heterotopia

plural heterotopias

1. countableuncountablemedicineNormal tissue (or an organ) present at an abnormal part of the body

   Synonyms: allotopia, ectopia, ectopy, dystopia, malposition

2. countableuncountablebiologyThe occurrence of an organism in a number of different habitats
3. countableuncountableliterary criticismhuman sciencesA space which is alien to what is normal within the society, variably presenting a utopian vision in physical form or serving to segregate subversive elements from the wider society.

   Michel Foucault gave the museum and the mental hospital as two different examples of heterotopias.

   2 more examples

   There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places — places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society — which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias. I believe that between utopias and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would be the mirror.

   1967, Michel Foucault, translated by Jay Miskowiec, "Of Other Spaces"

   For Foucault, heterotopias are not imagined places but real places that almost delete themselves from public consciousness. They are null sites in awareness, yet inevitable and vital to the construction of space.

   2002, James W Flanagan, David M Gunn, Paula M McNutt, "Imagining" biblical worlds