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