ABSTRACT
One consequence of 'politics of pregnability' that Robyn Longhurst explores is the occurrence of an, albeit temporary, 'shrinkage' in women's life-worlds. In this chapter, the author aims to take up the project initiated by Longhurst in relation to some of the agoraphobic boundary issues. It is important to re-emphasize certain aspects of the phenomenology of the panic attack and sufferers' subsequent agoraphobic anxiety. She seeks to elucidate and interpret the meaning of commonalties in pregnant and agoraphobic experiences, through a phenomenology of women's relations to social space. The fact that pregnant subjects seem suddenly to lose others' respect for their personal space also seems to be of more than passing relevance for agoraphobic women. Longhurst suggests that being pregnant may permit women to withdraw from public space in a manner that they may even find empowering. The nature and intensity of the gaze directed at pregnant women may prove to be a source of disturbing self-consciousness.
