Subdividing Inside Spaces: An Analysis - Essay Example

Subdividing Inside Spaces: An Analysis According to Michael McKeon (2006) in his Subdividing inside Spaces, the separation of the household from thebusiness enterprise has had a significant impact in the emergence of the capitalism and of the modern culture in general. He demonstrated this in his analysis of paintings, relevant literature, architectural layouts of building structures and the examination of the European royal households, among others. McKeon’s claim was that the public sphere is not a bourgeois form but a seventeenth-century development of the transition from rank to class future that generated the public sphere in the sense that there was already, by then, a public sphere of general belonging in the minds of citizens. I believe that this argument, while valid, is too ambitious and does away with the other important variables that have contributed to the separation of private and public domains. My thesis is that the mindset of citizens, as manifested in the evolution of the household from a unified private and public sphere to a divided space, has been influenced by various socio-cultural factors. These factors were the ones that were able to simultaneously change the perspective of the people, allowing for a mass transition in household spaces ushering a new modern era. The evolution of modern culture, as McKeon put it (P414-424), started with the way domestic spaces were divided between the man of the household’s workplace and the women’s area wherein she conducts her household work. The division of the household into spaces was supposedly responsible for increasing division between private and public that were previously mixed together in one single place. McKeon seems to be taking the wrong perspective here. The division of domestic spaces is an inevitable developed as life became more complicated. It is common sense: as men take in more work in a society driven by a bustling mercantile economy, he requires more space for his work. This is also the same for women as their role expanded. The Royal Household was directly cited by McKeon as an example of private spaces influencing the emergence of public spaces, including the line that draw these two apart from each other. According to him, “the openness of the great household went hand in hand with the ritualized expression of hierarchy, deference, and social place, which required a system of distinctions between spaces and marked differences in status that were also permeable to the basic principle of social totality” (p. 407). McKeon’s argument is weak in this regard. It is not plausible for people to decide on their own to change their living spaces at the same moment. There must have been variables that triggered or shaped such collective action. For one, it is wrong for McKeon to simply write off the role that the bourgeoisie society, culture and the monarchy played in the transformation. In his example of the Royal household, for instance, we can see a trendsetter at work – the way private household is built, organized and managed are emulated by the nobles, who in turn are emulated by the commoners. Then, we have the evolution of gender roles, which, unfortunately, was wrongfully interpreted because it is an entirely socio-cultural phenomenon and not simply an offshoot of structural evolution of the domicile. In McKeon’s argument, the division of the inner spaces of the household is prophetic of the interchanging roles for men and women through the years. Indeed, the inner spaces and their divisions (Comments: grammar.)demonstrated the increasing changes in the way men and women do the work. For example, while the traditional place for women in medieval Europe is within the confines of the private space, this has been gradually taken over by men as well and vice versa. What this tells us is that a transformation is taking place not exclusively within the confines of the household alone. Change is happening outside. Whatever development that occurred inside the house was just a reflection of the movements and trends permeating the society it is in. People were acquiring a particular mindset just as much as how people had during cultural and philosophical movements such as the Enlightenment and the Age of Rationalism. Arguing that the achievement of social awareness is due to how household spaces are subdivided is a wrong point of view to take. Instead, it would have been better to say that the manner by which inner spaces evolved from a unified space to a divided sphere is a manifestation of a socio-cultural movement. (Comments: It’s just like the same problem as before, the transition not clear, show it to us .) Comment: Can you please tell your professor that from here on goes the conclusion part so it does not necessarily require a transition from the previous paragraph. This is like a summary of the points made by the paper and the final argument in connection with the thesis. What McKeon’s arguments tell us is that the division of inner spaces contributed to the development of our age. How the inner spaces were divided through the years tells us that it may be considered as a conduit, a micro representation of the dynamics of a rapidly changing world and human culture. However, it cannot lay an exclusive claim to being the sole source of much of the systematic structures and procedures behind science, engineering, and the concepts of modern public and private dwellings and structures. What is important here is that McKeon was able to present a pattern – a systematic evolution of the inner spaces that reflects or is congruent with the evolution of a specific period in our history. How women penetrated men’s world and vice versa is not due to how their household spaces were divided because it was a socio-cultural and political phenomenon. In his analysis of numerous sources, it was demonstrated that the traditional role of women within the period of the study is relegated to tending the house and all the domestic chores while the men tend to their work. The inner spaces – their makeup and how they were laid out - served as a clear line that determines what role a man must play and what should be the woman’s back in the medieval era. However, in the latter part of the piece, McKeon made it clear that changes did emerge in regard to the division of spaces and roles. He stressed that as year passed; there came an interchangeable of the male and female roles – an element that characterize the modem conception of gender roles. For example, there was this account that women used be the midwives and rule over the inner sanctum during the birth of a child. However, later on, men started to become midwives as well. Clearly, this is not the work of subdividing household spaces. With this example, McKeon had actually demonstrated that the evolution of inner spaces is influenced by socio-cultural factors that permeated the period and, therefore, did not occur on its own, independent of any external influences. It disputed his claim that the evolution of inner spaces is the originator of modernity. The emerging equality in gender roles is a consequence of a number of historical movements particularly those in line with liberalism and the weakening of traditional and religious authority. McKeon’s work has been especially helpful in understanding the public spheres – how and why they were built or developed. Particularly, the concepts of what is private and what constitutes public life have also been addressed by the author’s discourse on the subject. However, the evolution of “inner-space” as presented by McKeon cannot cover and answer the entire issues tagged to how modernity came to be. It presents a refreshing, and therefore, interesting insight to explore in regard to explaining the emergence of modernity, but I believe I have established that the subdivision of inner spaces is a mere factor that characterized the dynamics of a social transformation and not the progenitor of modernity. References David B; Anthony P, Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. B/ST.M Press. (McKeon, M) Read More