The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part I: Filters
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Jane Rendell
In my pursuit of historical knowledge, in my search to understand
architecture and gender, I desired the city. In my attempts to know, to reunite,
with nineteenth-century London, I entered poignant forms of exchange—through
reading (and rereading). Two pieces of writing seduced
me, one theoretical and poetic, the other a bawdy urban narrative. These
were sites of methodological struggle—places where difficult questions of
spatial and historical knowledge were raised but also where I was offered
tantalizing and “knowing” glimpses of the relation between my desirous
self and the city, the object of my desire. “When desire takes over, the body
gets the upper hand. In our intense contemplation of the beloved—as if to
discover the secret of that which binds and confuses—we are looking for our
past. We reunite with something that seemed lost but now appears in a new
and even more attractive light.” 14
THE EXCHANGE OF WOMEN: WOMEN ON THE MARKET
The “exchange of women” is a powerful
and seductive concept. It is attractive in
that it places the oppression of women
within social systems, rather than in biology.
Moreover, it suggests that we look for the
ultimate locus of women’s oppression within
the traffic in women, rather than within
the traffic in merchandise. 15
As I read Luce Irigaray’s “Women on the Market” for the first time, I was
overawed. This woman was able to express, critically and poetically, the political
anger I felt about women’s oppression. 16 Her writing fired me; it
served as a political manifesto, and as a source of creative inspiration. I read
it in the park, on the bus, in bed. The more I read Irigaray, the more I felt I
knew about the way in which space was gendered in nineteenth-century
London. Yet I had not looked at a single piece of primary evidence. I had not
entered the British Library nor even contemplated visiting archives. I was
uttering profanities in the sacred space of historical knowledge.
She may go anywhere and everywhere, gaining entrance wherever
she chooses; she sails through walls as easily as through tree-trunks
or the piers of bridges. No material is an obstacle for her, neither
stones, nor iron, nor wood, nor steel can impede her progress or
hold back her step. For her, all matter has the fluidity of water. 17