Performing Gendered Disaster Nationalism and its Feminist Resistance in China during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The essay investigates gendered ‘disaster nationalism’ during Covid-19 which objectified female bodies and strengthened gender performativity in China. It also examines the performative subversive interventions launched by feminist activists. Borrowing Butler’s concept of ‘performativity’, in particular, the performativity of gender, of national identity, and of public assembly, the essay argues that gender and national identities converged in the pandemic, contributing to a Covid-initiated, gendered disaster nationalism in China. This performative nationalism was open to repeated subversive feminist interventions, which the essay argues, had strong performative capacity. The essay first maps out performativity theory in gender studies and its extension to studies of nationalism, particularly of Chinese nationalism, and applies it to the exploitation of female bodies during the pandemic. Further, the essay extends performativity to the analysis of feminist resistance against such exploitation. The essay concludes that performative feminist resistance destabilised the performative constitution of gendered nationalist subjects.