Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopherMichel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow "other": disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are "worlds within worlds": both similar to their surroundings, and contrasting with or upsetting them. Foucault provides examples: ships, cemeteries, bars, brothels, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs, Muslim baths and many more. Foucault outlines the notion of heterotopia on three occasions between 1966 and 1967. A lecture given by Foucault to a group of architects in 1967 is the most well-known explanation of the term.[1] His first mention of the concept is in his preface toThe Order of Things, and refers to texts rather than socio-cultural spaces.[2]
Heterotopia follows the template established by the notions ofutopia anddystopia. The prefix hetero- is from Ancient Greek ἕτερος (héteros, "other, another, different") and is combined with the Greek morpheme τόπος (topos) and means "place". A utopia is an idea or an image that is not real but represents a perfected version of society, such asThomas More's book orLe Corbusier's drawings. AsWalter Russell Mead has written, "Utopia is a place where everything is good; dystopia is a place where everything is bad; heterotopia is where things are different — that is, a collection whose members have few or no intelligible connections with one another."[3]
Foucault uses the termheterotopia (French:hétérotopie) to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye. In general, a heterotopia is a physical representation or approximation of a utopia, or a parallel space (such as a prison) that contains undesirable bodies to make a real utopian space possible.
Foucault explains the link between utopias and heterotopias using the example of a mirror. A mirror is a utopia because the image reflected is a "placeless place", an unrealvirtual place that allows one to see one's own visibility. However, the mirror is also a heterotopia, in that it is a real object. The heterotopia of the mirror is at once absolutelyreal, relating with the real space surrounding it, and absolutely unreal, creating a virtual image.
Foucault articulates several possible types of heterotopia or spaces that exhibit dual meanings:
Acrisis heterotopia is a separate space like a boarding school or a motel room where activities likecoming of age or ahoneymoon take place out of sight. Foucault describes the crisis heterotopia as "reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis". He also points that crisis heterotopias are constantly disappearing from society and being replaced by the following heterotopia of deviation.
Heterotopias of deviation are institutions where we place individuals whose behavior is outside the norm (hospitals,asylums, prisons,rest homes).
A heterotopia can be a single real place that juxtaposes several spaces. Agarden can be a heterotopia, if it is a real space meant to be amicrocosm of various environments, with plants from around the world. Similarly,theaters andcinemas are heterotopias where multiple incompatible spaces converge on a single stage or screen, bringing together different places, times, and realities in one location.
Heterotopias of time orheterochronies, such asmuseums andlibraries, enclose objects from all eras and styles within a single place. They exist in time, but also exist outside of time, because they are built and preserved in such a way to be physically impervious to the ravages of time. Some heterotopias, on the other hand, are more transient and fleeting, such asfestivals andamusement parks, which exist only for a limited period and offer a temporary experience outside of daily routine.
Heterotopias of ritual or purification are spaces that are isolated and penetrable, yet not as freely accessible as a public place. Either entry to the heterotopia is compulsory, as withimprisonment, or entry requires specialrituals orgestures, like in asauna or ahammam.
Heterotopia has a function in relation to all of the remaining spaces. The two functions are: theheterotopia of illusion, which creates a space ofillusion that exposes every real space; and theheterotopia of compensation, which creates a real space—a space that is other.
Foucault's elaborations on heterotopias were published in an article entitledDes espaces autres (Of Other Spaces). In the article, Foucault calls for a society with many heterotopias, not only as a space with several places of or for the affirmation of difference, but also as a means of escape fromauthoritarianism andrepression, stating metaphorically that if people take the ship as the utmost heterotopia, then a society without ships is inherently a repressive one.[4]
Human geographers often connected to thepostmodernist school have been using the term – and the author's propositions – to help understand the contemporary emergence of (cultural, social, political, economic) difference and identity as a central issue in largermulticultural cities. The idea ofplace (more often related to ethnicity and gender and less often to the social class issue) as a heterotopic entity has been gaining attention in the current context ofpostmodern,post-structuralist theoretical discussion (and political practice) in geography and other spatialsocial sciences. The concept of a heterotopia has also been discussed in relation to spaces in which learning takes place, such as institutes oftertiary education.[5] There is an extensive debate with theorists, such asDavid Harvey, who remain focused on the matter of class domination as the central determinant of social heteronomy.
The late geographerEdward Soja worked with this concept in dialogue with the works ofHenri Lefebvre concerning urban space in the bookThirdspace.[6]
Mary Franklin-Brown uses the concept of heterotopia in an epistemological context to examine the thirteenth centuryencyclopedias ofVincent of Beauvais andRamon Llull as conceptual spaces where many possible ways of knowing are brought together without attempting to reconcile them.[7]
New media scholar Hye Jean Chung applies the concept of heterotopia to describe the multiple superimposed layers of spatiality and temporality observed in highly digitized audiovisual media. According to Chung, a heterotopic perception ofdigital media is to grasp the globally dispersed labor structure of multinationalcapitalism that produces the audiovisual representations of various spacio-temporalities.[8]
^Foucault, Michel (1971).The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books.ISBN978-0-679-75335-3.
^Mead, Walter Russell (Winter 1995–1996). "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles: The End of the Postmodern Moment".World Policy Journal.12 (4):13–31.JSTOR40209444.
^Foucault, Michel (October 1984). "Des Espace Autres".Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité.5:46–49.; it has been translated into English twice, first asFoucault, Michel (Spring 1986). "Of Other Spaces".Diacritics.16 (1). trans. Jay Miskowiec:22–27.doi:10.2307/464648.JSTOR464648. available online atfoucault.info (accessed 10 August 2014); and second asFoucault, Michel (1998). "Different Spaces". In Faubion, James D. (ed.).Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, Volume 2. trans. Robert Hurley. New York: The New Press. pp. 175–185.ISBN978-1565843295.; ambiguities of the two translations are discussed inJohnson, Peter (November 2006). "Unravelling Foucault's 'Different Spaces'".History of the Human Sciences.19 (4):75–90.doi:10.1177/0952695106069669.S2CID146192540..
^Soja, Edward (1996).Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.ISBN978-1-55786-675-2.
^Franklin-Brown, Mary (2012).Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age. Chicago, Ill.: University Of Chicago Press.ISBN978-0-226-26068-6.
^Chung, Hye Jean.Media Heterotopias: Digital Effects and Material Labor in Global Film Production, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018, pp. 17–37
^Gordon, Joan (November 2003). "Hybridity, Heterotopia, and Mateship in China Miéville'sPerdido Street Station".Science Fiction Studies.30 (3):456–476.JSTOR4241204.
^Chan, Edward K. (Summer 2001). "(Vulgar) Identity Politics in Outer Space: Delany'sTriton and the Heterotopian Narrative".Journal of Narrative Theory.31 (2):180–213.doi:10.1353/jnt.2011.0082.JSTOR30225762.S2CID162231951.
Dehaene, Michiel; De Cauter, Lieven, eds. (2008).Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society. New York: Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-42288-8.
Kharlamov, Nikita A. (2014). "Heterotopia, Overview". In Teo, Thomas (ed.).Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. New York, NY: Springer. pp. 860–866.doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_584.
