Introduction

Spatial studies that emerged as a nascent discourse in the post Second

World War period has suddenly assumed prominence with the spatial turn in poststructuralist theories. Globalisation, with its liberal immigration policies, has transformed the spatial experiences of individuals and reconfigured the world, redefining spatial relations and reordering existing spatial structures.

The virtual space provided by the Internet has added a new spatial experience, which is at once heterotopic and panoptic. The spatial turn in academic discourses leads to the emergence of the politics of spatiality in the practice of everyday life enacted in the social space. In this regard, Robert T. Tally Jr. explains: “The spatial turn is . . . a turn towards an understanding of our lives as situated in a mobile array of social and spatial relations that, in one way or another, need to be mapped” (17). The fundamental pattern of discursive enquiry has changed: every cultural critique is now punctuated with questions of space, spatiality and spatial relations. Spatial practices have become prominent along with cultural and social practices. The ontological enquiry of space has evolved from space as a container of objects to space as a structured and mediated reflection of social/power relations.

Space has been a complex and problematic term in cultural critique. The noted geographer Bertrand Westphal observes that the cosmopolitan diaspora caused by “grand migrations occasioned by economic or political exigencies 2

specific to the industrial, and especially the post-industrial era” has called for a rereading of space (25). A study of the spatial representations in literature opens up a changing world where new spatial experiences and perplexities get constructed. Literature emerges from the human life in social space where spatial relations and spatial practices converge to reproduce represented spaces, which are paradigmatic representations of power relations. In this regard,

Tally Jr. observes: “. . . literature helps readers get a sense of the worlds in which others have lived, currently live, or will live in times to come. From a writer’s perspective, maybe literature provides a way of mapping the spaces encountered or imagined in the author’s experience” (2). The textual practices a writer follows and the spatial practices he has experienced are interrelated.

Literary texts testify to different spaces, whether social, textual, discursive, virtual or fictive. A literary text always reflects the social and political structures of the place. In this context, Westphal explores the relation between geography and literature: “. . . literature provides a complement to the regional geography; it can translate the experience of places . . . and it expresses a critique of reality or of the dominant ideology” (32). Space is never politically neutral; it is inscribed with power relations and dominant ideologies deeply encoded in the emplacements of heterogeneous sites. Thus innumerable factors have contributed to the emergence of different categories of spaces.

Dominant ideologies and authoritarian power structures remain latent in the spatial configurations of social life leading to the emergence of different 3

and deviant spaces which Michel Foucault has termed as “Other spaces” in his article “Of Other Spaces.” Heterotopias and panopticons constitute these fundamentally disturbing and uncanny spaces. Foucault argues that all cultures constitute heterotopias, which are variegated in nature, but without any universal form. Heterotopia juxtaposes and superimposes several spaces in a single real place, several sites that intersect with each other, but remain incompatible. In simple terms, it is a spatial metaphor which refers to a space, both real and unreal, existing outside the normative social/political space, a space where all the other spaces intersect, a space which transcends all spaces.

Panopticon is another category of “Other spaces,” a form of heterotopia appropriated as a surveillance system and disciplinary mechanism. Literature has always been a tool to reflect social relations and spatial configurations. A literary text itself is a textual/discursive heterotopia, a constructed system that keeps the characters under the panoptic gaze of an all-seeing eye.

The thesis tries to unravel the politics of spatiality in the select fictional works of the Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai. The concepts of “Other spaces,” heterotopia and panopticon, as formulated by Foucault and modified by other poststructuralist theorists, form the theoretical underpinning of the study. Krasznahorkai portrays both heterotopia and panopticon, the deviant spaces constructed by spatial relations, which are in fact based on power relations. Conceptual inputs on heterotopia by Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja,

Kevin Hetherington, David Harvey and others are also used for exploring the 4

structures and features of the “Other” spaces in Krasznahorkai’s works. The thesis further investigates the representation of discursive heterotopias within the textual space from the perspective of Foucault’s disturbing illustrations on how the literary heterotopias undermine the syntactical and semantic order of language. The thesis also examines Krasznahorkai’s depiction of panoptic disciplinary spaces in the light of Foucault’s notions of panopticism as the ultimate surveillance mechanism. The study enquires how the politics of spatiality has become the vital problematic in Krasznahorkai’s fiction. The spatial critique of his fiction explains how identity and subjectivity of individuals get mediated in the deviant “Other spaces.”

