Afterword

This book has examined the ways that white femininity, as an assemblage of power, is utilized in the production of a national modernity by using the case of Princess Diana. It has shown how transnational relations and contexts (even when they are not apparent) are always embedded in the processes through which white femininity and the nation articulate each other. It has also illustrated the complex and multifaceted role that white femininity (as a racial formation) plays in the management of contemporary liberal logics of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. The book concludes with a discussion of where white femininity is now—in these recession years—especially in the United Kingdom. It describes two salient operations of white womanhood in contemporary UK: white womanhood becomes a site through which economic austerity is glamorized and justified, and through that class and raced inequalities are obscured; and defiled white womanhood functions as a trope through which multiculturalism is being rendered a problem. The book ends by offering some thoughts on future directions for further work on white femininity and the nation.