Article 1: Michael Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ The article ‘"Of Other Spaces"



Article 1: Michael Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’

The article ‘"Of Other Spaces" (Des espaces autres), also commonly known as "Heterotopia", was initially a lecture carried by Michel Foucault to a group of architects in 1967’. Foucault starts to expand on the idea of perception and emplacement, are the spaces we use real? Are they a concept? 
Michael Foucault (1926-84) was a French historian and a philosopher. Michael Foucault’s work can be considered ‘philosophically oriented historical research’ (Iep.utm.edu, 2017) .He focused on many subjects of life from Psychology, Art and Literature, the science of genealogy to  ‘The Birth of the Prison’. In the article “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heteretopias” Foucault talks about the different types of spaces that he sees and he gives us 6 principles regarding these spaces. He explains that Utopias and Heterotopias and are consequences of historical, political and social situations. He gives us an idea of how these issues could create Utopias and Heterotopias and he gives us an insight of these spaces.

Firstly, Foucault starts of with giving us a timeline; the nineteenth century and it’s obsession with history. He describes this time had the theme of ‘the ever-accumulating past’ with simultaneously being in juxtaposition: the near and far, the side-by-side.

 He believes, time and space are on a parallel wavelength. Every space is affected by time, throughout the Middle ages he points out that there were a hierarchy of places, there were places of different levels of importance such as 'sacred' places and 'profane' places ; protected places and open, exposed places: urban places and rural places.’ The very idea of these spaces being at war with one and another, being juxtapositions and opposing each other could define the Medieval space: the space of emplacement.
In addition, in the paper of Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias; Foucault is trying to understand what is a space, what is in between and what makes a space. He talks about the sun and the earth, when the earth moves around the sun constantly, then where is the earth’s place? It feels like he is at war with his ideas of where a place is, where we belong, what is in-between. He gives us an example of a train of which we can move through it, use it to go from one point to another, and it simultaneously goes by us.
 He concludes these ideas by catograizing them into utopias and heterotopias. Utopia is essentially a none-space, a site that is none-existent in reality. In contrast, there are sites which do exist and are placed in reality from all different societies and civilisations throughout time, these spaces are ‘simultaneously represented, contested and inverted’. These places will have a site and location, yet might be out of this realm. As he points out about looking through a mirror, the reflection which shows me something that does not exist in reality will be the utopia, however as the actual mirror does exists, it is a passage through time and space of which allows me to see an unreal image, it can be the heterotopia.
 
Man, reflection, mirror protrays the idea of topos, utopia, heterotopia respectively

Moreover; Foucault gives us the 6 principles of the heterotopia which are:

1.    Crisis Heterotopia
2.    Heterotopia of the Cemetery
3.    Heterotopia of Juxtaposition (The Persian Gardens)
4.    Heterochronies
5.    Heterotopic Place. Public Space or Prison?
6.    Heterotopia of Compensation
The most interesting type of Heterotopia for me is the Juxtaposing of many spaces which contradict one another; yet simultaneously exist within one space. The Persian Gardens, where the rug represents the four corners of the world, and the most sacred part being the middle represented by a fountain. The garden would be covered by a rug. Now the garden is a representation of the whole world, but the rug is a garden that can move through space. ‘The garden is the smallest parcel of the world, and then it is the totality of the world’.
   




As a microcosm, the Persian garden bears the image of Paradise, of the perfect place. As an actual place, it is elevated to an earthly paradise, a perfected place. 
Babur’s garden, Baburnama, 16th c. British Library






Safavid 16th c. miniature from “The Seven Thrones” of Jami, from Mehdi Khansari, 
PERSIAN GARDENS, 1997
 

  
References:

  Culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.co.uk. (2017). Michel Foucault – Of Other Spaces (Heterotopia) – summary and review. [online] Available at: http://culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/michel-foucault-of-other-spaces.html [Accessed 15 Oct. 2017]. Iep.utm.edu. (2017). 
Foucault, Michel | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [online] Available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/foucault/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2017].
  

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