ABSTRACT
On September 20, 2001, George W. Bush announced the creation of the Office of Homeland Security, invoking intimate longings for a secure and familial polity in response to the trauma of 9/11. When criticized for not thanking Canada for crisis support in this speech, Bush responded, “I didn’t necessarily think it was important to praise a brother; after all, we’re talking about family.” Colin Powell, writing about U.S. foreign policy and multilateral relations, affirmed that the world need not become multipolar “because there need be no poles among a family of nations that shares basic values” (Powell 2004). Familial metaphors of nationhood have a long history, and the United States is certainly not the first to invoke the image of homeland. But historically, a familial imaginary has not been a prominent feature of U.S. nationalist discourse. Yet this framing has found meaning in the crisis of the contemporary War on Terror. Moreover, just as metaphors of family are more frequently being deployed in U.S. political discourse, public policy is also increasingly geared toward “marriage promotion” and “safe and stable families” and away from any form of social and sexual alternative. Since the initiation of the “War on Terror,” the private family stands at the center of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, with the “failure” of the family understood as a cause of suffering, misery, disease, and even terrorism, particularly in racialized communities across the nation and around the world.
