Socialist and post-socialist art and film along with interviews function in ways analogous to ethnographic accounts that, rather than lingering on the overarching project of socialism, bring to the fore the subject who experienced these transformations concretely (see also Humphrey 2005). Here, the notion of the appropriation of space refers to the inhabitation and transformation of domestic space through various practices that were not compliant with the ideological intent embedded in the infrastructure. Through an analysis of state policies regulating both the body and home on the one hand, and of modes of appropriation by these spaces’ inhabitants on the other, the article emphasises the nuanced practices that shaped women’s ambiguous identity within state socialism in Romania. While studies of the role of infrastructure in shaping not only social relations but also subjectivities in socialist contexts are not new ( Buchli 1999 Humphrey 2005 Holbraad 2018), my focus is different: I consider the intersection between the spatialisation of power, especially through mass housing built in Bucharest between 19, and the politics of reproduction. In response to this question, my article investigates two different scales of socialist domesticity - the city and the home - in order to map the instrumental role of the home in the constitution of women’s subjectivity. This image provides a critical point of departure for this enquiry, as it brings to light the question of scale in the socialist project.
Puia Hortensia Masichievici, New Housing Blocks. The image thus evokes the encounter between women, domestic architecture, and the socialist state and emphasises the transition to a much larger scale that encompasses both a mass subject and domestic architecture. The curtain, plant, and closed window suggest her care for her home, while her elevated perspective reminds us that she occupies a high-rise, having already appropriated the new way of life. But crucially, the socialist transformation is portrayed through a transition in scale: from inside to outside, from the domestic space of the home to mass urbanism. The woman, whose face we cannot see, seems to represent a collective ideal: the strong arms, short hair with no headscarf, and modern clothes all reveal her to be the new woman who can appropriate the new type of modern domesticity. She is depicted alone, within a rich interior. 1) shows a woman contemplating the city from the window of her socialist home.
Puia Hortensia Masichievici’s etching New Housing Blocks of 1959 ( Fig.
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