Jemima Repo

• PhD
• Lecturer at Newcastle University

Michel Foucault identified sexuality as one of the defining biopolitical technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Jemima Repo argues in this book, "gender" has come to be the major sexual signifier of the mid-twentieth and early twenty-first century. In fact, in this historical excavation of the biopolitical significance of the te...

This article argues that European Union (EU) gender equality policy operates as a technology of biopolitical and neoliberal governmentality. Through a genealogical examination of EU policy documents and relevant demographic research, I examine how EU gender equality policy emerged as a means to reorganise women's work and personal lives in order to...

This article argues that gender was invented in the 1950s as a new sexual apparatus of biopower. Through a reading of mid-century sexological studies against the background of structural–functionalist and behaviorist theories of social order, it shows how gender was born in the clinic to discipline the reproduction of life in new ways. The truth of...

This article argues that the relation between the biopolitical functions of life and death and the apparatuses of sexuality and race through which they operate is a contingent one. Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended lectures and Will to Knowledge are revisited for genealogical clarity regarding the strategic relations underpinning their emergence,...

This article argues that Judith Butler’s neglect of biopolitics in her reading of Michel Foucault’s work on sexuality leads her to propose a genealogy of gender ontology rather than conduct a genealogy of gender itself. Sex was not an effect of a cultural system for Foucault, but an apparatus of biopower that emerged in the eighteenth century for t...

The objective of this article is to bring Palestinian women to the centre of a discussion about the gendered dimensions of Israel’s convoluted permit system and checkpoint security infrastructure. Drawing on fieldwork close to one of the largest checkpoint terminals in the West Bank, Checkpoint 300 between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the article devel...

This article brings women to the fore of a discussion of checkpoints in Palestine to understand better the ways that Palestinian women’s lives—even as they may not regularly cross checkpoints—are affected by Israeli security infrastructure. Drawing on fieldwork near Checkpoint 300 between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, we examine women’s lives in the con...

This article theorizes the commodification of the recent resurgence of feminist activism through the concept of “feminist commodity activism.” The focus is on the mass popularization of feminist-themed commodities, with T-shirts as a particular focus. First, I discuss how the mass marketing of feminist goods ties in with: (a) commodity feminism, by...

In many countries, compulsory sterilization is still a precondition for amending juridical sex. Drawing on feminist and queer debates on the entanglement of recognition with governmentalization, this article moves beyond a human rights frame to examine how struggles for legal gender recognition are bound up with the production and discipline of tra...

This paper argues that Chicago School economist Gary Becker’s theory of fertility underpins contemporary rationalities of global population governance. Drawing on feminist critiques of biopolitics, the paper proposes reproduction as a missing link that ties Becker’s homo economicus to the aggregate question of population. It argues that Becker’s wo...

Checkpoint 300 serves a large amount of Palestinian labourers as they make their way to places of employment in East Jerusalem and Israel. The Checkpoint is a large complex of corridors, turnstiles, metal detectors and security desks that control the movement and mobility of these workers every day, subjecting them to enforced waiting, stress and a...

Governed Through Choice: Autonomy, Technology, and the Politics of Reproduction. By Denbow Jennifer . New York: New York University Press, 2015. 231p. $28.00 - Volume 14 Issue 3 - Jemima Repo

This article examines the idea of ‘middle-class monarchy’ emerging in Europe from the internationally publicised marriages of Kate Middleton to Prince William in the United Kingdom and Charlene Wittstock to Prince Albert in Monaco. Through a careful analysis of sexuality, class and race in three major British newspapers, we demonstrate how media di...

The issue of reproduction is associated with state intervention and government policies in the twentieth century as much as it is with radical feminist calls for women to counter sexual exploitation by taking control of their bodies. Possessing an elusive status in political thought, it has been conceptualized by feminists, Marxists, poststructural...

It is generally accepted amongst demographers that a declining fertility rate has negative economic consequences, namely in the guise of a slowdown in economic growth. Declining fertility has, therefore, been seen as a major problem in Japan and the EU for the last 20 years. Over the past two decades, demographers and social scientists have discuss...

Within barely a year, two school shootings shook Finland. The school shootings shocked Finnish society, forcing media, academics and experts, police and politicians alike to search for reasons behind the violent incidents. Focusing their analysis on the two main Finnish newspapers, Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet , authoritative sources of...

This article examines Anglo-American news media through a discourse-theoretical framework to study first, how celebrities are constituted as gendered humanitarian subjects acting on behalf of African problems, and second, how the concept of ‘Africa’ is produced, not only as a place, but also as a purpose in the world system. The debate surrounding...

This article is a feminist examination of gender and national memory at the Yasukuni Shrine. It argues that the spaces and practices of Yasukuni and the adjoining Yūshūkan War Memorial Museum idealize a militarized masculinity, which is constructed through enshrinement to produce nationalist bereavement and a celebration of sacrificial death for th...

Endast avhandlingens sammandrag. Pappersexemplaret av hela avhandlingen finns för läsesalsbruk i Statsvetenskapliga biblioteket (Unionsgatan 35). Dessa avhandlingar fjärrutlånas endast som microfiche. Abstract only. The paper copy of the whole thesis is available for reading room use at the Library of Social Sciences (Unioninkatu 35) . Microfiche c...

This thesis contributes to the development of poststructuralist feminist International Relations analyses about the US War on Terrorism. Gender is significantly involved in the justification and conduct of wars and militarism, established and supported by a particular hierarchal structure of masculinities and femininities. Hierarchal power relation...