Foucault begins his lecture by describing the loss of the hierarchical assemblage of places seen most prolifically in the Middle Ages. Most specifically referencing the cemetery, encompassed by both a series of hierarchies both within the cemetery and within the larger arena as an external space connected to all the sites of the city. At the start of the 19th century, cemeteries were no longer the heart of the city, as they became associated with illness and infection, and were consequently located to the outskirts of cities where each family had their dark resting place. With the loss of history and the celestial, sites across the city appear to homogenize. However, Foucault argues that simple life still remains governed by oppositions, “for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of leisure and that of work. All these are still nurtured by the hidden presence of the sacred.”[1]
Foucault classifies the cemetery as a heterotopia, to mean space that is outside the everyday social and institutional space. The cemetery historically has a “curious property;”[2] that which both contradicts and links to surrounding sites, while also neutralizing a set of relationships on the site. Looking forward, as cities begin to homogenize and loose tangible qualities to the celestial, how will power and social control shift? Will power structures neutralize with a shift in previously deemed ‘negative structures’ of society, or will there be a new set of standards created?
[1] Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Architecture/ Mouvement/ Continuite, 1984: 2. (“Des Espace Autres,” March 1967 Translated from French by Jay Miskowiec)
[2] Foucault: 2.