“Of Other Spaces” introduces the notion of the “heterotopia,” a hybrid space that is “a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live.” The text begins with a succinct description of how the discrete and hierarchical spaces of the Medieval era — the celestial, the earthly, the subterranean, and so forth — were eventually thrown into question by the ruptures brought about by Galilean physics and cosmology. According to Foucault, Galileo’s epistemological break substituted “extension” for “localization”, meaning that a “thing’s place was no longer anything but a point in its movement.” This set the stage for our present epoch, which Foucault (following Bachelard) argues is “one in which space takes for us the form of relations among sites.”

The remainder of the paper discusses the various characteristics of heterotopias. Foucault argues that such spaces are universal and necessary components of human civilization, but that their function shifts over time in response to changes in culture. Their overarching functionality, however, remains constant: heterotopias are always places where incompatible or contradictory kinds of space converge. Heterotopias are often linked to “slices in time”: museums present a space for the indefinite accumulation of time, while festivals are transitory heterotopias that frame an experience of the immediate and the ephemeral. In both cases, they represent an “absolute break” with the traditional time of their enclosing cultures.

Heterotopias are both isolated and accessible, public and hidden. They enable us to both confront our illusions and to create new illusions of the utopias we cannot have. Foucault concludes his paper by remarking that the ship, with its shifting relations and meanings, is the heterotopia par excellence, and that in “civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.”