IN CIVILIZATIONS WITH BOATS text: Lora Sariaslan
“[…] The boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development, but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.”1 Michel Foucault We are drifting… in our minds, bodies, daily life, and travels. The French philosopher Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia is instrumental in the attempt to comprehend the in-between nature we are embodying at this moment of drifting. According to Foucault, heteretopias—such as mirrors, trains, gardens, hotel rooms, prison, or mental hospitals— have the main function commenting, mirroring, and exposing reality. The philosopher drew on the medical term “heterotopia” (the displacement of an organ from its normal position) to suggest those spaces in society which served as “counter-utopias”. Thus, whereas a utopia was a kind of pure space that did not really exist—literally a “non-place” (to use Marc Augé’s wording2)—but which expressed the social norms that dominated our ideas of what kinds of spaces ought to exist, a heterotopia was an actual space within which various incompatible sites in fact did exist.3 Foucault meant it to identify actual sites or places in which seemingly incompatible differences were—however awkwardly—brought together. A perfect metonym for our current state of 1 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of Human Sciences (London: Routledge Classics, [1966] 2002),124. 2 Marc Augé. Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 2008). 3 Tim Oakes and Patricia Lynn Price. The Cultural Geography Reader (London: Routledge, 2008),79.
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mind as they show a co-existence of contrasts where all spaces are represented, contested, and reversed. According to Foucault, heterotopias can function as alternative sites, between real spaces and imagined utopias. This notion is not simply an abstract space of difference. Heterotopias can thus be both actual and metaphorical spaces, a conjunction between reality and unreality. As Foucault wanted, one of the functions of heterotopia is to provide space for illusion, which is then to uncover real space. The disclosure of real space and the search for freedom are performed through exploration of the (in)stability of all borders, as well as in relation to the most serious phenomena typical of contemporariness. As such, heterotopic spaces are particularly able to denounce reality, to expose existing conditions, to mirror and thus reveal illusions. His heterotopia is “a space in which things are “laid”, “placed”, “arranged” in sites so very different from one another that it is impossible to find a place of residence for them, to define a common locus beneath them all”.4 Foucault suggested that in order to define heterotopia, we need heterotopology that would account for the fact that heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces that might seem incompatible. It is exactly in such places that artists, motivated by a vague longing, look for freedom and demand it. When people move, so do spaces, along with images, cultural practices, and lifestyles. In a time of constant movement, we are in a distinct state of mind that of translating: translating ourselves hence translating our identities. Etymologically meaning ‘the activity of carrying across,’ translation may be the epitome of the global world. Translation has always meant, to a greater or smaller extent, displacement, and is never a once way process, and always involves beings as well as goods in transit. This translation of people and things, either voluntary or forced, has come to change the world, as well as in conceptual terms. The 21st century may well prove to be the age of migration, with millions—of people, goods, money, ideas, and hopes—getting translated every single moment. Hence, translation becomes a metaphor for modern day experience and a practical and conceptual tool to negotiate the world around. 4 Kelvin T. Knight, ‘Placeless places: resolving the paradox of Foucault’s heterotopia’, Textual Practice (2016): 1–18.