ABSTRACT
In these postmodern, post-positivist, self-reflexive times, when ideas about positionality, location, borders and margins are the hot words on the lips of every social and feminist theorist (Where is she coming from, man? as we used to say in the less gender-correct 1960s), it may seem curious to be writing about the need to spatialize feminism or feminist theory (there is also a larger doubt that perhaps comes with the terrain of geography-is this what we really do: ‘spatialize’ others’ theory-add that particular focus, that added extra, that turns something into geography? But let’s leave this disciplinary anxiety aside, at least for now). In contemporary theoretical debates this use of locational terminology is largely metaphorical, referring to the displacement of androcentric, ethnocentric ‘grand narratives’ from centre stage to the margins as the voices of those multiple Others, subjugated peoples of the Third’ World, women, people of colour, those peoples labelled as mad, bad and perverse reveal the particularity of the ‘universal’ claims of Western theorists. It is now widely argued that the location-the standpoint-of the theorist makes a difference to what is being claimed.