Eastern Europe remained under the Iron Curtain after the Second World

War until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. The nations of the Eastern Bloc had been under the dominance of the Soviet Union with the Soviet Red Army present in most of these nations. Following the Second World War, Soviet troops remained stationed throughout Eastern Europe to remind the Eastern

European peoples of Soviet dominance over their countries. These countries were modelled on the USSR in economic, social and administrative matters.

The single party system without any democratic elections prevailed in most of these nations and many of the leaders gradually degenerated into dictators, effecting a transition from socialism to totalitarianism. Literature was censored mostly; dissident writers who criticised the ruling party and regime were either imprisoned or exiled; only “harmless” literature was permitted to be published, 5

that too under the direct control of the state. All East Central European nations had security services modelled on and connected to the Soviet KGB.

Conditions were not different in Hungary and the country was under the rule of the Communist party after the violent suppression of the national uprising in

1956 until the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. Having suppressed the revolution on 4 November 1956 with an inhuman ruthlessness, the Russian army installed itself in Hungary and stayed there for thirty-five long years, with the secret police and agents dominating the lives of the people. In this context,

Miklos Molnar observes in his work, A Concise History of Hungary:

“Hungary’s popular democracy was a system under surveillance and wired up, ready to explode at the appropriate moment” (299). A single leader, Janos

Kadar, ruled the nation from 1956 until the great changes that shook entire

Eastern Europe, defining a new world order: the fall of the wall of repression and division, the great Berlin Wall.

Though the Hungarian economy had shown a promising growth in the beginning, it could not be maintained. The hopeful picture of the first twenty years was overshadowed by many issues. The centralised economy of Hungary confronted a setback in the beginning of the1980s as the national debt skyrocketed and most of the collectivised farms were ruined. In this regard,

Paul G. Lewis states:

The later years of communist rule were characterized by

increasing obstacles to stability and effective political 6

development throughout Central Europe, problems arising in the

pursuit of economic growth and balanced budgets and the

heightened role of military power in maintaining the Soviet

control of the region. (17)

The socialist system of production was deteriorated. The people became dissatisfied and the new values of commodification slowly crept into the nation where the laws were relaxed. The government found it difficult to continue on the same lines and finally the entire system collapsed. A political vacuum was created towards the middle of the 1980s and the ineffectual attempts for reforms also failed. The communist dream had withered away long before the disintegration started and the initial charm of the utopian dream eventually wore off. Moreover, communist ideology came to Hungary as an outcome of the Soviet occupation which liberated them from the German occupancy after the Second World War. The transition into a community which deprived people of their property and rights was implemented for realising the paradise of equality that it promised. Andras Gero, in his work Hungarian Illusionism, speaks of this broken promise: “All this was done under the guise of a utopia that was, in its entirety, unrealizable while the process of realization became a very real experience” (69). The bleak and desperate conditions that the people were left in, led to the creation of a dystopian landscape everywhere with the predominance of heterotopic/panoptic spaces around. 7

Hungarian literature has a commitment to the national cause. George F.

Cushing, in the article “Social Criticism in Hungarian Literature since 1956,” presents social criticism as “a staple ingredient of Hungarian literature” (101).

In Hungary, writers are held in high esteem as leaders, teachers and prophets; they assume a politically significant position. Cushing means that writers are expected to pronounce their opinions on matters affecting the people and the nation. In Hungary, literature has functioned as an effective forum of political opposition, where the writers express their disapproval of hostile regimes in definite terms. The restrictions imposed by the Communist regime on the publication of dissident writings led to the exile of many intellectuals from the country. But Hungarian intellectuals and writers expressed their resistance to the repressive conditions through the secret circulation of samizdat literature.

Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Satantango was also circulated as samizdat literature among his friends and well-wishers before its official publication with a permission to print only five thousand copies.

