of large numbers of single mothers, we can
understand what it means to be inside and out-
side the ideology of gender. At these moments,
we may go from being ‘just’ an individual to rec-
ognizing ourselves as gendered subjects. To take
another example, if you are not heterosexual (and
maybe even if you are), the dominant representa-
tion of romance and family will at times irritate.
At some level, the very fact of being at odds with
culture is experienced like a visceral schism. In
this case, chances are that your subjectivity will
be keenly experienced as different from others.
There is no doubt that this moment of misrecog-
nition – when you do not feel hailed by dominant
ideologies – can be painful. But it is also crucial
to the production of another subjectivity, one that
may be in the ‘spaces-off’ of mainstream culture.
De Lauretis provides us with a critical frame-
work for thinking about subjectivities and space.
She is very clear that when she speaks of the
movement back and forth, she does ‘not mean a
movement from one space to another beyond it,
or outside’ (1988: 25). In other words, she does
not want us to think that there is ideology and
there is ‘reality’, as if the latter were not inextri-
cably caught with the former. Subjectivity is a
process that is continually in play with ‘reality’
and ‘ideology’, dominant representations and our
own self-representations. And as de Lauretis puts
it, we all live with, and indeed within, ‘the tension
of contradiction, multiplicity, and heteronomy’
(1988: 26).
Clearly then, subjectivity is not a given but
rather a process and a production. It is also unde-
niable that the sites and spaces of its production
are central. In other words, the space and place
we inhabit produce us. It follows too that how we
inhabit those spaces is an interactive affair. A
jointly authored article published a few years ago
argued that ‘space is gendered and that space
is sexed... The reverse has also been shown:
gender, sex and sexuality are all “spaced” ’ (Bell
et al., 1994: 31–2). Their article presents a com-
plex argument about sexual practices and space.
In turn, the journal which published it (Gender,
Place and Culture) asked several people to
respond, including myself. I won’t rehash my
argument more than I already have, but I want to
replay an example I used in order to extend the
idea about subjectivity and space as interactive.Consider this scene: your average type of pub some-
where (for some reason, a place in Kitislano, Vancouver
comes to mind), the men are propped up on the bar,
shoulder to shoulder, presenting a solid front of space
gendered as masculine; they are men’s men but cer-
tainly not gay. A single woman enters and she is
checked over, chatted up or ignored. And if that spacefeels stultifying, it is because she is walking into strata
upon discursive strata that produce masculine space as
the ground of differentiation and the grounds for their
appropriation of women as Woman (which is to say, a
man-made gender). (Probyn, 1994: 80)What I wanted to raise here were the ways in
which space presses against our bodies, and of
necessity touches at our subjectivities. One of the
important implications of thinking in terms of
subjectivity rather than identity is that even in
banal examples like this, the denseness, histori-
city and structural complexity become clear.
There are of course lots of spaces that seem to be
naturally masculine or feminine. For instance,
the kitchen is held to be the woman’s domain,
and in our daily lives we may often experience
this: from mothers cooking for families, to
parties where the girls gather in the kitchen to talk.
Historically, pubs have been designated as men’s
places. In western cultures until recently women
were excluded either by law or by custom from
entering the pub. In Quebec there are signs on the
doors of brasseries that state: ‘Women welcome.’
This is because by law they now have to let
women in. But it is a powerful reminder of how
recent that change is. In Australia, women did
not go to bars, and Aboriginal Australians were
prohibited until recently. Indeed there are stories
about how, during the Vietnam War, black
American soldiers were allowed into bars and
pubs, whilst Aboriginals were not allowed. The
idea that the pub is a male-gendered space is not
a myth but an actual historical construction.
So when I ask what happens when a woman
goes into a bar, it is clear that she must confront
at some level the fact that ‘she does not belong
here’. She will occupy that space quite differ-
ently from the men who are ‘propped up on the
bar’. She will be made to feel her gender subjec-
tivity, whereas men may be able to forget that
their subjectivities are also constructed through
the interpellation of gender. This is a small
example, but it may help us examine more
closely how as individuals we inhabit space, and
how space inhabits us.
In the example of the pub, I also wanted to
bring out the ways that sexuality is highlighted in
certain spaces. If the space of the pub is gendered
as masculine, in my example it was also struc-
tured by heterosexuality. We can again ask the
question of what happens when a woman goes
into a bar, and complicate it by adding the fact
that she is going to meet her girlfriend. In this
scenario, not only will the women feel their
gender, but they will also be made to feel their
difference: that they are not heterosexual. This
space reveals that parts of their subjectivities are294 PLACING SUBJECTIVITIES3029-ch14.qxd 03-10-02 10:54 AM Page 294