CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Azarova, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | "Demography Makes History": Discourses of Gender and Nation in Viktor Orban's Political Speeches Between 2015-2018 |
| Summary | The aim of the thesis is to contribute to the existing scholarship on contemporary Hungarian anti-genderism, which examines how and why “gender” is targeted by political actors; by analysing discourses on gender within the framework of nationalism. Therefore, it is an analysis of how, in contemporary Hungarian politics, the conception of the nation is gendered, and how reproduction is conceptualised within the nation; seeking an answer to the question, how exactly does gender figure in Orbán’s speeches? This is achieved through an analysis of Viktor Orbán’s political speeches and radio interviews made between 2015–2018, using the method of critical discourse analysis as outlined by Fairclough (2003). Additionally, since there has not been an adequate study of how contemporary anti-genderism draws on earlier discourses on reproduction, the analysis is then put into the context of the historical development of Hungarian family policies and the surrounding discourses of reproduction, demography, and the nation, from the state socialist welfare system of the 1960s to Fidesz-KDNP’s family policies in the 2010s. The findings of the research are the following: in this time period, Orbán almost exclusively talks about gender when he talks about the family; which is constructed as fundamental for the nation through its assumed role in reproduction. The nation itself is represented in a highly militarised way, as a unified actor in social processes, which are constructed as zero-sum conflicts. Demography plays a central role in winning or losing; therefore, childrearing is constructed as a tool to “make history.” These representations are found to resemble longstanding nationalist discourses which conceptualise the nation’s survival as dependent on proper reproduction, and thus on heteropatriarchal and reproductive families, and the subordination of women’s various positions in society (e.g. women as citizens) to their reproductive capacity in the nation. |
| Supervisor | Helms, Elissa |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/azarova_anna.pdf |
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