Describing non-plan-based dwelling always requires imposing a plan upon it

Evidence

Second, my attempt to describe the kind of building that colonial villages and towns were to replace involves a particular difficulty: to describe a way of dwelling that did not reduce order to a question of the relationship between things and their plan, between the world and a map. Yet I will have to begin with a plan. The Kabyle house can be described as follows. It is rectangular in shape, and a double door gives access from the courtyard. Inside there is a low wall, dividing the interior into two parts. One part, slightly larger than the other and raised slightly higher, is reserved for human use. The fireplace is at its far end, and a weaving loom is assembled by the side wall opposite the doorway, the source of daylight; the other side wall, in which the door is set, is called the wall of darkness. The smaller, lower part of the house, occupied by the animals, has a loft above it where tools and animal fodder are stored, and where women and children usually sleep, especially in winter. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 172

Categorization

• XREF: The Kabyle house structure (light/dark, high/low, human/animal) anticipates Bourdieu’s own analysis of the house as orientation scheme; connects to this reader’s interest in domestic space and gender division.
• QUESTION: The ‘wall of darkness’ and its gendered associations warrant chasing - how does the darkness/light axis encode status hierarchy?