experiencing space beyond place

last week i decided to forfeit the chapter on 'space', leaving me with only 2 chapters to draft. the next one is 'experience'. but yesterday i returned to certeau's the practice of everyday life, and plans changed again. 'experience' will now be about space. young people's experience of sex/health will be the starting point - that which is problematised at angles of too much experience (without knowledge) or lack of experience - both of which constitute risk. yet, how are experiences discursively produced? i suspect that sex often features across the data as a uniform practice. sex is sex - its function and actors are the same, transportable to any given sexual occasion. yet interview data suggest otherwise. sex experiences always differ, which relates to the various spaces in which they unfold.

as certeau highlights, the map is different from the itinerary. the bearings of a sexual encounter rarely differ in the discourse - the map is a diagram of bodies sexually connected. yet the itinerary, the ways in which this sexual 'place' is experienced alter, elaborate, or stray from the map.

this is about moving from place (lieu) to space (espace). the place is the proper law of a location, the space involves the mechanics of practice. the space is unstable, and scripted through the experience had. therefore, the guide/map of sex outlined in a website cannot be the same as the sex had, which is spacially constructed through its enactment. sex had in a bedroom, in a relationship, in a park, in a one-night-stand, in a bout of depression, in a group of friends etc, are different elaborations of sex. these spaces are not pre-determined by the map. and hence, the map that plots points of safety does not translate to the journey had.

and so i still get to write about space. which is nice.