Subcultures and domesticity

I thought there was an interesting overlap between the Acker, McRobbie and Fregoso articles, as domesticity figures centrally in all of their works. McRobbie offers a feminist re-appraisal of subcultural studies, noting the remarkable absence of attention paid to the gendered implications of what are usually masculinist, homosocially organized subculltures constituted by men: “If we look for the structured absences in this youth literature, it is the sphere of family and domestic life that is missing...few writers seemed interested in what happened when a mod went home after a weekend on speed. Only what happened on the streets mattered” (19). Here, McRobbie comments on the ways in which academic conceptualizations of subcultures -- though her grievance is with both male-centered theories and praxis “in the streets” -- are mapped spatially onto feminine domestic and masculine public spheres. I believe Kelly has already pointed to this in her post. In other words, while the boys were busy giving the finger to the pressures of entering a normative domestic life, women were there to provide feminine structures of support for the boys’ other life on the street; they were left to take care of the kids, make the food, endure the physical violence after a bad comedown, and were expected to be available for the occasional (or frequent) shag. And, as McRobbie notes, it is not only that the women weren’t allowed into these subcultures, but that “access to its thrills...would hardly be compensation” because the girl’s function is so deeply instantiated (I know I haven’t included all of the subtle class readings that McRobbie makes).

As for the Acker article, because it is an interview, it is not as coherently organized. To be sure, her comments on domesticity are tangential to her broader comments about a woman’s relationship to her own body’s sites of pleasure/pain/fantasy/play. But, perhaps this is why these moments struck me. When she challenges the misconception that women who want to be spanked position themselves submissively, she moves into an argument about suburban women who really “are” submissive: “Actually submissive women freak me out; I like women who know what they’re doing... I guess everybody makes a choice, somewhere down the line: that they’re going to abide by society’s rules and hide in their nice suburban house and do what they’re told... and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be ‘safe.’” To me, this seems uncharacteristically uncomplicated -- as are her comments about plastic surgery -- but perhaps signals a particular feminist discourse circulating at the time (1991). I mean what would Lynn Spigel say? Or maybe Spigel’s comments about post-War domesticity and post-Reagan domesticity would be different. I digress-- more importantly, Acker positions the woman contained in her suburban house as a foil for those women who are more polymorphous(ly perverse), adventurous, “true to themselves” and not to society’s norms. But, who’s to say that these women aren’t finding their own radical pleasures and getting kinky somewhere behind or on those well-manicured lawns when no one is looking? So, while Acker points in some way to the existence of sexual subcultures that are inclusive of women (orgies in her room, BDSM communities, etc.), she does so by re-inscribing the domestic as something separated from the vibrant worlds lived “in the streets.”

Fregoso’s comments about domesticity versus the streets perhaps offers the most textured account. She begins by re-constructing for us the image of the pachuco, whose immediate familiarity already offers evidence of her point. Chicano urban style has been representationally reserved for the province of men, in spite of the vast presence of women in the actual barrios. If anyone went to see the Cheech Marin collection at the LACMA this summer can attest to just how masculine and heterosexual Chicano art of the 1960s and 1970s was, though it was a really impressive show. Needless to say, the feminist absence in spite of its historical importance, with the exception of a few Diane Gamboa pieces, was striking. Fregoso, like McRobbie, critiques the gendered street/domestic divide, though she addresses it more specifically as it cuts across with race. The body of the pachuca, and the chola, ruptured these spatial divisions; she “refused to be confined by domesticity” (75). However, she returns to these "domestic refusals" in her analysis of Mi Vida Loca. One of her primary complaints with the film is its construction of the dysfunctional Latina family in spite of the crucial importance that the extended system of support that the family provides in the barrio.

I know this post was all over the place. I just really wanted to zone in on the trope of domesticity, because it offers such an interesting contrast to last week's conversations about domestic sitcoms.