Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890-1915, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011

摘要

The faltering fortunes of feminist architectural theory are notable in comparison to the longstanding and unbroken thread of the feminist architectural history project. History has provided a more durable home for architectural gender analysis. It was certainly a safer refuge during the late 1990s and early twenty-first century architectural theory wars. The rising visibility of feminist theory reminds us that visibility has an enduring political function in feminist theory and history writing. Women's subjection was partly founded on their invisibility in history, events and public life.~1 It becomes harder to have debates about feminist theory if it has a scant presence. Exposure is political and spatialised, and visibility is a material characteristic of the public realm. The city provides a concrete locus for public life and exchange. The public space of the city has been a contested site in struggles to confine women to interiors, particularly by sequestering them within the "private" domain of the home. Feminists describe this as the separate spheres model, one that places men in the city and women in the home. These twin spheres construct gender segregation and arguably disadvantage women.