RECONSTRUCTING THE GENDERED SPACES USING PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY IN CHAN LING YAP’S SWEET OFFERINGS

Abstract

The persistent male ideological narratives attached to psychogeography and walking still take pivotal sides in various discussions. This essay uses the psychogeographical approach that focuses on gender and space to prove that this masculine idea has changed otherwise. What makes the fictional character’s movement aesthetically imperative in Chan Ling Yap’s Sweet Offerings is the relationship with the environment both in the private and public spaces, associating walking, seeing, and sensing with the spatial and temporal position of the narrative. The interaction between the fictional character with her geographical environment while commencing the movement reveals a conscious act that provides readers with a symbolic expression in this literary representation of the period in history. This study seeks to achieve two objectives. Firstly, to analyse the protagonist’s experiences in the private and public space that reveals issues or situations that disrupt the very concept of masculine and feminine subjectivity in the prescriptive social and spatial setting. Secondly, to expand the existing discussion that uses the contemporary approach of feminist psychogeography to understand the social and spatial experience that connect or disconnect women with a particular space. Implementing the mixed method derived from Harlow’s Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Bridger’s Feminist Psychogeographical Method, this paper uncovers that Yap has portrayed a fictional female character that can take the wanderer mode in the city. She transgresses the traditional constraints and expectations and becomes an independent woman who resists the gendered spatial division in her private and public domain.