Though Hungarian literature has a tradition of over two hundred years, it was not widely translated into English until late twentieth century. The first

Hungarian to win the Nobel Prize for literature was Imre Kertesz in 2002.

Another international literary prize reached Hungary in 2015 in the form of the

Man Booker International Prize to Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Krasznahorkai gained considerable recognition with the publication of Satantango. In 1993, he received the German Bestenliste Prize for the best literary work of the year 8

for The Melancholy of Resistance. He has since been honoured with numerous literary prizes, including the highest award of the Hungarian state, the Kossuth

Prize. His first novel Satantango was published in 1985, creating a sensation in

Hungary. His second work The Melancholy of Resistance, which also deals with the poverty and decline of the 1980s, and features destruction and miracle as in Satantango, appeared in 1989. A writer with considerable output in

Hungarian, Krasznahorkai has been widely translated into most of the

European languages. The Melancholy of Resistance is his first translated work in English (1998) which was followed by War and War in 2006. His first novel

Satantango appeared in English only in 2012. Seiobo There Below (2008), translated in 2014, is a collection of 17 stories numbered according to the

Fibonacci sequence, most of them set in Japan. Animalinside (2010) is a work that conjoins drawing and text for which he collaborated with the artist Max

Neumann. The Last Wolf, a novella published in 2009, was translated into

English in 2016. The World Goes on, a short story collection that appeared in

2017 and Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, translated in 2019, are his other major works translated into English. Krasznahorkai has collaborated with the famous Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr in the production of many films, most of which are adaptations of his own novels. At present, he lives in reclusiveness in the hills of Szentlaszlo in Hungary, making occasional public appearances.

Krasznahorkai moved out of Hungary for the first time in 1987 and visited West Berlin at the time of the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. This was 9

followed by visits to different countries like Japan, China and India. His travels have widened his literary horizon, and his spatial perspective has shifted from

Hungary to the larger world outside. Krasznahorkai is of the opinion that East

European misery is a global phenomenon. Krasznahorkai is still disappointed with the socio-political situation in Hungary. In an interview with Richard Lea, published in The Guardian, he states: “The world in Hungary was absolutely abnormal and unbearable, and after 1989 it was normal and unbearable” (“This

Society”). The stupidity and absurdity inherent in human life is

Krasznahorkai’s major area of concern. Margit Koves, in the article “The

Limits of Total Narration and the Experience of the East in Laszlo

Krasznahorkai’s Work,” observes that “senses, body, space and narration are important elements of Krasznahorkai's work” (46). Krasznahorkai feels that there are “. . . no empty spaces with possibilities, only stupid spaces, spaces in which you can’t do anything other than wait to return from this space . . .”

(“This Society”). Thus the spatial becomes the major problematic in

Krasznahorkai’s writings.

As an author of international acclaim, Krasznahorkai needs to be approached seriously. The Man Booker International award committee commented on his works: “Laszlo Krasznahorkai is a visionary writer of extraordinary intensity and vocal range who captures the texture of present day existence in scenes that are terrifying, strange, appallingly comic, and often shatteringly beautiful.” They praised his works for exhibiting “deep 10

imagination and complex passions, in which the human comedy verges painfully onto transcendence.” They also commented on the incredible

Krasznahorkaian sentences: “. . . what strikes the reader above all are the extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths, their tone switching from solemn to madcap to quizzical to desolate as they go their wayward way” (“Laszlo”). The complexity of life is suggested by the author through the use of these interconnected and long sentences. The author himself comments on the style of his prose: “Letters; then from letters, words; then from these words, some short sentences; then more sentences that are longer, and in the main very long sentences, for the duration of 35 years.

Beauty in language. Fun in hell” (qtd. in Bausells). He justifies his use of long and winding sentences:

. . . the short sentence is artificial – we use almost never short

sentences, we make pause, or we hold on a part of a sentence

end . . . but this characteristic, very classical, short sentence –

at the end with a dot – this is artificial, this is only a custom,

this is perhaps helpful for the reader, but for only one reason,

that the readers in the last few thousand years have learned that

a short sentence is easier to understand, this is also a custom, but

if you think, you almost never use short sentences, if you

listen . . . . (“This Society”) 11

His uncompromising style makes him stand out among his contemporaries.

