Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher
Michel Foucault 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,
brothels, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs,
Turkish baths and many more.
Foucault outlines the notion of heterotopia
on three occasions between 1966-67.
A talk given to a group of architects is the
most well-known explanation of the term.
His first mention of the concept is in his
preface to 'The Order of Things' and refers
to texts rather than socio-cultural spaces.
== Etymology ==
Heterotopia follows the template established
by the notions of utopia and dystopia.
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's drawings.
As Walter Russell Mead 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 impossible.
Foucault explains the link between utopias
and heterotopias using the metaphor 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, cemetery).
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
or a hammam.
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, in a clear reference to Stalinism.
== Heterotopia in the work of other authors
==
Human geographers often connected to the postmodernist
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, that remain focused
on the matter of class domination as the central
determinant of social heteronomy.
The geographer Edward Soja has worked with
this concept in dialogue with the works of
Henri Lefebvre 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 of Vincent of Beauvais and Ramon
Llull 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 and other weird fiction writers
to be heterotopias insofar as they are worlds
of radical difference transparent 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,
which is subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia
