Heterotopia (humanities)

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Heterotopia (from Greek hetero (different) and topos (place)) is a term used by Michel Foucault in an early phase (1967) of his philosophy for a short time for spaces or places and their systematic meaning that the norms given at a time only have partially or not fully implemented or that function according to their own rules. Foucault assumes that there are spaces that reflect social conditions in a special way by representing, negating or reversing them.

Heterotopias are “real places, effective places that are drawn into the establishment of society, so to speak opposing placements or abutments, actually realized utopias in which the real places within culture are represented, contested and turned at the same time, places outside of all places, as it were they can actually be located. "

In addition, what all heterotopias have in common is that their respective social significance is not static, but can change over the course of their existence. Investigating the change in meaning of a heterotopia therefore means proceeding discourse-analytically and understanding the heterotopia against the background of social change.

Examples of heterotopias

Foucault cites youth , retirement and rest homes , psychiatric clinics , prisons , the colleges of the 19th century, barracks , cemeteries , cinemas and theaters , gardens , museums , libraries , festival grounds , holiday villages, cultic and non-cultic cleaning facilities as examples of heterotopias , Guest houses, brothels , colonies and the ship as a heterotopia par excellence. Mirrors have an interesting function, they are neither utopia nor heterotopia, but something in between.

meaning

Foucault takes a closer look at institutional places that are subject to certain rules and whose “participants” are subject to strict control. They are places where behavior deviating from the prevailing norm is ritualized and localized. They are on the margins of society, "on the empty beaches that surround them."

Foucault also describes this form of heterotopias as crisis heterotopias or - in our modern societies - as deviation heterotopias . He considers them to be fundamental for every society, since they structure, order and control their members by punishing or segregating deviants, thus guaranteeing the continued existence of the respective society. The best-known heterotopias of deviation treated by Foucault are, for example, psychiatry and prison.

On the other hand, through their otherness, other heterotopias offer the possibility of reflecting on and problematizing given norms and of contradicting them.

properties

Spatial structure

Heterotopias also differ from other spaces in their structure . In this way, they are able to unite several rooms in a single place and relate them to one another that are actually incompatible. This is the case, for example, with the traditional Persian garden, which symbolically depicts and connects the whole world as its own microcosm, or with the cinema, which is the audience hall and window to other worlds at the same time.

Temporal structure

The time structure on which it is based also plays an important role, which Foucault describes as heterochrony and which delimits the heterotopias from the outside: "The heterotopia reaches its full functioning when people break with their conventional time."

Foucault describes two extreme forms of heterotopias in this respect: those in which time is endlessly accumulated, piles up and crowded in books or pictures, as is the case in libraries and museums, and those in which time is extremely limited and within dissolve less hours or days as is the case at festivals or the fair.

Opening and closing

Heterotopias are always tied to a system of openings and closings that do not make them easily accessible to everyone. Their entry and exit is linked to certain entry and exit rituals. These rituals can consist of complex cleansing rituals, as in Japanese teahouses, or of a relatively profane nature, such as paying an entrance fee in the cinema. The examples show how different these rituals can be and how much the degree of opening or closing can vary from the outside - theoretically everyone who pays the entrance fee is allowed into the cinema, whereas in the Japanese tea house the visitor must first choose a certain one Have acquired knowledge of the ceremonies before being allowed to enter the place. In addition, not all heterotopias are entered voluntarily and not always participation in the heterotopia when one enters its space. Entering a prison is a highly involuntary form of participation for the inmate; On the other hand, if you come to the open house as a visitor, you enter the prison room, but remain largely excluded from its heterotopic structures, so you do not actually enter the room.

Illusion space, compensation space

Heterotopias develop a difference in relation to the remaining space. Extreme heterotopias are in this respect the illusion space and the compensation space.

The illusionary space creates a reality within which the entire real space appears to be even more illusory than the heterotopia itself. As an example, Foucault describes the earlier brothels, which were perhaps so famous precisely because they created the perfect illusion of an "other" reality.

The compensation space creates another "real" space that appears more perfect and well-ordered than the real space. As a compensation space - in addition to the Jesuit colonies in South America led by Foucault - the kibbutz could possibly also be classified as a realized utopia, which due to its place in the world, at least according to its original ideas, should appear as the more perfect real space.

Reception of the term in science fiction

SF author Samuel R. Delany referred to Foucault's concept of heterotopia in his novel Triton . The novel has the subtitle: A heterotopian novel .

See also

literature

  • Michel Foucault : The heterotopias / The utopian body. Two radio lectures , bilingual edition, translated by Michael Bischoff . With an afterword by Daniel Defert. Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp, ​​2005 ( Reviews Perlentaucher )
  • Marvin Chlada : Heterotopia and Experience. Outline of the heterotopology according to Michel Foucault , Aschaffenburg: Alibri, 2005
  • Michel Foucault: Other spaces (1967), in: Barck, Karlheinz (ed.): Aisthesis: Perception today or perspectives of a different aesthetic; Essays . 5th revised edition. Leipzig: Reclam, 1993.
  • Urs Urban: The Space of the Other and Other Spaces . Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2007
  • Patrick Baum: Belong to the opposing spaces - Review by Michel Foucault: Die Heterotopien / The utopian body . In: Literaturkritik.de [1]
  • Rainer Becker: Silencio, please? Another room of the voice . Review by Michel Foucault: Die Heterotopien / The utopian body . In: Sic et Non. Magazine for philisophy and culture. in the web. [2]
  • Hamid Tafazoli , Richard T. Gray (Ed.): Outside space-Mitraum-Interior. Heterotopias in Culture and Society, Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2012.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foucault, Michel: Other spaces (1967), in: Barck, Karlheinz (ed.): Aisthesis: Perception today or perspectives of a different aesthetic; Essays . 5th revised edition. Leipzig: Reclam, 1993, p. 39
  2. ↑ Foucault, Michel: Die Heterotopien / The utopian body. Two radio lectures , bilingual edition, translated by Michael Bischoff. With an afterword by Daniel Defert. Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp, ​​2005, p. 12 ( Reviews Perlentaucher )
  3. ^ Foucault, Michel: Other spaces (1967), in: Barck, Karlheinz (ed.): Aisthesis: Perception today or perspectives of a different aesthetic; Essays . 5th revised edition. Leipzig: Reclam, 1993, p. 43