Abstract

Edit András Masculine nation, masculine war, masculine art Nationalism and masculinity (Little Warsaw: The Battle of Inner Truth) The rhetoric of nationalism is regarded to be heavily gendered, still for quite a long time the various nationalism theories have been in agreement only in their gender blindness. The gendered notion of nation has been naturalized to the degree that even feminist scholars have failed to examine the constructed nature of this connection. When they finally targeted nationalism, they focused on women as victims of patriarchy or explored women’s contribution to the process of nation building. The focus on gender and sexuality in the making of nations appeared in parallel with the rise of nationalisms globally. This essay travels around the connection between nationhood and manhood through a close reading of the installation entitled The Battle of Inner Truth by a Hungarian artist duo, named Little Warsaw, examining how this symbiosis has been manifested in visual and cultural representation through the construction of the image of a glorified, virulent male warrior and heroic male struggle as opposed to the passive and weak, or its idealized and static counterpart, symbolizing the feminized nation to be defended. The artists transformed the floor of the Trafo Gallery, Budapest into a plotting board on which 73 statuettes and figurines borrowed from Hunga- rian public art collections serve as regiments in an imagined battlefield (these included small scale models for public monuments, autonomous and propaganda works, as well as commercialized knick-knacks, some of which are still visible in public spaces, others have been removed or never realized). They selected works made in the 20th century but relying on19th century visual clichés of public monuments, which represent mili- tary acts, patterns of aggression, heroism and are strongly connected to nation building and later to the construction of Socialist identity. The essay offers a feminist analysis (relying also on Nationalism Studies and Masculinity Studies) of nationalism and masculinity, to demonstrate the interplay between masculine culture and nationalist ideology as they designate gendered places for men and women in national politics. While the ready-made statues justly put into effect the nation as a masculine enterprise, the various artistic strategies – such as artistic research, re-enactment and popular history – applied to the very idea of setting up a game and the rearrangement of the figurines, in difference to the national and (art) historical canon, actually subvert the authority of post-socialist nationalism. However, its highly gendered construction is left intact. Keywords: masculinity, Men’s Studies, femininity, Women’s Studies, feminism, Gender Studies, game theory, war games, public monuments, public space, artistic research, re-enactment, nation building, nationalism, post-socialism