His translator George Szirtes calls his works a “slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type” (“This Society”). Szirtes means that the style is inherently dangerous and potentially delirious.

Krasznahorkai has been widely appreciated by his contemporaries and critics. He has been described by Susan Sontag as the “contemporary

Hungarian master of apocalypse who inspires comparison with Gogol and

Melville” (blurb, Melancholy). The writer W. G. Sebald is of the opinion that

“the universality of Krasznahorkai’s vision rivals that of Gogol’s Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing” (blurb,

Melancholy). His works, usually referred to as dark fiction, end with an irresolution that undermines the reader’s initial beliefs. Krasznahorkai could not accept the neo-capitalist global politics that came into existence after the political changes in 1989. In this context, Margit Koves comments:

Krasznahorkai’s novels before the political changes in East

Europe in 1989 and after them deal with characters and issues

which question accepted interpretations about the transformation.

Even though he wrote about poverty and decline in the 1980s, he

was highly critical of the complete acceptance of neo-capitalism.

(“Limits” 44) 12

The political change in Hungary could not kindle any spark of hope in

Krasznahorkai’s vision of life as he was disillusioned with the whole world outside.

The critical focus of this study is on the trialectics of space-power- knowledge that construct heterotopic spaces which mediate the identity and subjectivity of people. The works taken for study are the novels Satantango,

The Melancholy of Resistance, War and War and some short stories selected from the collection The World Goes on such as “Wandering-Standing,” “How

Lovely,” “On Velocity,” “One Hundred People All Told,” “The World Goes on,” “Universal Theseus,” “One Time on 381,” “Gyorgy Feher’s Henrik

Molnar,” “That Gagarin” and “The Swan of Istanbul.” The fictional works selected for the study have a discursive ecosystem where the characters confront a gloomy and uncertain future in the absence of an escape from the rhizomatic present.

Satantango, Krasznahorkai’s first work published in 1985, depicts the political and cultural situation that existed in Hungary towards the end of the communist regime. It was translated into English by George Szirtes only in

2012. The novel has an epigraph from Franz Kafka’s The Castle that reveals the political purpose of the novel: “In that case, I’ll miss the thing by waiting for it.” The novel is a product of its times with high postmodernist overtones, polyphonic narrative voices, intricate sentence structures, metafictional elements and open-ended closure. In her article “Between East and West,” 13

Margit Koves points out that Krasznahorkai writes prose in “sentences which express conditions, considerations and circumstances, sentences which demonstrate that narration itself requires circumspect thought, sentences which either suck in the readers in the vortex of the text . . . or turn them away” (91).

The language of Satantango bears testimony to these words; the novel comprises twelve chapters, referred to as Dances, which are divided into two parts. Both parts consist of six chapters each, which are numbered from one to six and then from six to one, completing the steps of a tango. The writer does not use paragraph breaks in the novel; a chapter comprises a single paragraph forcing the reader to move on without a break in his/her thoughts.

The word satantango means devil’s dance, and the novel portrays the bleak and dilapidated village referred to as “the estate,” reduced almost to nothingness with only a handful of inhabitants left there. All the others have left the estate which is facing a crisis in economy with the mill closed and the collectivised farm ruined. The people who remain in the farm are Futaki, the

Schmidts, the Horgos family, the Kraners, the Halicses, the headmaster,

Kerekes - the blind farmer and the doctor. The villagers, who wait for whom and what they know not, are expecting a divine sign of some sort which is evident from the interest that they show in the ringing of the bell at the beginning of the novel. Their hope that there would be some divine intervention to bring about their salvation is supposed to have blossomed when

Irimias and Petrina, whom they thought to be dead, come back to the village. 14

The novel portrays how the people are once again cheated of their money, dispersed to different parts of the town and made part of the secret network system even without their awareness or consent.

The Melancholy of Resistance was written in 1989 in Hungarian and was translated into English by George Szirtes in 1998. The novel consists mainly of three parts: “An Emergency: Introduction,” “The Werckmeister Harmonies:

Negotiations” and “Sermo Super Sepulchrum: Conclusion.” It can be considered a surrealistic novel written in a stream of consciousness mode, which proclaims the philosophy that chaos is the natural condition of the world.

Most of the Krasznahorkaian writings uphold this philosophy as is evident in all the works under study.

The Melancholy of Resistance portrays the ethical decadence of society, which is ineffectually attempted to be corrected by marginal individuals. The decay of all common values is symbolically represented in the mummified whale, the circus exhibit that attracts hundreds of followers, desperately pinning their hopes on a miracle that would bring about their salvation. The four main characters of the novel are Mrs Eszter, Janos Valuska, Mrs Plauf and

Mr Eszter. The novel revolves round the arrival of a circus to the town claiming to exhibit the world’s biggest whale, stuffed. It brings a culmination to the chaos that already existed there, with a riot in which the town is disturbed, looted and destroyed. The tragic rape and murder of Mrs Plauf, Valuska’s mother, also happen on that disastrous night of the riot. Considered a half-wit, 15

Valuska is the postman of the town, who finds pleasure in wandering through the streets at night, obsessed with his interest in the configuration and movement of heavenly bodies. He lives in a fictional ethereal world, enchanted by the beauty of the cosmic realm. Mrs Eszter, the power hungry manipulator, gains control of the town during the riot, imposing her power over everyone, cunningly making them accept her prominence.

A medley of various voices appears in the narration of The Melancholy of Resistance. James Wood, in the article “Madness and Civilization,” observes:

The Melancholy of Resistance is a comedy of apocalypse . . . [It]

is a demanding book, and a pessimistic one, too . . . The pleasure

of the book, and a kind of resistance, as well, flows from its

extraordinary, stretched, self-recoiling sentences, which are

marvels of a loosely punctuated stream of consciousness.

The novel ends with a section called “Sermo Super Sepulchrum” meaning the words on her grave, which is a scientific description of the decomposition that happens to Mrs. Plauf’s dead body. The work ends with the message that the novel itself is not free from this inevitable disintegration.

War and War was written in 1999 and translated into English in 2006 by

George Szirtes. The novel is divided into eight chapters with an epilogue at the end titled “Isaiah Has Come.” The work has an epigraph “Heaven is sad,” and the entire work is a blend of the historical and the personal that happen in the 16

life of Gyorgy Korin, an archivist in a village two hundred and twenty kilometres away from Budapest. It is Korin’s journey with the manuscript that he gets from the archive. The novel portrays Korin’s efforts to preserve the message contained in the manuscript for posterity to peruse as he thinks its beauty is eternal. The manuscript contains a narrative on four men, named,

Kasser, Bengazza, Falke and Toot and their journey to different parts of the world like Crete, Cologne, Venice and Northern England in different historical periods. Overwhelmed by the beauty and importance of the manuscript, Korin decides to go to the very centre of the world where matters are actually decided and end his life there. Considering New York to be the present centre of the world, he flees from Hungary with a plan to make the manuscript eternal and immortal by uploading it to the virtual space.

Korin’s tryst with the manuscript and the obsession that he develops for it form the crux of the novel. His quest for a way out proves to be futile and he commits suicide in a museum in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. A plaque is inscribed in the place conceding to his request to do so, and a picture of that is included in the novel. The work ends by providing the URL of Korin’s homepage where the manuscript was uploaded: www.warandwar.com. But while searching for it, one gets the message that the web page does not exist anymore. It tells: “Additionally, please be informed that this home page service has been called off due to recurring overdue payment. Attempted mail 17

deliveries to Mr G. Korin have been returned to sender with a note: address unknown. Consequently, all data have been erased from this home page.”

There is a sequel to the novel, titled “Isaiah Has Come,” which refers actually to an earlier episode in Korin’s life. Wood borrows from the author himself to describe the novel: It is “reality examined to the point of madness.”

The disintegration continues to be represented with the depiction of absurd, incoherent spaces. As usual, long, convoluting Krasznahorkaian sentences bewitch the readers with their intricate beauty. One can see the notable shift in the geographical space in his works after 1989; in War and War also, there is a hope of finding order and peace there. But Korin’s quest for such an orderly utopian central place proves to be futile in War and War.

