Logo image
Homeland maternity: US security culture and the new reproductive regime
Book

Homeland maternity: US security culture and the new reproductive regime

Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz
Feminist media studies, University of Illinois Press
2019
DOI: 10.5406/j.ctvfrxq2m

View Online

Abstract

"In US security culture, motherhood is a site of intense contestation--both a powerful form of cultural currency and a target of unprecedented assault. Linked by an atmosphere of crisis and perceived vulnerability, motherhood and nation have become intimately entwined, dangerously positioning national security as reliant on the control of women's bodies. Drawing on feminist scholarship and critical studies of security culture, Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz explores homeland maternity by calling our attention to the ways that authorities see both non-reproductive and "overly" reproductive women's bodies as threats to social norms--and thus to security. Homeland maternity culture intensifies motherhood's requirements and works to discipline those who refuse to adhere. Analyzing the opt-out revolution, public debates over emergency contraception, and other controversies, Fixmer-Oraiz compellingly demonstrates how policing maternal bodies serves the political function of securing the nation in a time of supposed danger--with profound and troubling implications for women's lives and agency"-- "Motherhood in the context of homeland security culture is a site of intense contestation--at once a powerful form of currency and a target of unprecedented assault. In this book, Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz designates the term "homeland maternity" in order to theorize the significant relationship between motherhood and nation within homeland security culture. While recent scholarship has explored both homeland security culture and the politics of contemporary motherhood from critical perspectives, no study to date has considered how recent discourses of motherhood and nation are deeply enmeshed and mutually constitutive. As reproductive bodies are represented as a threat to national security, either through supposed excess or deficiency, a culture of homeland maternity intensifies the requirements of motherhood as it works to discipline those who refuse to adhere. Each chapter takes up a specific site where this occurs. In so doing, Fixmer-Oraiz argues that homeland maternity offers a way to understand how the policing of maternal bodies in contemporary US culture serves an overt but unexamined political function--namely, securing the nation in times of perceived vulnerability, and with profound implications for women's reproductive lives and agency"--
Feminist Theory National Security Sociology Women's Studies Human reproduction SOCIAL SCIENCE / Abortion & Birth Control MEDICAL / Reproductive Medicine & Technology SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies Motherhood Political aspects Health Sciences National security-United States Human reproduction-Political aspects-United States Motherhood-Political aspects-United States Feminist theory-Political aspects-United States

Details

Metrics

40 Record Views
Logo image