Geography Compass 7/11 (2013): 790–803, 10.1111/gec3.12079 The Geographies of Heterotopia Dr Peter Johnson* Bath Spa University Abstract This article explores the ongoing fascination with Foucault’s brief and rather sketchy idea of heterotopia. Drawing out some key lessons from the most sustained interpretations of this curious spatio-temporal concept, it addresses weaknesses and potential contradictions and goes on to highlight trends and emerg- ing themes in studies that incorporate the notion. The article argues that although the uses of Foucault’s accounts of heterotopia are bewilderingly diverse, heterotopias are most productively understood in the context of Foucault’s insistence on ‘making difference’ and their adoption as a tool of analysis to illumi- nate the multifaceted features of cultural and social spaces and to invent new ones. I am like the crawfish and advance sideways. (Foucault 2008a, p. 78) Introduction to an Elusive Idea Foucault’s sketchy, open-ended and ambiguous accounts of heterotopia have probably provoked more discussion and diverse applications than any other of his minor texts. Apart from stimulating three distinct English translations of a short lecture on the topic in 1967 (see Foucault 1986, 1998, 2008b), the notion has received sustained responses from both Defert (1997), Foucault’s long-term partner, and Faubion (2008), the editor of the English translation of Foucault’s Essential Works. As Defert (2004, p. 2) remarks in an introduction to a 1966 radio talk that Foucault gave on these ‘different spaces’, the tantalisingly brief outlines of the concept of heterotopia are unusual in that they are presented in a rather light-hearted and almost improvised manner, eschewing any explicit reference to academic or ‘serious’ texts and involving perhaps a certain pleasure, a ‘play of the imagination and intelligence’. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, the fragmentary and elusive quality of the ideas, the concept of heterotopia continues to generate a host of conflicting interpretations and research across a range of disciplines, particularly art and architecture, literary studies, social and cultural geography, sociology and urban studies. Foucault’s outlines of heterotopia attempt to explain principles and features of a range of cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow ‘different’: disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory and transforming. His thoughts about heterotopia are marginal and yet provoke interesting connections with his wider projects concerned with, for example, discipline, aesthetics and ethics. Some examples of these spaces link with projects he had already carried out in relation to the asylum (Foucault 2006), some to work that would be taken up later concerning the prison (Foucault 1977) and some to sites mentioned frequently but which he never pursued in detail, for instance, the cemetery (Foucault 2001). Other sites present the possibility of further absorbing explorations (for example, the garden, brothel, rest home, festival, magic carpet, Muslim baths and so on). The list of heterotopias becomes almost mischievous in its variety. Heterotopias are defined as sites which are embedded in aspects and stages of our lives and which somehow mirror and at the same time © 2013 The Author(s) Geography Compass © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd The Geographies of Heterotopia 791 distort, unsettle or invert other spaces. Foucault (1998, p. 178) contrasts these spaces with utopias; both are connected with the rest of space and ‘yet are at variance somehow’, but whereas utopias are unreal, heterotopias are ‘actually localisable’. This paper will draw out some key lessons from the most sustained elucidations of the notion and explore weaknesses and potential contradictions both in Foucault’s original accounts and in various uses of the concept. Despite the plethora of applications and expositions, I go on to highlight some emerging commonality. I conclude by arguing that although the uses of heterotopia are bewilderingly diverse and often make far too large claims for the significance of the concept, these spaces are most productively understood in the context of Foucault’s (2008a) ongoing quest for a ‘critical morality’ (p. 186) and their use as an initial conceptual method of analysis. I will concentrate on Foucault’s (1984) most explicit account of heterotopia given to a group of architects rather than the brief discussion of the term in relation to discursive spaces in his preface to The Order of Things (Foucault 1970) first published in 1966. The context of the lecture is worth brieflyrecountingasitisareworkingofa radio talk given on ‘France Culture’ (Foucault 2010) as part of a series exploring utopia and literature. According to Defert, Foucault’s most detailed account of heterotopia began with some bewildered amusement. In a letter Foucault wrote to Defert: Do you remember the telegram that gave us such a laugh, where an architect said he glimpsed a new conception of urbanism? But it wasn’t in the book; it was in a talk on the radio about utopia. They want me to give it again.... (Defert 1997, p. 