The World Goes on was published in Hungarian in 2013 and was translated into English in 2017. The collection consists of twenty-one short stories, arranged in three different parts: “He Speaks,” “He Narrates” and “He

Bids Farewell.” This collection, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Man

Booker International Prize, includes translations by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirtes. Nathaniel Rich, in the article “The Storyteller Who Offers

No Escape,” comments: “In Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s fiction the world never goes on. It is always ending. Or, as Krasznahorkai might write, the world is always ending, bursting into flames, collapsing into itself, exploding, tearing apart, disintegrating, being devoured by nothingness.” Space, speed, movement, resistance, forgetting, sadness and war constitute the main themes 18

of the stories included in the collection. They are marked with a shift in space; though set in different parts of the world, some of them have a Hungarian background. The author’s disenchantment with the world is visible in many of these stories. Rich observes: “He writes fairy tales without morals, jokes without punch lines.” Krasznahorkai appears as a detached observer of the world in these stories.

“The World Goes on,” a story composed of one long sentence running up to four pages, is related to the 9/11 World Trade Centre attack, which signalled the beginning of a new world order. But the writer’s hopes to find an order goes awry. Margit Koves also comments that “The World Goes on” presents this futile attempt and also presents how, “in the new world order after

9/11, language, forms of prose, novel and short story lost their relevance along with other forms of art and culture” (51). “That Gagarin” is the story of an institutionalised individual, who is obsessed with Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut and the first person to reach space. The narrator’s enquiry into the last years of Gagarin in comparative seclusion takes the readers through a thirty- seven page long story composed of a single sentence.

“Universal Theseus,” a story in three parts, includes three lectures by the narrator on different topics such as melancholy, revolution and possessions.

The narrator, on being invited for the first time to the auditorium for a speech, experiences constraints being imposed on him and later ends up in his detainment in a sub-basement room under the instructions of the authorities. 19

“One Time on 381” tells the story of a boy working in a mine, going in search of the sublime, leaving the mundane realities. “Gyorgy Feher’s Henrik Molnar” is a story that speaks about a strange video tape that the narrator has received from his friend, which documents a real trial in a courtroom. The story

“Wandering-Standing” describes the state that many people find themselves in.

Though yearning intensely to go somewhere, they cannot go anywhere.

The story “The Swan of Istanbul” with the subtitle “seventy-nine paragraphs on blank pages” literally produces empty pages before the reader with some endnotes at the end. The story “One Hundred People All Told” deals with the disintegration of ideas and the ineffectiveness of language. “On

Velocity” is a story that presents the speaker’s desire to leave the Earth for the outer space. The story “How Lovely” describes the enigmatic thought about the existence of the world and the human beings in it. In this regard, Koves comments: “Krasznahorkai's last book, The World Goes on . . . expresses that the world goes on at its own pace and in a direction that is out of joint with human measures, it is not possible to maintain unity with its movement”

(“Limits” 44). The characters and the world move in different paces and the bewildered readers cannot synchronise them.

Krasznahorkai’s works do not provide explicit answers to every question that crops up in the mind of the reader. The novelist does not make everything obvious, but leaves clues and hints for the reader to conclude. As Jacob

Silverman remarks: “He offers us stories that are relentlessly generative and 20

defiantly irresolvable. They are haunting, pleasantly weird and, ultimately, bigger than the worlds they inhabit.” The readers are left with certain questions without answers even at the end of the story. The readers have to think about the questions and find answers themselves. Krasznahorkai’s use of language illustrates the kind of symbolic violence that represents the systemic violence pervasive in the world. In this regard, Idra Novey also comments:

“Krasznahorkai constantly pushes beyond the expected, escalating everything to the brink of deliriousness.” The disorder that results from linking together inappropriate linguistic elements opens up innumerable possibilities of different combinations, containing within them myriad heterotopic spaces within the textual space.

