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Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. 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 1966–1967. A lecture given by Foucault to a group of architects in 1967 is the most well-known explanation of the term. His first mention of the concept is in his preface to ''
The Order of Things ''The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences'' (Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines, 1966) by French philosopher Michel Foucault proposes that every historical period has underlying epistemic assumptions ...
'', and refers to texts rather than socio-cultural spaces.


Etymology

Heterotopia follows the template established by the notions of
utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island societ ...
and
dystopia A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493) ...
. The prefix hetero- is from Ancient Greek ἕτερος (héteros, "other, another, different") and is combined with the Greek morpheme τόπος ("place") and means "other place". A utopia is an idea or an image that is not real but represents a perfected version of society, such as Thomas More's book or
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
's drawings. As
Walter Russell Mead Walter Russell Mead (born June 12, 1952) is an American academic. He is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and taught American foreign policy at Yale University. He was also the editor-at-large of ...
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."


Heterotopia in Foucault

Foucault uses the term "heterotopia" (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 unreal virtual 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 absolutely real, 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: * A 'crisis heterotopia' is a separate space like a boarding school or a motel room where activities like coming of age or a honeymoon 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). * Heterotopia can be a single real place that juxtaposes several spaces. A garden can be a heterotopia, if it is a real space meant to be a microcosm of different environments, with plants from around the world. * 'Heterotopias of time' such as museums enclose in one place objects from all times and styles. They exist in time but also exist outside of time because they are built and preserved to be physically insusceptible to time's ravages. * 'Heterotopias of ritual or purification' are spaces that are isolated and penetrable yet not freely accessible like a public place. Either entry to the heterotopia is compulsory like in entering a prison, or entry requires special rituals or gestures, like in a
sauna A sauna (, ), or sudatory, is a small room or building designed as a place to experience dry or wet heat sessions, or an establishment with one or more of these facilities. The steam and high heat make the bathers perspire. A thermometer in a ...
or a
hammam A hammam ( ar, حمّام, translit=ḥammām, tr, hamam) or Turkish bath is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited f ...
. * Heterotopia has a function in relation to all of the remaining spaces. The two functions are: heterotopia of illusion creates a space of illusion that exposes every real space, and the heterotopia of compensation is to create a real space—a space that is other. Foucault's elaborations on heterotopias were published in an article entitled ''Des espaces autres'' (Of Other Spaces). The philosopher calls for a society with many heterotopias, not only as a space with several places of/for the affirmation of difference, but also as a means of escape from authoritarianism and repression, stating metaphorically that if we take the ship as the utmost heterotopia, a society without ships is inherently a repressive one.


Heterotopia in the work of other authors

Human geographers often connected to the
postmodernist Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
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 larger multicultural cities. The idea of ''place'' (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 of postmodern, post-structuralist theoretical discussion (and political practice) in Geography and other spatial social sciences. The concept of a heterotopia has also been discussed in relation to the space in which learning takes place. There is an extensive debate with theorists, such as
David Harvey David W. Harvey (born 31 October 1935) is a British-born Marxist economic geographer, podcaster and Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He received his Ph ...
, that remain focused on the matter of class domination as the central determinant of social heteronomy. The geographer
Edward Soja Edward William Soja (; 1940–2015) was a self-described urbanist, a noted postmodern political geographer and urban theorist on the planning faculty at UCLA, where he was Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of E ...
has worked with this concept in dialogue with the works of
Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of so ...
concerning urban space in the book ''Thirdspace''. Mary Franklin-Brown uses the concept of heterotopia in an epistemological context to examine the thirteenth century
encyclopedias An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into artic ...
of
Vincent of Beauvais Vincent of Beauvais ( la, Vincentius Bellovacensis or ''Vincentius Burgundus''; c. 1264) was a Dominican friar at the Cistercian monastery of Royaumont Abbey, France. He is known mostly for his '' Speculum Maius'' (''Great mirror''), a major ...
and
Ramon Llull Ramon Llull (; c. 1232 – c. 1315/16) was a philosopher, theologian, poet, missionary, and Christian apologist from the Kingdom of Majorca. He invented a philosophical system known as the ''Art'', conceived as a type of universal logic to pro ...
as conceptual spaces where many possible ways of knowing are brought together without attempting to reconcile them. New Media scholar Hye Jean Chung applies the concept of heterotopia to describe the multiple superimposed layers of spaciality and temporality observed in highly digitized audiovisual media. A heterotopic perception of digital media is, according to Chung, to grasp the globally dispersed labor structure of multinational capitalism that produces the audiovisual representations of various spacio-temporalities.


Heterotopia in literature

The concept of heterotopia has had a significant impact on literature, especially science fiction, fantasy and other speculative genres. Many readers consider the worlds of
China Miéville China Tom Miéville ( ; born 6 September 1972) is a British speculative fiction writer and literary critic. He often describes his work as ''weird fiction'' and is allied to the loosely associated movement of writers called '' New Weird''. Mi ...
and other
weird fiction Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horr ...
writers to be heterotopias insofar as they are worlds of radical difference transparent to, or of indifference to, their inhabitants. Samuel Delany's 1976 novel '' Trouble on Triton'' is subtitled ''An Ambiguous Heterotopia'' and was written partly in dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction novel ''
The Dispossessed ''The Dispossessed'' (in later printings titled ''The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia'') is a 1974 anarchist utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, one of her seven Hainish Cycle novels. It is one of a small number ...
'', which is subtitled ''An Ambiguous Utopia''.


References


Further reading

* * * {{Michel Foucault Postmodernism Queer theory Human geography Michel Foucault Utopian theory