Between Heteropatriarchy and Homonationalism: Codes of Gender, Sexuality, and Race/Ethnicity in Putin's Russia

This dissertation examines two simultaneous and convergent processes. One is the mechanism of heteropatriarchal nationalism in Russia, in which white ethnic Russian heteronormativity is idealized and employed for maintaining symbolic and physical boundaries of the state. Another is the process through which Russias heteropatriarchal nationalism interacts, diverges from, or overlaps with homonationalism and homotransnationalism on a global scale. In order to unravel these complex processes four political case studies are presented: Chapter 1 explores how Russian gender and sexuality studies were affected by the Western gaze and the Russian governments repression on queer and feminist scholars and discusses the resistant practices in academic contexts. Building on this foundation, Chapter 2 employs visual analysis to examine the links between notions of patriotism and representations of gender and sexuality in Russian popular culture. Chapter 3 applies semiotic analysis to examine the use of sexual signs and metaphors in political cartoons in the context of RussiaUkraine war. Finally, Chapter 4 applies critical discourse analysis to investigate the discursive and representational practices embedded in oppositional media reporting on the persecution of Chechen gay men. These political case studies demonstrate how codes of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity are employed to sustain the physical and symbolic national borders in the Russian centre and in two peripheral militarized zonesthe Republic of Chechnya and the recently annexed Crimea. This thesis argues that both nationalist sexual politics and resistance to it are saturated by the concomitant processes of racialization/ethnic othering and the ascendancy of white Russianness. Located at the crossroads of Russian studies and transnational sexuality studies, this dissertation expands our understandings of the intersections of nationalism and sexuality, global homonationalisms, and the links between sex, gender, and race/ethnicity in the post-Soviet region.