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We are in the epoch
of simultaneity
(Michel Foucault) |
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1. ‘There is probably not a single culture in the world that fails to constitute heterotopias.'
As this results in many different forms of such sites, Foucault splits them into two main categories: the crisis heterotopia
and that of deviation.
The first is for people, who are, in relation to society, in a state of crisis, such as ‘adolescents, menstruating women,
pregnant women, the elderly, etc.’
The Internet can provide such places, that function as points of contact for those in comparable situations.
These virtual support groups and information points function in the same way as a place reserved for menstruating women or
hormonal teenagers would, where the support of ones peers provides some relief.
The second, the heterotopias of deviation are places in which ‘individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation to
the required
mean or norm are placed’.
Psychiatric hospitals and prisons are such places. Although use of the Internet is a voluntary experience, comparable sites
can be found. The most obvious would be the proliferation of specialist sex sites, catering for every possible predilection,
allowing those with such tastes access to material and contact with others of the same, which normally would be out of bounds
in the practice of everyday life.
Another example would be those sites used by those with socially unacceptable ideals or political agendas, such as anarchists,
the far right and other politically marginalised groups. Although those that run such sites are, own the whole, at liberty,
they have been forced to use the net as a consequence of society’s intolerance to their views, and so have been effectively
placed there, even if it is by their own hands and as a last resort.
It is a consequence of the net's freedom and amorality that such creeds, whatever their aim may be, have flourished there,
away from the physical world.
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3. Heterotopias are ‘capable of juxtaposing in a single real space several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible’
Foucault gives the examples of the theatre or cinema. Art galleries are another possible example, each painting bringing into
the single space of the gallery many different scenes, tableaux and locations .
Cyberspace, of course, displays this same quality. Within this space, one is able to visit any number of locations and experience
many different views. One is not simply shown what a place looks like, but also what is happening there at that very moment,
thus experiencing a temporal as well as spatial compression.
This apparent simultaneity further increases the sensation that the distant place is actually being experienced first hand
and that one is present in an, in reality, far removed space.
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4. The fourth principle is that a heterotopia is ‘most often linked to slices of time (and) begins to function at full capacity
when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time.’
Again, Foucault identifies two main categories for such heterotopias, those of ‘indefinitely accumulating time’ and those
linked to ‘time in its most fleeting, transitory, precarious aspect’.
For the first kind, he describes places such as museums and libraries, which can store and archive all times and epochs, and
which go on doing so, adding all ideas to the ever growing store until everything is contained in the one place.
This can be seen to be happening in cyberspace, where there is a constantly expanding archive of what has gone before is digitised
and made available through the computer.
Foucault describes the library and the museum as ‘heterotopias that are proper to Western culture in the nineteenth century’,
but the Internet is proving to provide a similar function in the twenty-first.
For the second category, that of the fleeting moment, Foucault used the examples of the festival, the fairground or the vacation
village, all of which are totally orientated towards providing a temporally finite experience, far removed from the everyday,
yet over in a short time.
Web cams have played a part in providing such an experience, with web casts covering specific events and broadcasting them
live across the globe.
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6. Heterotopias have ‘a function in relation to all the space that remains’.
This principle is again split into two categories, those of illusion, and those of compensation.
Heterotopias of illusion are said to ‘expose every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as
still more illusory’. The function of such a site would be to create a space that is ‘as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged
as ours is messy, ill constructed, and as jumbled.
Foucault uses the examples of colonies or ideologically planned settlements.
A comparison could be made to the pioneer notions of the Electronic Frontier Foundation of cyberspace as somewhere onto which
certain ideals can be mapped, as a chance to once again be the architects of a virgin terrain.
It has also been noted that many popular representations of cyberspace, such as in the work of Gibson places cyberspace within
a dystopian (though near future) context, inviting the reader to ‘look into the orderly world behind your computer screen
and at the screaming, disorderly mess outside your window (…the thinly disguised present).’ (Pam Rosenthal, quoted in Lajoie,
1996, p.168).
Such fantasies can definitely be seen to exhibit compensatory characteristics, and the increasing amount of time and number
of activities experienced online further attest to such a theory.
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Foucault spoke of heterotopias in a 1967 lecture entitled 'Of Other Spaces'.
Here Foucault talks of those spaces that are ‘in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize,
or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect.’
He describes a counter-site in which ‘the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously
represented, contested and inverted.’
These sites he calls heterotopias, and claims they are real sites that can be found in every culture.
Cyberspace can be described as a heterotopia, one that millions visit everyday, and which displays all of the principles by
which Foucault defined such places.
Foucault used the term ‘heterotopology’ to describe the systematic study of such places and identified six traits or principles
which heterotopias displayed. |
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2. A society 'can make an existing heterotopia function in a very different fashion'
This could be applied to the Internet in terms of its transformation from a largely military preserve to a civilian forum.
In its initial stages, the required amounts of funding and technological resources, as well as its communicative advantages,
kept the Internet’s availability limited to those who had access to such.
As technology advanced, prices fell and the hardware got smaller, so more people had the opportunity to use the system.
Even since this sea change in access and usage occurred, the function of cyberspace has continued to evolve, as it mirrors
and perhaps affects changes in society. Where it was once seen as a place for academic research or debate, it has begun to
be used as a site for leisure activities, and increasingly as a commercial, mercantile arena . |
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5. Heterotopias ‘always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable.’
This has a literal parallel in the fact that cyberspace is a closed space.
Although open to other places, this is only possible once already inside and access has been gained through a specific entry
point and requiring a sophisticated computer system to gain entry. Without it cyberspace might as well not exist, as one will
experience none of its qualities in any other everyday, physical place, just as the activities within a casino or monastery,
for example, will remain unknown unless one can gain entry to them.
The possession of both material and intellectual capital allow the user to successfully negotiate the esoteric system that
guards the many portals to cyberspace.
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