The Rules of Physical Spaces

I apologize for the lateness of this post.  I had intended to submit this before class, but now I am glad that I forgot because the discussion actually gave me more to think about and filled some of the holes within my understanding of the text. While discussing Roxanne Mountford's example of the pulpit as both a rhetorical and gendered space, the idea of rules implied by certain spaces was brought up in class.  The idea of children running up the steps of the pulpit was one such example of rules within certain spaces.  Likewise, the disconnect between the seriousness of the site of the World Trade Center and the lightheartedness of tourists taking pictures of themselves highlighted even further this idea of rules within certain spaces.

What I have begun to consider is the likelihood that the rules of rhetorical spaces are never really established until they are broken. Mountford discusses the pulpit as a particularly masculine space; however, I would argue that this was not the case until women started to take their own place in the pulpit.  In fact, I remember growing up around the debate concerning "women in the pulpit" (I used quotation marks because I remember hearing that exact phrase as a child--it was almost always accompanied with heads shaking in disapproval).  This was, of course, a regional debate rooted mainly in a local church which had recently hired a female pastor.  Likewise, I am reminded of the British television show, The Vicar of Dibley, in which a woman is assigned the role of vicar to a small village in England.  However, within both of these examples is the sense that, in taking their position in the pulpit, women are throwing off the larger ideas/institutions that the pulpits are associated with--the ideas and institutions which give the pulpit its rhetorical power.  Thus, the disjointedness of the feminizing of the pulpit lies within the larger power structure of Judeo-Christian beliefs.