Reading the Gendered Order of Labor in Space

Karl Schlögel coined the phrase “In space we read time.”¹ It captures a simple insight: History does not unfold in abstraction but takes place in space. Spaces, in turn, are produced through historical processes and shaped by the lives and labor of those who inhabit them. History therefore always has a spatial dimension. Schlögel accordingly understands historiography as a form of spatial inquiry. It does not confine itself to written records but also reads the built environment—with its materialities, aesthetics, and atmospheres—as a field of historical experience and interpretation.