Heteronational Matrix: Nation and the Social Construction of Gender

Abstract This article explores how nation and nation-state materialize in interactional contexts and shape the social construction of gender in everyday life with a focus on Turkey. Judith Butler’s (2004) concept of “undoing gender” has influenced debates within the “doing gender” literature, a sociological body of work on the social construction of gender in everyday life, with particular attention to the deconstruction of heteronormativity. However, the more contestation of heteronormativity proliferated, the more the roles that the nation plays in the social construction of gender stayed obscured. I offer a corrective to nation-bound or nation-blind analyses of gender and propose the concept of the “heteronational matrix” as a perspective for analyzing how gender and sexualities are dynamically woven into the symbolic and material construction of the nation and nation-states, and how these constructions, in turn, shape the social construction of gender in everyday life.