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Heterotopia as choreography: Foucault’s sailing vessel

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posted on 2023-06-09, 07:36 authored by Arabella StangerArabella Stanger
In thinking through Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, with a particular focus on the sailing vessel as the heterotopic space par excellence, this article develops an idea of ‘the choreographic’ in order to illuminate the spacetime dialectics which mobilize certain strands of utopian thought. The choreographic is defined incipiently as a place in process and theorized as the making of a situation in which space and time negate one another. The article presents a three-part inquiry through which this idea of the choreographic is used to assess propositions about utopia come-to-earth. The first part of the discussion excavates the choreographic properties of David Harvey’s model for utopian thought and practice (2000). The second part extends that excavation to questions about the spatiotemporal nature of Foucault’s sailing vessel (1986). Finally, the discussion of spacetime oscillation at sea is used to evaluate the utopian character of a lived example: the Middle Passage slave ship. Here the materialist underpinnings of Harvey’s argument are used to extend Foucault’s ideas to (or locate them in) the context of a ship that carries utopia and dystopia entwined. Ultimately, a dialectics of negation is found to be innate in choreography and is uncovered in the concept of utopia itself.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Performance Research

ISSN

1352-8165

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

3

Volume

21

Page range

65-73

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-08-14

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2021-07-26

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2017-08-12

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