Kelvin T Knight | University of East Anglia (original) (raw)

Talks by Kelvin T Knight

Considerations of Space: Foucault’s Heterotopia in Ulysses Although the streets of Ulysses are we... more Considerations of Space: Foucault’s Heterotopia in Ulysses
Although the streets of Ulysses are well-worn, there remains a significant unresolved tension in the critical approaches to the question of space in Joyce’s most famous work. On the one hand, influenced by anecdotal remarks about Joyce’s own claims to geographical accuracy, a culture has grown up that reveres the novel’s precise topography. On the other, post-structuralist critics assert that Joyce’s language eradicates the possibility that the novel represents any stable and unified external reality.
In this paper, I want to suggest that these two ways of thinking can be reconciled through reference to Foucault’s notion of heterotopian spaces, sites which, he says, ‘are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.’ Indeed, of the spaces mentioned by Foucault in his lecture ‘Of Other Spaces’, the cemetery, the library, the museum, the bath house, the brothel, and the mirror all appear in Joyce’s novel. However, although it has found a wider audience in its geographical incarnation, Foucault’s concept has a literary origin. He actually first defines it in relation to Borges as an impossible space, representable only in language, of which there are many examples in Ulysses. Therefore, I also want to think about how the novel can help us to elucidate the apparent contradictions in Foucault’s concept, and to ultimately discuss the ways in which Joyce’s use of certain geographical settings allows him to constitute the unthinkable spatial constructs of chapters such as ‘Cyclops’ and ‘Circe’.

Although notoriously ill-defined, Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia provides a privileged loc... more Although notoriously ill-defined, Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia provides a privileged locus for an examination of the relationship between textual and geographical space. Foucault first uses the term to describe an impossible Chinese encyclopaedia fabricated by Borges, in which animals are classified according to such bizarre categories as “(a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens,” and “(f) fabulous.” The incommensurability of these groups precludes their simultaneous co-existence in space, prompting Foucault to ask where they could ever be juxtaposed “except in the non-place of language?” However, the concept has found a much wider audience in its geographical incarnation, as delineated in Foucault’s lecture ‘Of Other Spaces’. Here, Foucault describes heterotopias as “a simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live,” sites which are “outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.” As numerous commentators have pointed out, there exists a significant contradiction between these two definitions, with one signifying an impossible space, only representable in language, and the other describing a real, albeit mythical site. In this paper, I want to argue that in order to ascertain any useful understanding of the concept it must be restored to its literary origins. In particular, I believe Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia hinges upon that word “contestation,” a term he borrows from Blanchot, who uses it in both his literary criticism and his political writings to describe a persistent testing of the limits of comprehension, and a kind of non-positive affirmation. As Foucault makes clear, such a seemingly paradoxical construct can only be fully realised in language, and only then in representations of space, thus making fictional space a privileged realm of contestation.

W.G. Sebald’s penultimate work of prose fiction, The Rings of Saturn, has silk woven through its ... more W.G. Sebald’s penultimate work of prose fiction, The Rings of Saturn, has silk woven through its pages. Culminating in a lengthy discussion of the history of sericulture in the final chapter, the fabric repeatedly surfaces in the fragmentary episodes of the narrative, from the purple piece of silk in Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial to the fishing nets of coarse Persian silk used to catch herring in Lowestoft. Sebald even compares the occupations of writer and weaver, suggesting that both professionals are prone to the bouts of melancholy that result from “the feeling that they have got hold of the wrong thread.” Yet in response to the pattern books that he views in a Norwich museum, Sebald’s narrator explains how the samples of silk found therein “seem to me to be leaves from the only true book which none of our textual and pictorial works can even begin to rival.” Therefore, in this paper I want to address the way in which things hold together in The Rings of Saturn, and the way in which Sebald attempts to weave together the diverse subjects of his digressions, but can never quite emulate the materiality of the sample book. It is my opinion that the author uses this metaphor to demonstrate the discord between the integrity of the landscape that his narrator traverses, threaded together by roads, footpaths, railways, and bridges, and the highly incongruous nature of his diverse mental detours.

In the opening pages of Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald’s narrator describes the experience of watching a... more In the opening pages of Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald’s narrator describes the experience of watching a raccoon in Antwerp Zoo repeatedly washing the same piece of apple, “as if it hoped that all this washing…would help it to escape the unreal world in which it had arrived, so to speak, through no fault of its own.” This image anticipates the appearance of Sebald’s protagonist, Jacques Austerlitz, who is sent by Kindertransport to Britain in 1939, where all memory of his origins is subsequently erased by his Welsh foster parents. Yet in contrast to the raccoon, Austerlitz’s world seems unrelentingly real. The narrative contains a remarkable number of Foucault’s heterotopian places, such as the zoo, which he describes as “simultaneously mythic and real contestation[s] of the space in which we live.” But while Sebald’s narrator frequently points out the mythical potential of such sites, his protagonist repeatedly dispels the unreality of these spaces, assimilating them into historical narratives of atrocity, or demonstrating how they constitute monuments to imperial power. Nevertheless, it is his experience in the Ladies’ Waiting Room at Liverpool Street Station, which appears to him as an entirely unthinkable space, that ultimately allows Austerlitz to discover the truth about his past, as he witnesses all the hours of his life simultaneously. Therefore, in this paper, with reference to Foucault’s heterotopia, I will examine the relationship between real and unreal space, and consider why it is that this unimaginable place allows Sebald to access his true identity.

