Heterotopias
Returning to The Book of Trespass, there’s a chapter about Grow Heathrow, a live-in protest encampment that ran for 19 years. Nick Hayes notes that:
Foucault has a word for places such as these. He called them heterotopias — spaces of outsiders forged deep inside society, spaces that reflect the orthodoxy of that society by arranging themselves differently. These spaces are distinct from utopias in that they are real, they actually exist, and they manifest their ideologies in real space. Someone has done the plumbing, set up the solar panels, installed the long-drop compost toilet. They work; there are alternatives.
Yes. Yes. Yes. There are alternatives. Some are not merely theoretically. We can point directly at them. We can go there.
The Findhorn Community in Scotland springs to mind. The Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. Until last month there was Schumacher College in England.
It’s not just the big institutional ones either: every tiny home, every squat, every not-for-profit or public interest company, every commune, every inhabited van or canal boat, every tent-as-residence, every magazine that refuses adverting (!). There are thousands of heterotopias, thousands of alternatives, out there. Maybe millions. Isn’t that exciting?
See also: experiments in living, as discussed by another philosopher John Stuart Mill.
We should all be on the lookout for heterotopias. Tell others about them. Believe in alternatives.
Update: My other notes from The Book of Trespass, though they may not be as directly Escapological as this one and may also deluge you, are here.
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About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk
Some techy examples of heterotopias: blogs, YouTube videos that teach us how to fix obscure problems, Ad blockers, free software that will do something that was previously paid (eg. OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office), people who refurbish and resell old office computers destined for the dump on eBay for a fraction of what a new computer costs, and old school chat rooms where you can ask questions when your computer breaks. These were all my first exposures to this concept, and definitely instilled that sense that this is real and touches millions of people and makes their lives just a little bit easier.
All true. Do you like the Old Web review in the magazine?