Women, nation, and the ambivalence of subversive identification along the Thai-Burmese border

Abstract

This article focuses on the making of Shan nationalism as a subversive identification against the Burmese regime and its gender ambivalence. By employing a feminist critique of nationalism, it explores the relationship between women and nation within the movement for political independence among the Shan people. The article examines the way in which the imagined Shan nation has become a gender construct and is negotiated and contested by Shan women. Through the experiences of the displacement of Shan women exiles, the tension between the master and marginal narratives about the nation has become crucial to how women (re)construct their transnational identities. As women's voices are far from homogeneous and coherent, multiple and divergent experiences characterize the distinctive ways in which Shan women have come to terms with their ambivalent identities. © 2006 ISEAS.