If Ulysses is “a kind of encyclopaedia,” as Joyce insists it is, then surely it is the kind in wh... more If Ulysses is “a kind of encyclopaedia,” as Joyce insists it is, then surely it is the kind in which “things are ‘laid’, ‘placed’, ‘arranged’ in sites so very different from one another that it is impossible…to define a common locus beneath them all.” This is how Foucault defines his concept of the heterotopia, an impossible textual construct which violates the spatial nature of our thought, and which he illustrates through reference to Borges’s infamous Chinese encyclopaedia, which classifies animals in such incommensurable categories as “belonging to the Emperor,” “fabulous,” “included in the present classification,” and “et cetera.” Where else could these groupings be juxtaposed, Foucault asks, “except in the non-place of language?” Of course, Joyce’s ‘encyclopaedia’ ostensibly finds its own common locus in the city of Dublin; however, perhaps this well-defined topography is undermined by an alternative definition that Foucault outlined of the heterotopia as a geographical site which constitutes a “simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live.” As Enda Duffy has remarked, Ulysses is “rife with heterotopic spaces.” From the bath house to the library, the museum to the cemetery, the maternity hospital to the brothel, via countless mirrors, Joyce’s readers are constantly encountering examples of Foucault’s “other spaces”. Indeed, Foucault even suggests that the colony serves as a kind of heterotopia. Therefore, this paper aims not only to investigate the relationship between space, language and knowledge in Ulysses, but also to think about the ways in which Joyce’s novel can help us understand the connection between Foucault’s seemingly contradictory definitions of the same term.

“Frustratingly incomplete, inconsistent, incoherent.” That is how Edward Soja describes Michel Fo... more “Frustratingly incomplete, inconsistent, incoherent.” That is how Edward Soja describes Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia. Yet despite being notoriously ill-defined, the heterotopia has endured as a source of inspiration for geographers, architects, and writers alike. In recent decades, for example, authors including WG Sebald and Michael Ondaatje have explicitly engaged with Foucault’s concept in their novels. But this relationship between space and literature in the heterotopia is not unreciprocated. “It is obvious,” argues Christine Boyer, “that Foucault is drawing many of his examples from literature to shore up his discussion of heterotopias.” Nowhere is this more evident than in a radio talk delivered as part of a series on literature and utopia in December 1966, in which he quotes Edmond de Goncourt, Louis Aragon, and The Thousand and One Nights. He even discusses the relationship between the garden, the most ancient example of the heterotopia, and the novel form. However, it was as a result of this broadcast that Foucault was invited to lecture to the Cercle d’études architecturales, and it is in his reconstituted notes from this occasion, published in 1984 as ‘Of Other Spaces’, and devoid of literary significance, that the heterotopia endures. With reference to the writers who helped to shape Foucault’s ideas, and to much of his literary criticism from the same period, I hope to restore the heterotopia to its primary literary status, and explore the nature of this ongoing exchange between space and writing.

Papers by Kelvin T Knight

English Language Notes, 2014

Textual Practice, 2016

ABSTRACT This article looks to restore Michel Foucault's concept of the heterotopia to its li... more ABSTRACT This article looks to restore Michel Foucault's concept of the heterotopia to its literary origins, and to thereby resolve the paradox that exists between Foucault's various definitions of the term. Described by Foucault as both an unimaginable space, representable only in language, and as a kind of semi-mythical real site, examples of which include the mirror, the prison, the library, the garden and the brothel, the heterotopia seems inherently contradictory. However, through a reading of an often overlooked radio broadcast given by Foucault as part of a series on literature and utopia, this article demonstrates that the concept was never intended to refer to real urban sites, but rather pertains exclusively to textual representations of these sites. Subsequently, it looks to draw parallels between Foucault's remarks about the heterotopia and several examples of his literary criticism, on writers including Sade, Flaubert and Borges. In particular it draws attention to the similarities between Foucault's definitions of the heterotopia and the language he uses to describe the ‘placeless places’ of Blanchot's fiction, and to posit the heterotopia as an example of Blanchot's notion of literary contestation.

This article looks to restore Michel Foucault's concept of the heterotopia to its literary origin... more This article looks to restore Michel Foucault's concept of the heterotopia to its literary origins, and to thereby resolve the paradox that exists between Foucault's various definitions of the term. Described by Foucault as both an unimaginable space, representable only in language, and as a kind of semi-mythical real site, examples of which include the mirror, the prison, the library, the garden and the brothel, the heterotopia seems inherently contradictory. However, through a reading of an often overlooked radio broadcast given by Foucault as part of a series on literature and utopia, this article demonstrates that the concept was never intended to refer to real urban sites, but rather pertains exclusively to textual representations of these sites. Subsequently, it looks to draw parallels between Foucault's remarks about the heterotopia and several examples of his literary criticism, on writers including Sade, Flaubert and Borges. In particular it draws attention to the similarities between Foucault's definitions of the heterotopia and the language he uses to describe the ‘placeless places’ of Blanchot's fiction, and to posit the heterotopia as an example of Blanchot's notion of literary contestation.

English Language Notes, 2014

Textual Practice, 2016