Heterotopia

The term heterotopia was first used in a social– theoretical context by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. It refers in one sense to a place that is socially different from the (implicitly normal) [Page 355]spaces surrounding it. However, the difference presented by heterotopia is not essential to that place. Instead, heterotopia is foremost an ambiguous, variable, and dynamic site that incites (re-)consideration and (re-)negotiation of sociospatial norms. The concept has therefore been deployed by critical theorists, architects, and geographers to interrogate the ways in which social norms and differences are built into particular places. Most important, the concept of heterotopia has been interpreted creatively to theorize new forms of thinking and living differently grounded in ordinary everyday spaces (rather than in utopian plans).

The variable usage of the term heterotopia should initially be considered with reference to Foucault's theoretical corpus. First, Foucault's direct treatment of heterotopia was inconsistent and unfinished, represented by merely one book chapter and a short lecture. The preliminary nature of Foucault's discussion means that its usage varies, as does the degree to which his original texts are read literally rather than metaphorically. Second, although Foucault's influence on geography and urban studies is widespread, his theoriza-tion of space remained underdeveloped. Hence, critics have warned against a literal and simplistic reading of heterotopias as physical, locatable sites (Foucault offers examples such as asylums and cemeteries), which can be compared with other “normal” sites. Third, in overcoming this danger, heterotopia can be more usefully aligned with Foucault's writings on power, difference, and discourse. Foucault was concerned with ways in which normative political power was exercised (and resisted) through small-scale social practices and structures. More complex deployments have thus asserted that heterotopia provides a space or rupture—conceptual–discursive as well as literal—that can unsettle expected conventions. Heterotopia provide(s) a methodological tool, therefore, to effect contestations of normative political power.

Since the 1990s, heterotopia has figured relatively prominently in Anglo-American urban studies. Conceptually, it has been related to contemporaneous writings on otherness and mar-ginality (e.g., those of Henri Lefebvre and the Situationists). Much empirical research on hetero-topia has aligned the concept with postmodern urbanism and in particular with the place-specific emergence of new spatial expressions of power in Los Angeles. Elsewhere, the concept has enabled sophisticated readings of the idealistic, aesthetic, and commercial imperatives that inform new urban developments as diverse as the Las Vegas Strip and gated communities in postapartheid South Africa. Finally, the term has been used to identify alternate and unpredictable forms of (largely urban) utopian experimentation that shed new light on the historical processes inherent to the emergence of modernity. Heterotopia remains contested—indeed, its boundaries with both nonheterotopian and utopian spaces are still blurry. Yet, this ambiguity is its greatest strength: the power of spatial practice and discourse to unsettle convention and to evoke alternative forms of living.