The space of play.Towards of a general theory of heterotopia

Heterotopia, literally meaning ' other place', is a rich concept in urban design that describes a world off-center with respect to normal or everyday spaces, one that possesses multiple, fragmented or even incompatible meanings. The term has had an impact on architectural and urban theory since it was coined by Foucault in the late 1960s but has remained a source of confusion and debate since. Heterotopia and the City seeks to clarify this concept and investigates the heterotopias which exist throughout our contemporary world: in museums, theme parks, malls, holiday resorts, gated communities, wellness hotels and festival markets. The book combines theoretical contributions on the concept of heterotopia, including a new translation of Foucault's influential 1967 text, Of Other Spaces, with a series of critical case studies that probe a range of (post) urban transformations, from the 'malling' of the agora, through the 'gating' of dwelling to the 'theming' of urban renewal. Wastelands and terrains vagues are are explored as sites of promise and resistance in a section on urban activism and transgression. The reader gets a glimpse of the extremes of our dualized, postcivil condition through case studies on Jakarta, Dubai, and Kinshasa. Heterotopia and the City provides a collective effort to reposition heterotopia as a crucial concept for contemporary urban theory and redirects the current debate on the privatization of public space. The book will be of interest to all those wishing to understand the city in the emerging postcivil society and posthistorical era. Planners, architects, cultural theorists, urbanists and academics will find this a valuable contribution to current critical argument. Summary of the chapters Chapter 1: Heterotopology: 'a science in the making'. To help the reader, the book opens with the text that is one of its prime sources of inspiration: Michel Foucault's 'Of Other Spaces', in which he introduces his program for research on space, a science in the making and labeled as 'heterotopology'. Foucault's text is followed by two contributions that place the text in context. James Faubion's text situates this rather atypical essay within Foucault's wider oeuvre. Heidi Sohn focuses on the reception history of the initially medical concept. Chapter 2: Heterotopia Revisited. The texts of the second chapter present a commentary on Foucault's concept in light of its contemporary relevance for a discussion on the city and public space: Quid heterotopia? What constitutes the otherness of the other spaces Foucault speaks of? What is their role in society and their place in the city? The contributions of this opening chapter set out to test the limits and internal consistency of Foucault's concept. Heterotopia appears to be open to very different readings: one reading views it as a central institution of the polis, another approach situates heterotopia in the subliminal, infra-political margins, and yet a third perspective focus on heterotopia's representational/mirroring role within the contemporary network space. Chapter 3: The Mall as Agora / The Agora as Mall - The mall has clear heterotopian characteristics which could perhaps most easily be qualified as situated somewhere between the 'heterotopia of illusion' and the 'heterotopia of compensation'. However, in spite of all its phantasmagoric qualities, the mall seems profoundly embedded in everyday culture, in the commodification of life, the reproduction of conformity and conformism, rather than the celebration of alterity. In the different contributions of this chapter, heterotopia appears as a helpful concept to understand the mall as a newly emerging public space type, or, more accurately, a new 'dispositif' supporting old and new practices of public life. Chapter 4: Dwelling in a Postcivil Society: The house, the dwelling, is the place of everyday life par excellence. Today, the place of intimacy and invisibility changes and takes on heterotopian overtones. On the one hand, instead of just being unexposed, it becomes gated, fortified. On the one hand, it becomes a place of visibility: themed holiday living. Chapter 5 Terrains Vagues: transgressions and urban activism - Following the tradition of the sociology of Lefebvre, the activist practices of the International Situationists and the social critique of Michel de Certeau, the contributions to this chapter look for heterotopia in the margins, in the terrains vagues, the zone, the wasteland, the invisible leftover territories. All the contributions focus on that dimension of heterotopia which resists representation: heterotopia's subliminal side. In a series of different case studies, heterotopia's potential as a 'space of resistance' is rendered explicit. The micro-political underpinnings of the texts in this chapter show that the tradition of artistic urban activism is far from dead. Chapter 6: Heterotopias in the splintering metropolis The texts in this chapter investigate the possibilities of a heterotopian urbanism, questioning the capacity of architecture and urbanism to design for 'the other'. One problematic characteristic of 'other spaces' is their tendency to become 'normalized', institutionalized or even annihilated as soon as they become the subject of attention of the architect or urbanist. Nevertheless, heterotopia holds the promise of a program, a city in which the other is accommodated, an affluent city of plurality and heterogeneity. Heterotopia appears as the last resort for urbanism to maintain its integrating gesture in the context of the contemporary splintering metropolis. Chapter 7: Heterotopia after the Polis. The contributions to this last chapter try and tackle the place and function of heterotopia in an emerging postcivil society. Heterotopia appears both as part of an archipelago of well connected and privileged islands as well as the suspended, isolated enclaves of the impoverished and disenfranchised communities of the 'global south'.

ISBN:978-0-415-42288-8

Jaar van publicatie:2008