BOOK PROPOSAL The proposed publication will look at the construction of domestic space through the act of cleaning. Following Dipesh Charkrabarty's text "Of Garbage, Modernity, and the Citizen's Gaze" in which the act of "taking out the trash," is what spatially demarcates the boundary between the private domestic space and the urban sphere. Whereas Charkrabarty's piece focuses on the effect of the trash's expulsion from the domestic space into the civic realm and implies a "selfishness" through the individual's prioritization of the domestic condition over the urban condition, this study will look at cleaning as an act of creating a spatial differentiation, which effectively separates the private from the public, the domestic from the urban and the individual from the collective. Dipesh Charkrabarty's is of interest because of its positing an act of occupancy that effectively separates creates an "architectural separation," so to speak. In an earlier essay "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Walter Benjamin described the construction of domestic space through the act of domesticating objects. Benjamin posits that it is through the bringing in and the displaying of objects and the act of "leaving traces" on the architecture both the domestic space and individual domestic subject are constructed. While Chakrabarty and Benjamin each point to two nearly opposite acts, that of bringing inside and that of taking outside and are conducting analyses of quite different contexts, both authors position the formation of the individual subject through individual, spatial practices that are related to but not entirely determined by the space defined by its associated architecture. Though Chakrabarty's piece focuses on post-‐occupancy cleaning, cleanliness, specifically in the form of hygiene, was a prevalent part of Functionalist architecture's discourse. Over the course of Functionalism development hygiene was understood variable as being related to the bringing of the outdoors inside, through the circulation of fresh air and natural light, alternatively as achieved through the implementation of Functionalist, white-‐washed aesthetics and occasionally understood as the creation of a space that is easily and efficiently cleaned. As such, more often than not, this form of architecture required cleaning, instead of itself being a cleaning agent. And while the prevailing discourse of Functionalism was that of an architecture that cleanses and purifies, the idea of the subject who cleans was somewhat suppressed. The proposed study considers this very subject and his or her practice of cleaning, through an understanding of cleaning as an act of creating spatial differentiation and a method by which space is demarcated. The study will narrate the history of domestic cleaning, as an agent which individualizes from the mass and in its related to the development of architecture and attempt to formulate the act of cleaning as a mode of spatial, self-‐ production. The analysis will conclude by reflecting on the potential of the practice of cleaning as entirely emancipated from any particular domestic architecture, as can be seen through a number of examples in contemporary art. While the book does not seek to make any normative declarations about domestic cleanliness or hygiene, it does seek to situate the practice of cleaning as an architectural consideration and as a self-‐initiated act through which the individual is related to the collective.
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