Heterotopia and Structuralism

Abstract

Foucault and geographyIn a 1976 interview with Michel Foucault in the geographical journal He¨rodote, one of the editors told him:``You accord a de facto privilege to the factor of time, at the cost of nebulous or nomadic spatial demarcations whose uncertainty is in contrast with your care in marking off sections of time, periods and ages. ... This uncertainty of spatialisation [also] contrasts with your profuse use of spatial metaphorsöposition, displacement, site, field; sometimes geographical metaphors evenöterritory, domain, soil, horizon, archipelago, geopolitics, region, landscape'' (Foucault, 1980, pages 67, 68). Foucault responded to the accusation by stressing that these spatial metaphors actually allowed him to think through what he became known for: the intersection of power and knowledge. Foucault's geography, as Chris Philo (1992) shows, was onlỳ nomadic' and`uncertain' so that the inherently distributed nature of subjectivity and the spatiality of discursive practice could become apparent to the critical analyst:`A nyone envisaging the analysis of discourses solely in terms of temporal continuity would inevitably be led to approach and analyse it like the internal transformation of an individual consciousness'' (Foucault, 1980, page 69). Geographers are fond of the final sentence of the interview:``Geography must indeed necessarily lie at the heart of my concerns'' (page 77). Though it is true that Foucault could be vague in his topographical referencing, it can be argued that his thought was more`geographical' than, say, Jacques Lacan's or Jacques Derrida's. As Edward Said suggests, Foucault's position in poststructuralist philosophy can be termed`geopolitical':`W hereas Derrida's theory of textuality brings criticism to bear upon a signifier freed from any obligation to a transcendental signified, Foucault's theories move criticism from a consideration of the signifier to a description of the signifier's place, a place rarely innocent, dimensionless, or without the affirmative authority of discursive discipline'' (1978, page 701, original emphasis).

Heterotopía y capitalismo en arquitectura. La función ideológica de las heterotopías como discurso propio de la disciplina arquitectónica en la era de la gobernanza biopolítica

“…Una ambigüedad, insuficiencia o impropiedad para las disciplinas como el urbanismo o la geografía que ha sido comentada en numerosas ocasiones (Soja, 1996;Harvey, 2000;Saldanha, 2008), llegando incluso a afirmarse que toda interpretación propiamente arquitectónica o geográfica del concepto es un "malentendido" de su significado original (Knight, 2014, p. 32). De este modo, el actual estado de la cuestión se caracteriza por una gran mayoría de arquitectos que defienden el empleo del concepto de heterotopía como "lugares de relevancia política y social para el empoderamiento de los grupos minoritarios y los sub-grupos marginales a través del uso del espacio" (Heynen, 2008, p. 317), frente a una minoría que afirma que "la heterotopía termina siendo un concepto inadecuado para analizar la diferencia espacial" (Saldanha, 2008(Saldanha, , p. 2081. Ante esta disyuntiva, el presente artículo se posiciona en favor de la concepción minoritaria, pero lo hace como punto de partida.…”

“…A este respecto, el mismo Foucault ya hacía notar que "hay algo cómico y amargo que es específico de estas filosofías occidentales modernas [las que establecen estados -filosofías basadas en la idea de la libertad y han promovido el desarrollo del poder]: han pensado, incluso se han pensado, en función de una relación de oposición esencial al poder y a su ejercicio ilimitado, pero el destino de su pensamiento ha hecho que ya no se les escuche; a medida que el poder y que las instituciones políticas se impregnaban de su pensamiento, más se prestan a legitimar formas excesivas de poder" (Foucault, 1999, p. 116) Es esta malinterpretación la que les ha llevado a seguir defendiendo el potencial liberador de la negatividad en una época cuyo sistema político-econó-mico se identifica precisamente con la negatividad y la crisis permanente. Desde nuestro punto de vista, el principal problema respecto del actual empleo del concepto de heterotopía no es únicamente que este "termina siendo un concepto inadecuado de analizar la diferencia espacial" (Saldanha, 2008(Saldanha, , p. 2081, sino que, además de ello, promueve aquello que dice evitar: la pérdida de la capacidad emancipatoria de sus usuarios. Lo que la teoría arquitectónica necesita no son más apologías de los centros comerciales y las modernas metrópolis como heterotopías, sino menos charlatanes y más análisis sobre segregación social e informes de vulnerabilidad urbana.…”

The Tarob and the Sacred Oath. Liminal Spirits and Stories Creating Heterotopic Spaces in Dusun Culture

“…However, as observed in Carabelli and Lubbock (2017), Foucault's 'heterotopia' is unsystematised (see also Harvey, 2000, pp. 537-538;Hook, 2007, p. 182;Saldanha, 2008). It is for these reasons that I look to the 'heterotopia' described by Henri Lefebvre.…”

Heterotopia and the urban politics of climate change experimentation

“…The concept of heterotopia diffused through geography and cognate disciplines largely as a result of Ed Soja's use of the term in his influential 1989 book Postmodern Geographies, in which he fused Foucault's method of heterotopology with Lefebvre's work on the 'right to the city' to construct a new way of thinking about space he termed 'thirdspace' (Saldanha, 2008;Johnson, 2013). Since then, its primary use has been to open up to analysts the idea that social differences necessarily coexist because of their spatial outworkings (Saldanha, 2008), and Johnson (2013: 796) draws up a long list of sites which have been cited as examples of heterotopia.…”

“…Despite reportedly not being fond of the ideas himself, just before his death in 1984 he allowed this lecture version to be published by the journal ArchitectureMouvement -Continuité, from which it was posthumously translated into English, appearing as 'Of Other Spaces' in Diacritics in 1986 (Saldanha, 2008;Johnson, 2013). Foucault's concern was to explain those spaces "that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect" (Foucault, 1986: 24).…”