Constructing Saudi Arabian Nationhood : Shaping Subjectivities Through Suitable Pasts, Imagined Futures and National Femininities

This thesis presents an ethnographic and discourse analytical approach to the construction of Saudi Arabian nationhood in the post-2016 era following the inception of the national, neoliberal economic reform plan Vision 2030. The analysis examines a dual dataset consisting of ethnographic data as well as textual and visual sources produced for the most part in the context of Saudi Arabia’s National Day and Founding Day celebrations. The framework of analysis draws on social constructivist theories of nationalism as well as Marxist approaches to political economy. The work focuses on the interlinkages of contemporary Saudi nationalism, capitalist political economy and the creation of neoliberal-national subjectivities by examining three core research questions. (1) How are national futures envisioned and pasts remembered in the context of state and elite production of nationalism? (2) How are certain femininities produced as national and what are the qualities that make up national femininities in state and elite discourse? (3) How do national celebrations participate in constructing Saudi Arabian nationhood and what are some popular responses to or understandings of nationalism in their context? The analysis shows how the neoliberal economic reform plan Vision 2030 constructs national, neoliberal subjects by projecting the image of a self-governing, economic and youthful Saudi citizen. Vision 2030 also emerges as an economic imaginary of a future techno-utopian Saudi Arabia, where the “giga projects” undertaken under Vision 2030 have been realized through the ambition-turned-labor of ideal citizens. Meanwhile, Founding Day surfaces as an invented tradition seeking to establish continuity with an “authentic” and suitable Saudi Arabian past at a time when the kingdom is in the midst of a period of economic and social change. The production of national subjects also occurs along gendered lines by producing neoliberal-national femininities: women occupy a dual role as both carriers of tradition and symbols of the nation and its modernity. Also popular Founding Day celebrations surface as practices that contribute to shaping subjectivities through the creation of embodied experiences of the nation along with visualizing its glorified past and utopian future. Participants in such events also participate in this subject formation by deciding whether to take part in celebrations and, if so, how