Janet Jakobsen, Claire Tow Professor and Chair of WGSS at Barnard College, Columbia University

“Toward Shared Abundance: Answering White Christian Nationalism”

Why has it been so difficult for a mainstream political culture supposedly dedicated to democracy, freedom, and justice to respond effectively to the broadly documented resurgence of White Christian Nationalism in the United States? One popular answer has been that the cultural conservatism of White Christian Nationalism around issues like gender and sexuality, critical race theory, and immigration also provides a response to decades of neoliberal austerity, even as this response to austerity covers over the interests of economically powerful people and institutions. This paper argues for an analysis that refuses a division between “culture wars” and the social and material basis of contemporary rightwing politics, suggesting instead that feminist, queer, trans, and critical race theories have much to offer an accurate political analysis. “Toward Shared Abundance” understands the politics of race, gender, sex, nation, and religion as part of (not counter to) a new nationalist neoliberal neoliberalism located in a fractured economic landscape that also includes finance capital and billionaires, transnational corporations, family businesses of both large and small scales, and technofeudalism. And, in turn, this more accurate analysis provides new sources for how those who seek justice might imagine an alternative to both an ineffective mainstream and a rising Christian right with autocratic tendencies.