Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place

In a context in which women and racialized minorities are increasingly entering spaces in the public realm traditionally occupied by white men, Space Invaders provides a compelling critique of discourses that continue to reduce diversity and equality to the inclusion of ‘different’ bodies. Author Nirmal Puwar argues that the tendency to equate the inclusion of these bodies with social transformation presumes problematically that ‘women’ and ‘ethnic minorities’ are homogenous groupings ‘that can generate a mimetic politics from their shared experiences’ (p. 149). This dominant rhetoric also

fails to examine the wider institutional changes required to address the white, masculine ideal (masquerading as ‘universal’) which is now deeply embedded in the institutional practices of a host of professional and political spaces, from the art world, to academia, to parliament.