Sovereignty after Gender Trouble: Language, Reproduction, and Supranationalism in Estonia, 1980–2017

This article argues that the recent rise of "anti-gender ideology," reproductive nationalism, and related discourses is best seen as an attempt to rework the boundaries of national sovereignty in a time of crisis. By focusing on the case of Estonia, the article shows how discourses which linked demographic decline to supranational, totalitarian, and utopian "experimentation" was articulated during the days of perestroika in 1980s Estonia, and how these ideas were later transposed onto the European Union, as a subsequent threat to national sovereignty.