274). Foucault was invited to speak to the Cercle d’études architecturales (Circle of Architectural Studies) and gave his lecture in Paris. He was reluctant to publish the lecture at the time, although some excerpts appeared in the Italian journal L’Árchittetura (1968), but shortly before his death, he agreed to its publication to coincide with an exhibition held in Berlin in 1984 (see Macey 1993, p. 186). The text, Des espaces autres, was published by the French journal Architecture, Mouvenment, Continuité (Foucault 1984) and translated into English by Miskoweic two years later in Diacritics as ‘Of other spaces’ (Foucault 1986). The text is based on the transcript of the lecture that was made and circulated by the group of architects. For and Against I will start this critical review of Foucault’s lecture with Hetherington’s (1997) study, which has been widely influential both inside and outside cultural and social geography. He anchors his understanding of Foucault’s concept within the evolution of specific social spaces during the formative years of modernity. He explores three specific examples of heterotopia: the Palais Royal in Paris, Masonic Lodges and early factories of the industrial revolution. Hetherington opens up many fruitful features of and questions about heterotopia, particularly in the context of the late eighteenth century, but his underlying arguments are in some respects unhelpful and confusing. One of Hetherington’s most powerful arguments is that the Palais Royal combined transgressive elements with subtle forms of control. In this, he wants partly to critique those who, influenced by such writers as Bakhtin, have ‘valorized’ the margins in terms of sites of resistance and otherness. Hetherington (1997, p. 30), heavily influenced by Stallybrass and White’s The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986, p. 18), wants to argue that these sites produced another ‘mode of ordering’ rather than a radical break. Bakhtin and those influenced by his thought have tended nostalgically to overplay the freedoms allowed by the authorities and ignored the diverse manner in which the events were moderated and controlled. © 2013 The Author(s) Geography Compass 7/11 (2013): 790–803, 10.1111/gec3.12079 Geography Compass © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 792 The Geographies of Heterotopia Hetherington’s description of the Palais Royal is suggestive and seems to chime with aspects of Foucault’s examples of heterotopia, but he wishes to take things much further by making two big claims. Firstly, he argues that the Palais Royal can be seen as a ‘metaphor for modernity’. Secondly, he asserts that heterotopias, and by implication, modernity itself, are characterised by combining, in new ways, aspects of social control and expressions of freedom. Hetherington (1997, p. 6) wants to replace the simple divide between social order/margins with a notion involving process, mobility and ambiguity. Hetherington unfortunately switches backwards and forwards between describing heterotopian sites as either ‘alternate’ (one thing and then another) or ‘alternative’ (one instead of another) in their ordering process. The distinction between the words is lost, and the definition of heterotopia becomes confusing. More importantly, by defining heterotopia very broadly, he also suggests that they are a significant feature of Foucault’s overall work. Hetherington (1997, p. 40) makes some sweeping, unsubstantiated claim that Foucault has ‘suggested its importance to understanding the spatiality of the social ordering of modernity’. Scant evidence is presented to suggest that Foucault developed the notion of heterotopia through his various projects. When the spatial aspect of Foucault’s other major works is discussed (Hetherington 1997, p. 111), the prison, asylum and hospital are tied together and defined within a ‘metaphor of the panopticon’ without any indication of the subtle breadth and variety of Foucault’s approaches to these spaces. Overall, Hetherington is caught in a web of dichotomisation. Osborne (1998, p. 19) argues that problems of dichotomisation undermine sociological theories of modernity; they ‘over-dramatise’ and condense features of social change to one or two basic elements. However, although Hetherington does not escape the play of binary thinking, his insistence that Foucault actively avoids the valorisation of the margins in terms of sites of resistance and otherness is a valuable argument that I will take forward later. From a geographical rather than sociological perspective, Soja provides another influential reading of heterotopia. Soja (1989, 1995, 1996) applies Foucault’s ideas about ‘different spaces’ in order to explore specific sites; for example, he analyses the Citadel LA, the ‘urban fortresses’ found in the centre of Los Angeles and an exhibition held there in 1989 to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution. However, Soja’s main application springs from Foucault’s term ‘heterotopology’ to describe a method of ‘reading’ particular sites. This is built up into a whole new way of seeing and thinking about space, or the conception of ‘thirdspace’ (Soja 1996, p.