De espaços outros

Abstract

The starting point of this lecture, which was conceived during Michel Foucault's stay in Tunisia as a visiting professor and published almost twenty years later, is this author's seminal thesis on the fact that the 20th century was the century of space. The aim is to emphasize the importance of a history of space in the Western experience By distinguishing between the (medieval) space of localization, the space of extension (evidenced by Galileo) and the (contemporary) space of emplacement, Foucault particularly tackles the latter's heterogeneity with reference to the "space of the outside", i.e. a set of relations which define emplacements that are irreducible to one another. Even though this realm comprises two major types of emplacements-utopias and heterotopias -, the author is especially interested in the latter ones, which he conceives as effectively enacted utopias. In his "heterotopology" he "describes" them by means of six principles which are explained one by one with the aid of inspiring examples.