Political and semantic shifts in notions of public space: a feminist refl exion

Abstract

In the late 1970s the idea of sexual difference undergoes a “Copernican” revolution thanks to the feminist movement. This revolution is both political and semantic. The first shift in space and time takes literally place from the space where the group of self-conscience develops: the house. The private house becomes a public space where an unexpected subject is shaped, the feminist one. The guiding words of this revolution are sexuality and liberation. Similarly, the bipolar terms of oppression and emancipation are shaken by the irruption of the female researcher’s subjectivity and by the women which are sought through History. Finally, this trajectory along several shifts in space and time reaches the key question: female citizenship. If full membership of the polis requires individuality, how can the “di-vidual” female body be inscribed on it?