been identified by Farris ( 2012 , 2017 ) in which the nationalist political right, neoliberal policy makers, and some feminist organisations converge in adopting the language of gender equality to argue that the burka is a symbol of patriarchal oppression. In this paper, I relate this femonationalist convergence to the maintenance of hegemonic femininity, which can be broadly defined as the privileging of femininity that is complementary to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy ( hooks 2000 ). Using feminist critical discourse analysis ( Lazar 2005 ), I analyse the representation of Muslim women in an article on the burka written by former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, for The Telegraph in 2018. I show how Johnson instrumentalises femonationalist discourse to justify his Islamophobic marginalisation of Muslim women. I conclude that Johnson used this article to lay the groundwork for his Conservative leadership bid the following year and to garner popular support for a shift to the far-right in British politics.

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