Abstract

Building on Merleau-Ponty’s recognition of the mutually expressive relation between the body and the space it occupies, I borrow from queer and feminist phenomenologies to reflect on the spatiality of subjects constrained to heterosexuality – a constraint that functions as a common ground, always already present, of the kind that Merleau-Ponty argued was constitutive of subject/world relations. If it is the case, as many feminist theorists after Adrienne Rich argued, that the patriarchal norm orients us early on toward the opposite gender, then there is much to be learned from studying the notion of feminine space and the erasure of the subject in this space -an erasure that has been largely discussed within recent feminist phenomenological work, notably in relation to the contrasting extension of men in space –, particularly as both are established in relation to male desire. Our aim is to argue that because it is temporal, and because it involves sedimentation and habit, the study of this orientational constraint through the lens of Merleau-Ponty could allow us to open up the future of gendered norms, and, through this, of gendered practices of sharing space.