The thesis is divided into four chapters in addition to an Introduction and a Conclusion. The study begins with a brief introduction to the need to understand the spatial or spatiality in interpreting literary texts in the contexts of culture and society. This is followed by an attempt to familiarise

Krasznahorkai and his works selected for the study. The first chapter titled

“Politics of Spatiality” explores the problematic of space and its representation, especially with reference to the social space. The chapter traces the emergence of space as a crucial and significant category in social sciences. It attempts to elucidate how space is politically charged, laden with structures of power and ideology. It also analyses various definitions of space, mapping its development from a receptacle of things to a political/cultural process. Space 21

has culturally evolved from a physical to mental to a social construct. The chapter discusses different theoretical perspectives of social space such as

Marxist, Structuralist and Post-structuralist approaches. The contributions of various theorists like Georg Simmel, Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre,

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu,

David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Neil Smith, Doreen Massey, Edward Soja and

Bertrand Westphal are discussed and their ideas are incorporated to form a conceptual framework to understand spatiality, spatial politics and spatial critique. The framework synthesised from the analogous relations of space, power and knowledge enables the analysis of Krasznahorkaian fiction.

The second chapter titled “Theorising Other Spaces: Heterotopia and

Panopticon” illustrates the “Other spaces” existing in every society/culture as a result of the unique spatial relations operating there. The chapter is a theoretical exploration on heterotopia and panopticon. It explains how they are inseparably linked to disciplinary technologies, wherein power structures have a decisive control. The chapter attempts a discussion of the theoretical foundations of heterotopia laid by thinkers like Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre and Edward

Soja, followed by further deliberations on the topic by Kevin Hetherington,

David Harvey, Peter Johnson, Marco Cenzatti, Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De

Cauter. This is followed by the concept of panopticon as formulated by Jeremy

Bentham and its theoretical elaborations by Foucault. Heterotopias are at once real and unreal spaces, a single space, where many conflicting and 22

incompatible spaces superimpose, where a telescoping of many heterogeneous, divergent and uncanny spaces takes place. Panopticon is the ultimate surveillance apparatus developed from Foucault’s ideas regarding the carceral, though its architectural semiotics was designed by Bentham. In its features and structure, panopticon is an uncanny form of heterotopia.

The third chapter, “Fictionalising Heterotopias," is a critical analysis of

Krasznahorkai’s select fiction in the light of the theoretical formulations regarding heterotopias. The nature of the spaces represented in the works under consideration is explored and analysed in the chapter. As Foucault has referred to both textual spaces and social spaces using the concept, heterotopias can be any space – textual, social or virtual – marked by its Otherness in relation to real places. Thus, the chapter investigates the heterotopic spaces, both socially and textually generated, in the select fiction. The spaces represented are not unreal or imaginary; they are actually existing places which can be considered as a microcosm of the larger world outside. The chapter analyses the weird space-power-knowledge nexus generating the absurd-looking spaces represented within the novels. The texts hold a mirror to the real spaces in the world to have a reflection of them within. Hence the texts become heterotopias where the blurred boundaries between the real and the represented gradually merge.

The fourth chapter titled “Metaphorising Panopticon” interrogates the spatial in Krasznahorkai’s fiction from the perspective of the theory of 23

panopticism. The chapter explores how a disciplinary space is formulated by the appropriation of power relations where the individuals are brought under the dominant power centre either by manipulating consent or through the coercion of power. It explains how the panoptic space imposes extreme regulation on the individual’s personal freedom and mediates the construction of his/her sense of identity. It also elucidates how the individual is converted into a subject and how the willing internalisation of power leads to the automatic functioning of disciplinary power. Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology is used to analyse the interpellation of subjects that happens in the works. The panoptic eye and its constant gaze result in the production of docile bodies, where the individual loses his agency as well as capacity for resistance and gets subjugated to the status of a conforming and compliant subject.

The fictional works of Krasznahorkai explore the potentiality of space and articulate the complex power relations manifested in the spatial relations operating within the society. The writer draws a picture of the fragmented societies by portraying heterotopic spaces within his works. His works engage with the social and political oppression of the people and investigate the power dynamics deciding the nature of the social space. He attempts to excavate and showcase the space-power-knowledge nexus that results in the creation of

“Other spaces.” Krasznahorkai’s works become universal in dealing with the global issues of repression, power relations and resistance. They are textual paradigms of the spatial critique of nations and cultures.