Spaces of Change: Arab Women’s Reconfigurations of Selfhood through Heterotopias in Manal al-Sharif’s Daring to Drive

Stereotypically depicted as unresisting and passive victims of oppressive power,Saudi women are generally considered as unable to effect changes to the patriarchal sociopoliticalstatus quo. This article studies the Saudi woman life writer Manal al-Sharif’sDaring to Drive (2017) to demonstrate the various ways in which the subjugated womeninstigate social transformations by resisting against the prevailing male dominated system.To this end, Michel Foucault’s theories on “other spaces” are employed to examine thefunction of spatial modalities in the workings of the dynamics of power. It is argued thatthe portrayed female subjects re-construct, re-experience and re-utilise different spacesto re-invent new identities and galvanise alternative ways of life. The analysis revealsthat within the emancipatory space of the Internet, Saudi women produce heterotopias oftransgressions, resistance and utopianism to unsettle the prescribed boundaries of malefemalerelations, protest against the impositions of gender performance in public spheresand creatively re-imagine an alternative, desirable order of things. Hence, the study arrives at two conclusions: first, Saudi women’s individual urgency for self-transformation havegenerated major social changes and ideological reconfigurations, resulting in many of therecent democratic developments in the country; second, space is not merely a normalisedand rationalised construct, but can function as a normalising and transformative force atthe same time.