Dd201 Tma1

Outline and analyse Rita Felski’s argument in ‘the invention of everyday life’.
I will outline Rita Felski’s argument in the invention of everyday life and also discuss how her argument agrees and disagrees with other sociologist such as Lefebvre.
Rita Felski’s argument in the invention of everyday life is about the cyclical and linear structure of everyday life, and also how women are associated with repetition and spatial dimensions of everyday life. Everyday life is based on cyclical repetition, which is events that occur in a particular order, which are often repeated, such as eating at regular meal times, working the same shift pattern, and going to bed at the same time. This can also occur on a larger scale, such as having an annual holiday or the weekends which is repeated at expected intervals.
At the beginning of Felski’s essay stands Lefebvre’s fascination with repetition as the typical feature of everyday life, in opposition to the contemporary drive towards progress and accumulation. In Lefebvre’s view repetition is a contradiction to the self-understanding of modernity as a permanent progress and an obstruction to it., basically Lefebvre favours linear, forward moving, abstract time of modern society as opposed to the natural rhythms of everyday life. Felski linked the linear and cyclical structure more to historical gender coding. Felski argued that masculinity stands for models of transformation, e.g. natural changes and development over time and femininity stands for repetition and cyclical time, e.g. reoccurring daily things that are ordinary and in no way unique. Felski’s view of why women are associated with reoccurrences differs from other writers like Simon de Bauvoir who claims that women are doomed to enslavement (1988, p.610). Felski’s view is more along the same lines as Lefebvre who see’s women as embodied subjects and closer to nature due to their bio-rhythmical cycles such as menstruation and pregnancy and The fact that women are...