Heteronormative Constructions of Romanianness: A Genealogy of Gendered Metaphors in Romanian Radical-Right Populism 2000–2009

The present article investigates the recent history of the Romanian national construct as a matrix for gendered metaphors at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as it is heralded by the main radical-right populist party the Greater Romania Party (Partidul România Mare, PRM). Focusing on the Greater Romania Magazine (Revista România Mare, RRM) – the party's main media outlet – the analysis is centered on the PRM leader's editorials during a well-defined timeframe in the recent history of Romanian radical-right populism, from the preparations for presidential elections in 2000, which witnessed Tudor's surprising runoff, through the subsequent presidential elections in 2004, and up to EU parliamentary elections in 2009, which enabled the PRM to send three representatives to the EU Parliament. The staunchly restrictive definition of the family, portrayed as the exclusive heteronormative domain of the Romanian male, has been developed in time with the help of the “nation is a family” and the “strict father” conceptual metaphors to proscribe the existence of family narratives including ethnically diverse or any sexually different Others. The article accounts for the discursive (re-)definitions of Romanianness enabled by conceptual metaphors so as to accommodate centrally located heterosexist masculinities, and underlines the need for further explorations of the radical-right populist narratives of national purity.