Utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is
nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to
unfold: they open up cities with vast avenues, superbly planted
gardens, countries where life is easy, even though the road to them is
chimerical. Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they shatter
or tangle common names, because they destroy "syntax" in advance, and
not only that less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next
to and also opposite one another) to "hold together." This is why
utopias permit fables and discourses: they run with the very grain of
language and are part of the fundamental fabula: heterotopias desiccate
speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of
grammar at its source: they dissolve our myths and sterilize the
lyricism of our sentences.
Michelle Foucault, The Order of Things
A heterotopia, a concept introduced and expounded on by Michel Foucault in his books The Order of Things (Les Mots et Les Choses, literally Words and Things), The Archeology of Knowledge (L'achéologie du Savior), and, my favorite discussion, in the essay This Is Not a Pipe (Ceci N'est Pas une Pipe),
is a place (real or fictional) that subverts representation.
Representation is the connection between the symbol and the
symbolized. A symbol can represent its subject by one of multiple
possible ways, but let's focus for now on symbols that represent their
subject by resembling them. Think of a movie actor, Leonardo
DiCaprio say, portraying a real person, Howard Hughes; or think more
simply, of a picture of a pipe, representing, presumably, some real
pipe that exists somewhere or existed some time. Or for that matter,
think of a movie actor, DiCaprio in The Departed this time,
portraying a non-real person. The latter is still within the usual
scope of symbols, and is typical of what Foucault calls the fundamental
fabula.
Well, a heterotopia is full of apparent symbols that are very similar
to other things (Foucault distinguishes between similitude and
resemblence), that beg of you to think of them as representing
something, but as you follow the arrow leading from the pseudo-symbol
to what you have expected it to symbolize, you are lead to a dead
end, or on a wild-goose chase, or around and
around in circles; you are subverted. Whereas in a utopia, the subject
of the symbols might not exist in reality, in a heterotopia the subject
often does not exist at all. A heterotopia mocks you for expecting the
existence of an apparent copy (simulacrum is the word Foucault's translator uses) to imply an original
(real or fantastic). Thus, heterotopias subvert the use of symbols,
that is they subvert language, "desicate speech, stop words in their
tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source".
What I am describing is the idea of a heterotopia as it applies to
art and literature, but Foucault and others also use it to describe
various institutions and social constructs. The latter use is not one I
understand very well, and I will leave it to somebody else who wants to
write it up.
Foucault's example of a heterotopia in This Is Not a Pipe is
René Magritte's paintings. However, my favorite example of the idea
of a heteroptopia, as compared to a utopia, is Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, as compared to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In Waiting for Godot,
we have two acts, two days in the life of Didi and Gogo. Each day
someone named Godot, for whom they are waiting, is supposed to show
up but doesn't. It is implied that these two days are two in an endless
series stretching endlessly back and forward. All of these days,
simulacra of each other, are devoid of substance, composed of idleness
and conversation-as-filler, as Didi and Gogo are paralyzed in their
inability to ascertain any a-priori knowledge, or indeed to figure out what they're meant to do. The reason I call this a utopia is that it is grounded in the notion of a law of the conservation of meaning inherent
in the rules of representation: because, to Beckett, the endless copies
of Didi and Gogo's lack an original, Didi and Gogo cannot have any
originality. If they find their original, namely if Godot shows
up, their life will be affirmed, but because there's no expectation he
will, their life is meaningless. You might like to call it a dystopia
instead of a utopia (hasn't Utopia always been a dystopia), but in any
case it is very indicative of the premise of existentialism.
On the other hand, in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,
we have another couple of characters who are trying unsuccessfully to
get a grip on their existence. Ros. and Guil. run around behind and in
front of the scenes of Hamlet, trying to figure out what the
hell it is that they're supposed to be doing here, going on very little
information (they're not even sure which one of them is Ros. and which
is Guil.). Miraculously, they stumble into all of their scenes and
utter all their lines. The way Ros. and Guil. try to figure out what
they're meant to do is
not to look for their supposed original (the script), but to figure out
what people expect them to do. One of the question the play raises is
"are Ros. and Guil. following the script or is the script a result of
Ros. and Guil.'s actions?" Indeed Stoppard puts into his play even more
levels of similitude -- apparent
representation -- (and even gets some layers for free with his choice
of
Hamlet, which already has in it a play within a play,) and
all of these copies in turn provoke more questions about the direction
of the arrows of representation between simulacra. But these are all
rhetorical questions without any satisfactory answers. They simply
point out the absurdity of the whole endeavor, the attempt to derive
affirmation from representation.
Rather the contrary seems to be implied: the sheer number of
different ways in which we might choose to understand the ambiguous
ways the simulacra interact contests understanding. This is a
heterotopia -- "the disorder in which a large number of possible
orders glitter separately" (The Order of Things). Whereas Waiting for Godot is a broken utopia, a chain of arrows pointing one to the next, never reaching a destination, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead is a playful answer: a whole mess of arrows pointing any and everywhere, spinning randomly. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
is great when it makes fun of the futility of discourse in this
heterotopia that it inhabits: Ros. and Guil.'s vain atempts to
ascertain a-priori facts like their own names, the direction of
the wind, or why the heck a tossed coin keeps coming up heads
invariably become hilariously absurd. Stoppard makes a mockery of
Beckett's fatalism. In his heterotopia, attempting to derive a
personal meaning through philosophical discourse doesn't make sense.
Instead, the advice one acting troupe member gives to Ros. and Guil.,
indeed that Stoppard gives to any of us, is "Relax. Respond. That's
what people do." This is postmodernism's response to
existentialism. This is the ultimate application of the concept of
heterotopia, to one's philosophical conception of the world.