Another Bun in the Oven

Abstract

To ascertain what systems of rules structure social meaning, particular versions of reality, and processes of subjectivity formation, we need to be attentive to actions and representations that become normalized in specific social settings. In previous chapters I have discussed many of my research participants’ customary behaviors in Gilgit, as well as the discursive foundations and (often unintended) effects of those actions. So far I have concentrated almost exclusively on Western women’s public sphere activities—working, traveling, shopping, socializing—and their efforts to manage public space. I devote this final chapter to an analysis of how their subjectivities are forged through specific practices and representations within domestic space. However, I avoid reproducing a false dichotomy between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres. I do this by outlining how imperial, cultural, and racial power relations are constituted and perpetuated through domestic sphere activities, including Western women’s governance of their family members and Gilgiti servants, as Anne McClintock suggests in the quotation that opens this chapter.¹

The cultural history of imperialism cannot be understood without a theory of domestic space and gender power. (McClintock 1995, 33)