Monthly Archives: November 2013

Disruptive aesthetic spaces

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29 November 2013

Two articles by Cath Lambert that have interesting connections with the aesthetic dimensions of heterotopia:

Lambert, C. (2012) ‘Redistributing the sensory: the critical pedagogy of Jacques Rancière’ Critical Studies in Education 53 (2)

Abstract

Jacques Rancière remains neglected within educational debates. In this paper I examine the potential of his philosophies for enacting critical interventions in relation to contemporary (higher) educational concerns. Rancière argues against the progressive temporality of pedagogic relations and provides an alternative thesis that equality is a point of departure for social and pedagogic encounters. He also emphasises the importance of aesthetics and the ‘distribution of the sensible’ as a mechanism for understanding who is un/able to be seen, speak and produce knowledge. These arguments are examined through an analysis of two research-based art installations: Sociologists Talking (2008, 2009) and The Idea of a University (2010). I consider the potential for ‘alternative’ forms of knowledge production and communication to enact different pedagogic methods and re/distribute the sensory spaces in which research and teaching take place.

Lambert, C. (2013) ‘Live Art as Urban Praxis: The Political Aesthetics of the City’ Sociological Research Online, 18 (3) 12

Abstract

This article examines the political possibilities for an aesthetic disruption of urban space and time. Locating the discussion within debates about the neoliberal city, selected art-works from Fierce live art festival in Birmingham, England are used in order to examine how, in a specific and localised context, normative spatial patterns and temporal rhythms can be challenged and subverted. The analysis draws on, and contributes to, a sociological account of the centrality of aesthetics to political and social organisation.

Peter

Prisons

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29 November 2013

I recently received a message from someone who is studying heterotopia in relation to the ‘black site’ prisons that the CIA runs on covert detainment missions around the world. The associations  between this type of  ‘dark space’ and heterotopia are sometimes forgotten.

The prompt reminded me that the United States has both the world’s largest prison population, and the world’s highest per capita incarceration rate as illustrated in this interactive world map showing number of prisoners per 100,000 citizens, by country.

Overcrowded Californian state prison 2006/7
Overcrowded Californian state prison 2006/7

 

Camp X-Ray located in Guantanamo Bay 2002.
Camp X-Ray located in Guantanamo Bay 2002.

 

These images (found readily on Wikipedia) took me to a disturbing site of photographs of Russian prisons and prisoners  taken by Olga Sliy. As she says, few people visit these prisons/prisoners or reflect on how they mirror, distort and disrupt the other world in which we live.

russian prson 2

 

 

 

russian prison

 

 

 

026-800x533

 

I would be interested to hear from anyone else who is undertaking work on the darker side of heterotopias.

Peter

The Geographies of Heterotopia

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8 November 2013

My article ‘The Geographies of Heterotopia’  has been published this week.

Geography Compass 7/11 (2013): 790–803

cover (1)

Abstract

 This article explores the on-going fascination with Foucault’s brief and rather sketchy idea of heterotopia. Drawing out some key lessons from the most sustained interpretations of this curious spatio-temporal concept, it addresses weaknesses and potential contradictions and goes on to highlight trends and emerging themes in studies that incorporate the notion. The article argues that although the uses of Foucault’s accounts of heterotopia are bewilderingly diverse, heterotopias are most productively understood in the context of Foucault’s insistence on ‘making difference’ and their adoption as a tool of analysis to illuminate the multifaceted features of cultural and social spaces and to invent new ones.

Peter

Recent publications

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6 November 2013

Here is a list of mainly recent publications which will be added to the  running bibliographies. The article by Bosteels is the exception – an important article published  in 2003 and  a glaring omission from my previous reference lists.

 

Baille, C. Kabo, J. and Reader, J. (2013) Heterotopia: Alternative pathways to social justice, Alresford, Hants : Zero Books.

 Boano, C. and Leclair-Paquet, B. (2013) ’No Constraint, Or the Potential to Not Do’. Trans – Issue on Stance 22:  50-55.

 Bosteels, B. (2003) ‘Nonplaces: An Anecdoted Topography of Contemporary French Theory’  Diacritics 33 (3/4) 117-139.

Farber, L. and Dreyer, E. (2012) ‘The diary of Bertha Marks as a heterotopia, as articulated in the artwork, The Futility of Writing 24-Page Letters’, Literator 33 (1)

 Franko, M. (2011) ‘Archaeological choreographic practices: Foucault and Forsythe’ History of the Human Sciences  24 (4) 97-112.

 Howell, F. C. (2013) ‘Sense of Place, Heterotopia, and Community: Performing Land and Folding Time in the Badalisc Festival of Northern Italy’ Folklore 124 (1) 45-63.

 McGrath, L. and Reavey, P. (2013) ‘Heterotopias of control: Placing the material in experiences of mental health service use and community living’ Health and Place 22: 123-31.

 Philo, C. (2013) ‘A great space of murmurings: Madness, romance and geography’, Progress in Human Geography  37 (2) 167-194.

 Puric, B. (2014) ‘Matka, a heterotopia of deviation’. Short Film Studies 4 (1) 43-46 (forthcoming).

 Kannen, V. (2013) ‘These are not regular places: women and gender studies classrooms as heterotopias’, Gender, Place and Culture (to be published).

 Turcotte, J. F. and Ball, M. N.  (2013) ‘All Transportation is Local: Mobile-Digital-Networked-Technologies and Networked Orientations’, Transfers 3 (1) 119-139.

Peter