“Transnational Struggles: Anti-Liberal Hungary’s Discourses on Gender, Sex, and Reproduction”

Hungary is my focus, but a nation-focus misses the ironic fact that far-right nationalist imaginaries are incited not only by “home” but by remote organizations, their funding and circulating discourses. Equally, the opposing struggle at ‘home’ for gender equality, the rights of women and sexual minorities is also transnational, working through networks of NGOs and international governance. I track several recent public clashes in Hungary around gender and reproduction showing the contrasting values and influence of these opposed networks, as revealed in their discursive/semiotic strategies of persuasion. Reciprocating these effects, how does PM Orbán influence the United States, Russian, and European Union politics?

Susan Gal is Mae and Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics. Her work addresses the political economy of language, language ideologies, and standardization. She has also worked on the politics of reproduction and gendered language, translation, and most recently the semiotic processes that mediate the discourses of the European far-right.

Gal is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the recipient of Guggenheim, ACLS and SSRC Fellowships. She is the co-author of Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life, co-author of The Politics of Gender after Socialism, author of Language Shift, and co-editor of the volume Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority. A collection of her articles has appeared in Hungarian translation; many are available in German, Russian, French, and Romanian.

Please reach out to Hazel Velasco Palacios hgv5008@psu.edu if you have any questions about the event or need accommodations.