Utopías de la vida privada

The article looks at the history of the construction of «private life» since the sixteenth century in order to demonstrate that this sphere is linked, on the one hand, to the difference between men and women, i.e. the construction of sex and gender, and, on the other, h to the residential and urban spaces familiar to Western readers. This historical overview enables us to observe how sexual identity and the creation of «privacy» are both essential to the triumph of moral notions, ideas about the «good life» and the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. It also shows that this culture is in decline, although we do not have sufficient information to analyze what kind of culture is replacing it, or the effects of this replacement on everyday and collective life. With the triumph of the private sphere over the public, both the idea of intimacy and the idea of politics paradoxically disappear. With their disappearance, urban differentiation ends, and perhaps the difference between men and women becomes irrelevant as it is superceded by other spaces and other identities.