Michel Foucault: 'Of Other Spaces (Heterotopias)'

"Des Espaces Autres", a relatively unknown work by Foucault, has risen to promise recently in a variety of fields due to its wide-ranging and insightful content. Despite being the work in which Foucault gives a thorough account of his notion of heterotopias, which is unto itself a worthwhile concept, it is essentially an analysis of space in its general and subjective sense. I agree with most of what Foucault says about heterotopias, despite them being like my discussion of medium theory below; that is, a very broad category. However their usefulness and applicability in my opinion is more valuable as theoretical material (compared to medium theory). I will therefore go over the notion of heterotopias as outlined by Foucault and then tie it together with the preamble of the article which is a discussion of the concept of space.

So for Foucault a heterotopia is an 'other space'. He is conscious that the criteria he gives are not scientific, having a condescending view of the term. Regardless, it is equally well that he does not attempt a method labelled explicitly scientific. Moving on, a heterotopia is a space, both cultural and material which can be found physically yet not actually be there. It is an escape, an apparent attempt at utopia (which Foucault concedes is unreal and unrealizable) which excludes normal space. This normal space in my opinion can often be regarded as public space but it is also defined by its function of exclusion. This exclusion is not necessarily an exclusion of people but also of materiality, concepts, other functions of society and culture. He gives clearly his six principles of heterotopias: they are present in every culture; they can have one, multiple or changing functions; they can bring together several incompatible spaces or things; they are capable of juxtaposing time across space; they manifest a system of apertures that is both accessible and exclusive from other spaces; and lastly they are relational to all other spaces. Foucault gives numerous examples, the brothel, the boat, the garden, the cemetery, the honeymoon suite, etc. He also points to the mirror as being heterotopic and simultaneously the closest approximation of a utopia that can be found. This discussion of utopias is interesting and warrants a greater look since it ties in to some other discussions that have taken place during the course.

A utopia, a perfect world, is for me by definition impossible. Foucault is in agreement in that regard. In view of the various debates surrounding the concept of perfection, the notion that something can be perfect is difficult to conceive. In other analyses of space (specifically online space) postulations have been made that our tendency to 'enter' these virtual worlds is essentially an attempt to find a utopia; it is an escape from our physical reality. Examples such as World of Warcraft were given, however I think they equally apply to any fictional narrative such as novels, movies, in some manner the online experience itself. We are perhaps intrinsically dissatisfied with our present space (i.e. circumstances, life) so we search for a better one with the view of finding the perfect space (read utopia). Foucault's point then is that since we cannot find our own utopia these other spaces we escape to are heterotopias, always based on the six principles he elucidated. It is furthermore not simply a personal escape either. Foucault gives cultural escapes as well. Places that society as a whole uses as an exclusion so they must not be explicitly subject to it. Foucault gives the honeymoon, the brothel, as such places with a specific demarcation between public and private. Heterotopias however are not necessarily utopian in a strict sense, but reflect a utopia based on function. To be clear, I mean that the cemetery is not considered a utopia in that it is the perfect space. This would be the view of a specific subjective consciousness. I refer rather to the cemetery as an attempt at the perfect space for a specific function, in its proper case a space for the dead removed from the rest of society. In that way heterotopias are an attempt to reconcile the myriad views of perfection help by everyone by demarcating places that can be said are close to perfect for a specific purpose. Another example would be the brothel. Some would think that frequent and random sex would be part of their version of a utopia while others would not. In this way heterotopias offer a "perfect" space for one specific function. It is a slightly polemical digression with interesting consequences which I do not wish to go into here, but we can then see how if all heterotopias are a perfect place for a specific function then the totality of heterotopias would be a utopia consisting of perfection of all functions equally a totality of human existence, but I am departing the subject I wish to focus on.

Again however I believe this theory to have the fault of being too broad (to some extent, depending upon one's purpose). It can perhaps be argued that almost anything can be considered a heterotopia and if so what then are they and what can be the benefits of realizing they exist? I see this more as a possible critique, I do not myself hold it because I think their merit lies in their explanation of the human search of the utopian. That is to say, the theory explains a purely conceptual problem and was likely not intended as a major social change.

Foucault's preamble is a discussion of space so as to set the stage for heterotopias. However he also makes the odd remark that the 19th-century was mainly interested in history. We know Foucault had a great interest in history since childhood, but I think his rejection of his century (the 20th) as not interested in history and interested in space predominantly is a mistake derived from being present in one's own historicism and for that reason he did not see recent events as history. That being said I think humans will always have a keen interest in historical matters. However I digress.

Foucault describes space as relational, much like his notion of power. And as Kezia pointed out, heterotopias are not outside of power relations despite being removed from normal space. Now Foucault says that space has a history in Western thought, yet he only goes back as far as the Middle Ages. He cites religious places and spaces for the peasantry as formative of a hierarchy of spaces, yet I think it is equally plausible to take that as far back as antiquity and the Hellenistic period; but I may be focusing on the pedantic here. In the preamble we see Foucault's distinctly Kantian influence: the reduction of principles to a priori conceptions of space and time. Foucault dismisses time as passé, of another era (although I think this is pointedly a rebuke against the phenomenological emphasis of time over space) and focuses instead on space saying it is that which occupies humanity at present. Foucault differs from Kant on his conception of space itself though, saying here that "The site is defined by relations of proximity between points or elements...". This is in reference to Galileo's implications of space as infinite. Further he says that "we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things." (a reference to Kant's second argument for space as synthetic a priori in the Trasncendental Aesthetic in the Critique of Pure Reason) How Foucault differs from one of his greatest teachers however is whereas Kant had an absolute conception of space Foucault has a relational conception of space which permeates all his works. Kant held, like Newton, that space was an absolute thing (in-itself) and could exist without anything in it. Foucault believes space to be relational in that space is defined by the relations of the objects within it to each other and therefore any limits on space would be defined by these relations. We see this resurface in his formulation of heterotopias, specifically in the sixth principle. With this metaphysical system in mind it becomes clear what Foucault is looking to do. That being that because space is relational we can understand space based on the relations that compose it. By doing so we have a greater grasp of what space is and what characteristics it has. He then arrives at his notion of heterotopias, which is an analysis of these relations of spaces with each other and their following implications and characteristics.

We see then that this short article touches upon three different yet important points: the metaphysical conception of space; the status of utopias and their significance; and heterotopias as the human manifestation of a drive for utopia in a subconscious sense. All of this in view of the new, virtual space of the internet, unknown to Foucault. My question to my peers then, despite being the obvious one, requires an in-depth answer: Is the internet a heterotopia? It may equally be considered in aggregate with the parts having multiple relations and demarcations of spaces within the internet as a whole, but also while offline. I have provided several links to material I believe to be relevant or of interest: a discussion of Kant's transcendental aesthetic as espoused in the Critique of Pure Reason from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (another good synopsis and discussion of this subject is Bertrand Russell's chapter on Kant in his History of Western Philosophy); a link to the Stanford entry on Foucault; and lastly a link to a Google Image search of Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier's architectural drawings. This I included because the general consensus is that his drawings embody utopia, however as per this discussion, never realized it in application.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-spacetime/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&biw=1133&bih=604&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=le+corbusier+drawings&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=

Tim