Waubonsee Community College

Homeland maternity, US security culture and the new reproductive regime, Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

Homeland maternity

bibliography

1057377230

Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz

Feminist media studies

US security culture and the new reproductive regime

"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"--, Provided by publisher"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"--, Provided by publisher