FEMINIST SPATIAL POLITICS

By: Sarah Brown

Abstract:Ìý

In Feminist Spatial Politics, I offer an explicitly spatial analysis of feminist activism that contests material spaces–buildings, infrastructures, and city layouts– to theorize an answer to a deceptively straightforward question: Why should feminists think politically about material spaces? Framing freedom, feminism, and material spaces as dynamic processes that are intertwined with one another, I contend that a spatially-oriented feminist politics can facilitate the exercise of political freedom and renew feminist visions. I argue, first, that material spaces should be intentional subjects of feminist activism. Feminists have documented the ways in which buildings and infrastructure constrain women’s participation in social and political life, circumscribe their movements, limit their sense of agency, or otherwise uphold sexist oppression. I reveal that when feminist activists contest these spaces, they reconfigure them from oppressive structures to feminist tools, means through which feminists can advocate for social and political change. Second, I contend that a spatially-oriented feminist politics expresses and extends feminist freedom–the ongoing political practice to end sexist oppression through envisioning new social and political worlds and speaking and acting with others to work toward those visions. Spatial contestation develops the political capacities and skills necessary for the exercise of feminist freedom. I develop this argument through an analysis of select case studies representative of four modes of feminist spatial contestation: the Women’s Social and Political Union’s destruction of patriarchal spaces, debates about infrastructure reform such as women’s-only transportation, the political placemaking of a group of marginally-housed Black mothers, and feminist institution building. Through each case, I show that feminists exercise judgments about gendered spaces and feminist tactics, dialogue through disagreements, and act on feminist spatial visions, ultimately opening new avenues for political action and inspiring imaginative feminist visions for our future world. This dissertation provides a necessary intervention in feminist literature that conceives of spaces largely as oppressive structures that contribute to women’s unfreedom. Reorienting feminist thinking about spaces toward freedom, I argue that feminists should think politically about material spaces not because they have constrained us in the past, but because a spatially-oriented feminist politics can open new possibilities for feminist futures.