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2 The Panoptic Gaze: Female Body and Place

  • Irene Breuer

    Irene Breuer is presently an independent researcher. She was Professor for Architectural Design and Theory at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad de Belgrano (Argentina) and lecturer for Theoretical Philosophy and Phenomenology at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (BUW). She is presently working on the reception of the German Philosophical Anthropology and Phenomenology in Argentina with the support of the BUW. Her research focus is set on ancient philosophy, classical German and French phenomenology, aesthetics, architectural theory and design. She is the author of Ort, Raum, Unendlichkeit. Aristoteles und Husserl auf dem Weg zu einer lebensweltlichen Raumerfahrung (2020).
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Women and Their Body
Ein Kapitel aus dem Buch Women and Their Body

Abstract

This chapter deals with the role of gender in place and enquires into the ways in which the question of space and place is already inscribed into the question of sexuality. I claim that from antiquity to modern times, women have usually been the object of the other’s gaze, being thus reduced to an image. Architecture provided a frame for the feminine body, a body that ‘orchestrated’ the male gaze directed at it to produce the effect of interiority or containment, the ‘proper place’ of women. This strategy concealed the fact that it was this panoptic gaze which produced this space of women’s confinement, thereby instituting a masculine space of control and discipline. Contemporary tendencies in architecture break with this long-lasting tradition by both annuling impositions on gendered attributions of place and conceiving of a fluid and hierarchy-free space, thus allowing for the intertwinement of bodies and spaces as flesh.

Abstract

This chapter deals with the role of gender in place and enquires into the ways in which the question of space and place is already inscribed into the question of sexuality. I claim that from antiquity to modern times, women have usually been the object of the other’s gaze, being thus reduced to an image. Architecture provided a frame for the feminine body, a body that ‘orchestrated’ the male gaze directed at it to produce the effect of interiority or containment, the ‘proper place’ of women. This strategy concealed the fact that it was this panoptic gaze which produced this space of women’s confinement, thereby instituting a masculine space of control and discipline. Contemporary tendencies in architecture break with this long-lasting tradition by both annuling impositions on gendered attributions of place and conceiving of a fluid and hierarchy-free space, thus allowing for the intertwinement of bodies and spaces as flesh.

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter V
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. 1 Introduction Women and Their Body: Breaking the Silence 1
  5. Part I The Feminist Perspective
  6. 2 The Panoptic Gaze: Female Body and Place 19
  7. 3 The Female Body and Freedom: Conflict of Life or Colonial Dilemma in Marko Vovchok’s Narrations? 41
  8. 4 Relative (Non-)Existence of Female-Specific Neuropathology in Current Neuroimaging Research into Hysteria/Functional Neurological Disorders 53
  9. 5 Sexual Bodies: On Desire and Pleasure in Feminist and Thoughts 79
  10. 6 Beauty and the Duty to be Beautiful 95
  11. 7 Beauty Practices and Ukrainian Women Refugees in the Context of Russia-Ukraine War: Another Double Bind 109
  12. Part II The Feminist Ethics Perspective
  13. 8 Distractibility: Wandering Between Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen 129
  14. 9 On Being ‘Indisposed’ to Study and Work, or the Discourse of the Victorian Women’s Menstruation 147
  15. 10 Female Reproductive Bodies and the Shift from Risk to Threat Society: The (Mis)Use of the Powers of Pregnancy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Amy Ewing’s The Lone City-Series 163
  16. 11 Andrea Dworkin. Life, Death, War, and Virginity: A Radical Truth 179
  17. 12 Reproduction, Structural Injustice, and the Problem of Speaking for Others 197
  18. Part III The Phenomenological Perspective
  19. 13 Women, Bodies, and Experiences: Feminist Interventions in the Philosophy of the Body 213
  20. 14 Between Feminist Phenomenology and Socio-Structural Critique: The Hybrid Construction of Female Embodiment in the Early Theoretical Framework of Iris Marion Young as a Locus of Radical Interdisciplinarity 233
  21. 15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties 251
  22. 16 Mothers Matter: Discussing Motherhood in Gender Studies and Feminist New Materialisms 269
  23. Part IV The Alternative Femininities Perspective
  24. 17 The Female Body and Leontion: Why Were Epicurean Women Capable of Philosophy? 287
  25. 18 Do Women Think with Their Body? Descartes, Malebranche, Poulain de la Barre 303
  26. 19 Arca as Demiurge: Cyborg’s Body, Mutant’s Body 321
  27. 20 The Reinvention of the Human Body: Cyborgs, String Figures and New Boundaries 339
  28. List of Contributors 339
  29. List of names
  30. List of subjects
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111396934-003

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter V
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. 1 Introduction Women and Their Body: Breaking the Silence 1
  5. Part I The Feminist Perspective
  6. 2 The Panoptic Gaze: Female Body and Place 19
  7. 3 The Female Body and Freedom: Conflict of Life or Colonial Dilemma in Marko Vovchok’s Narrations? 41
  8. 4 Relative (Non-)Existence of Female-Specific Neuropathology in Current Neuroimaging Research into Hysteria/Functional Neurological Disorders 53
  9. 5 Sexual Bodies: On Desire and Pleasure in Feminist and Thoughts 79
  10. 6 Beauty and the Duty to be Beautiful 95
  11. 7 Beauty Practices and Ukrainian Women Refugees in the Context of Russia-Ukraine War: Another Double Bind 109
  12. Part II The Feminist Ethics Perspective
  13. 8 Distractibility: Wandering Between Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen 129
  14. 9 On Being ‘Indisposed’ to Study and Work, or the Discourse of the Victorian Women’s Menstruation 147
  15. 10 Female Reproductive Bodies and the Shift from Risk to Threat Society: The (Mis)Use of the Powers of Pregnancy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Amy Ewing’s The Lone City-Series 163
  16. 11 Andrea Dworkin. Life, Death, War, and Virginity: A Radical Truth 179
  17. 12 Reproduction, Structural Injustice, and the Problem of Speaking for Others 197
  18. Part III The Phenomenological Perspective
  19. 13 Women, Bodies, and Experiences: Feminist Interventions in the Philosophy of the Body 213
  20. 14 Between Feminist Phenomenology and Socio-Structural Critique: The Hybrid Construction of Female Embodiment in the Early Theoretical Framework of Iris Marion Young as a Locus of Radical Interdisciplinarity 233
  21. 15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties 251
  22. 16 Mothers Matter: Discussing Motherhood in Gender Studies and Feminist New Materialisms 269
  23. Part IV The Alternative Femininities Perspective
  24. 17 The Female Body and Leontion: Why Were Epicurean Women Capable of Philosophy? 287
  25. 18 Do Women Think with Their Body? Descartes, Malebranche, Poulain de la Barre 303
  26. 19 Arca as Demiurge: Cyborg’s Body, Mutant’s Body 321
  27. 20 The Reinvention of the Human Body: Cyborgs, String Figures and New Boundaries 339
  28. List of Contributors 339
  29. List of names
  30. List of subjects
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Heruntergeladen am 5.12.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111396934-003/html?lang=de
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