Gender, Sexuality and Nationalism in the Age of Trump

In this seminar, we will explore the role of gender and sexuality in fomenting new populisms and nationalisms across the globe.  Although the political theorist Paul Amar has coined the term “thug love” to describe the rise of charismatic forms of masculine domination in diverse contexts (e.g. Trump in the U.S., Bolsonaro in Brazil, Erdogan in Turkey, el-Sisi in Egypt, Orbán in Hungary), the gendered and affective dimensions of contemporary governing masculinities have been insufficiently explored.  How do geopolitics and gender intersect in what some have termed a “post-neoliberal” era characterized by resurgent and reactionary racial and gender formations?  How does the rise of the far right through political parties across Europe, including VOX in Spain, speak to a crisis of gender as well as of previous forms of governance? This seminar takes the dynamics of gender and sexuality to be central, rather than peripheral, to changing political-economic realities, and considers what role they might come to play in emerging strategies of resistance.