Heterotopia (space)

Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow "other": disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming.

"[3] Foucault uses the term heterotopia (French: hétérotopie) to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye.

[4] Human geographers often connected to the postmodernist school have been using the term – and the author's propositions – to help understand the contemporary emergence of (cultural, social, political, economic) difference and identity as a central issue in larger multicultural cities.

[5] There is an extensive debate with theorists, such as David Harvey, who remain focused on the matter of class domination as the central determinant of social heteronomy.

[6] Mary Franklin-Brown uses the concept of heterotopia in an epistemological context to examine the thirteenth century encyclopedias of Vincent of Beauvais and Ramon Llull as conceptual spaces where many possible ways of knowing are brought together without attempting to reconcile them.

According to Chung, a heterotopic perception of digital media is to grasp the globally dispersed labor structure of multinational capitalism that produces the audiovisual representations of various spacio-temporalities.