Foucault, M. (1984). Of other spaces, heterotopias. Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 5, 46–49.
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Defines the term heterotopia which is an "effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality."
As an example of heterotopia, Foucault gives the example of a mirror. A mirror is a utopia but, because it does exist in reality, it is also a heterotopia exerting a "counteraction on the position" the viewer occupies. "...a virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I see myself there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent".
"The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment. [sic] I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein."
"For the real scandal of Galileo’s work lay not so much in his discovery, or rediscovery, that the earth revolved around the sun, but in his constitution of an infinite, and infinitely open space. In such a space the place of the Middle Ages turned out to be dissolved. as it were; a thing’s place was no longer anything but a point in its movement, just as the stability of a thing was only its movement indefinitely slowed down. In other words, starting with Galileo and the seventeenth century, extension was substituted for localization."
"Our epoch is one in which space takes for us the form of relations among sites."
". . . we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another."
"Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces."
"First of all, there are heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time, for example museums and libraries, Museums and libraries have become heterotopias in which time never stops building up and topping its own summit, whereas in the seventeenth century, even at the end of the century, museums and libraries were the expression of an individual choice. By contrast, the idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place, this whole idea belongs to our modernity. The museum and the library are heterotopias that are proper to western culture of the nineteenth century."
"In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures."
"The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains [sic]."
Utopias and heterotopias "have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect [sic], neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect. These spaces, as it were, which are linked with all the others, which however contradict all the other sites, are of two main types (i.e., utopias and heterotopias)."
Sacco, P. L., Ghirardi, S., Tartari, M., & Trimarchi, M. (2019). Two versions of heterotopia: The role of art practices in participative urban renewal processes. Cities, 89, 199–208.
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"Foucault's heterotopia is centered upon a representational approach to space, and generates a dichotomous urban epistemology structured along polarizations such as center-periphery and elites-community. Foucault's heterotopia is consequently possibly conducive to a topdown dialectic [...] Lefebvre's notion of heterotopia, on the contrary, is un-representational, and proposes a dialectical vision of space as a canvas for social change. From a spatial point of view, Lefebvre's heterotopia focuses upon places where economic exchange is neglected, rather than allowed/denied, thus creating the conditions for re-imagining a collectively meaningful notion of urban habitat. In Lefebvre's view, heterotopies are created by practices: they flourish spontaneously from collective action, and express a romantic idea of urban revolution. The debate on the re-appropriation of the right to the city that follows a bottom-up approach originates from the Lefebvrian perspective, and is linked to the promotion of democratic civism and to the recovery of practices of citizenship"
Interpret Foucault's heterotopia as "a portion of an autonomous, centripetal territory, separated from the rest of the world, a space that lives for itself and which is closed in itself [...] spaces that question existing relations and create a moment of displacement, disconnection from an existing social, cultural and aesthetic order [it] connects to the hyper-economization of all aspects of social life as determined by the global prevalence of the neoliberal paradigm"
