Hegemonic femininity, femonationalism and the far-right

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.