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Modern nations have often been explicitly imagined through familial metaphors. In particular, the construction of the national community as a brotherhood (a fraternity) has pointed both to the centrality of male bonding in the production of nationalist sentiment and to the exclusion of women from the social contract. Within that contract not only were women "subject to men's power; it also implied complementary bonds between men;. . . women had no place in the new political and social order except as markers of social relations between men." 1 Hunt's observation recalls Sedgwick's analysis of how male bonding is mediated through the figure of woman. 2 In nationalist discourse representing the homeland as a female body has often been used to construct a national identity based on male bonding among a nation of brothers. 3 The geo-An early draft of this essay was presented at the Social Science Research Council confere, "Questions of Modernity" (in Cairo on May 28-30. 1993). I would like to thank Lila Abu-Lughod and Timothy Mitchell for making that conference possible and the participants, whose critical comments greatly benefited me in its revision. My thanks also to friends and colleagues, whose criticism and suggestions were extremely helpful in this rewriting:

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