In Foucault’s Theory of Discourse, an Understanding of Space as Rhetorical (Or, En Route to a Visual-Material Rhetorics of Heterotopic Space)
While Foucault is of course no stranger to scholars of rhetoric, his concept of heterotopias is not one that is frequently invoked within the field; rather, it is more common, especially among new graduate students of rhetoric, to read Foucault’s work within the context of his theory of discourse. Because his work on heterotopias focuses more directly on his theory of spatiality, it is often more familiar to those who study geography or critical cartographies. Nonetheless, Foucault’s theory of discourse and his theory of space share some common themes; in fact, the curious reader may notice the seeming stylistic and thematic similarities between these two areas of his work. Moreover, readers may account for these similarities by noting the close chronological proximity of his initial articulations of these ideas. That is, the ideas underpinning Foucault’s essay, “Of Other Spaces,” preceded publication of The Archaeology of Knowledge by only two years. While “Of Other Spaces” was officially published in 1984 as “Des Espaces Autres” in the French journal Architecture-Mouvement-Continuité, it was in March of 1967, in France, that Foucault first gave the lecture that would then serve as the basis for this essay, in which he posits his theory of heterotopias (22). Only two years later, in 1969, The Archaeology of Knowledge, or L’Archeologie du Savoir, in which Foucault sets out much of his theory of discourse, was first published in France. Subsequently, to read these two works side by side—especially to read “Of Other Spaces” alongside “The Unities of Discourse” within The Archaeology of Knowledge—quite seemingly invites a reading of space as discursive. As Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg write in The Rhetorical Tradition, Foucault’s theory of discourse
[seeks to] restore to discourse its character as an event. [. . .] [It] describes the relationship between language and knowledge; the functions of disciplines, institutions, and other discourse communities; the ways that particular statements come to have truth value; the constraints on the production of discourse about objects of knowledge; the effects of discursive practices on social action; and the uses of discourse to exercise power. (1127)
Likewise, Foucault’s theory of space may be understood as an active endeavor—one that is concerned with teasing out the relationships between space and knowledge, understanding how spaces may constrain meaning by appearing simple while also concealing knowledge, and understanding how “our life is still governed by a certain number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down” (“Of Other Spaces” 23).
Foucault’s theory of heterotopias asks that we take a close look at our hierarchic “history of space,” which he notes may be traced roughly to the Middle Ages—we must understand this hierarchic ensemble of places in order to expose the different relationships that delineate them—this “ensemble of places,” he says, includes “sacred places and profane places; protected places and open, exposed places; urban places and rural places. [. . .] It was this complete hierarchy, this opposition, this intersection of places that constituted what could very roughly be called medieval space: the space of emplacement” (“Of Other Spaces” 22). Today, he says, this space of emplacement “has been substituted for extension,” which is defined by “relations of proximity between points or elements; formally, we can describe these relations as series, trees, or grids”; the intricacies of these sites then manifest, he says, when dealing with “the storage of data or of the intermediate results of a calculation in the memory of a machine; the circulation of discrete elements with a random output (automobile traffic is a simple case, or indeed the sounds on a telephone line). [. . .] In a still more concrete manner, the problem of siting or placement arises for mankind in terms of demography” (23). Interestingly, we see in Foucault’s description of the contemporary manifestation of the hierarchic ensemble of places, or in the transition from emplacement to extension, allusions to the spatial dimensions and problematics of mediated bodies functioning within a technologically mediated society. Moreover, the “relations of proximity,” or the series, trees, and grids to which Foucault refers, then make possible human practices that, as Biesecker might put it, work both “within and against the grain” to resist hegemonic constructions of space (357). That is, as Biesecker describes within the context of discussing the “implications of Foucault’s work for Rhetoric” (352), the practices that are made possible through these grids also “carry within themselves what Foucault calls ‘a kind of virtual break’ out of which transgression may ensue” (356). Such acts of transgression thus constitute a form of resistance. This notion of resistance, Biesecker feels, is rooted in Foucault’s “non-monumentalized conception of power” (354). I argue here that Biesecker’s ideas about Foucault’s theory of resistance are not only relevant to the field of rhetoric in general but also to how we might understand the rhetorical study of space more specifically.
Biesecker suggests that Foucault indeed has a theory of resistance, and that it is embedded largely in his understanding (and our misunderstanding) of power (pouvoir). That is, “to understand power only as oppressive is reductive” (Biesecker 354). Rather, when we understand that the meaning of the French verb pouvoir loses some of its dimension in the English translation, we begin to understand the ways in which power can be productive for Foucault. Here, Biesecker quotes from Gayatri Spivak: “Pouvoir is of course ‘power.’ But there is also a sense of ‘can-do’-ness in pouvoir [. . .] it is the commonest way of saying ‘can’ in the French language” (qtd. in Biesecker 355). Power then conveys not just limits, but also a “being-able” that happens at multiple levels of practice that at once rely on “existing lines of sense” and “carry within themselves a ‘virtual break’” (357). Resistance thus works “within and against the grain” (357). It “names the nonlegible practices that are performed within the weave but are asymmetrical to it. As Foucault put it, ‘They are the odd term in relations of power’” (357).
Foucault’s program in “The Unities of Discourse” is compatible with Biesecker’s description of how resistance works “within and against the grain” (357). Moreover, “The Unities of Discourse” not only puts into clearer context how scholars of rhetoric might proceed in thinking about discourse but also how they might begin to understand a Foucauldian notion of space. Like his theory of heterotopias, Foucault’s theory of discourse critiques historiography and its propensity toward creating normative continuities; it does so by problematizing a “whole mass of notions” such as tradition, origin, influence, causality, unity, development, and coherence (Archaeology 21), all of which have the effect of “master[ing] time through a perpetually reversible relation between an origin and a term that are never given, but always at work” (22). Foucault’s notion of heterotopic space is founded on a similar idea that contrasts “indefinitely accumulating time” with “time in its most fleeting, transitory, precarious aspect” in order to problematize normative continuities and tease apart the various realities that compose a given space; these realities are time sensitive, reliant on cultural contexts, and often oppose or challenge others’ claims to knowledge (Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” 26).
In the “Unities of Discourse,” Foucault asks us to understand the rules such that we might break them, so to speak; that is, we need to “accept the groupings that history suggests only to subject them at once to interrogation; to break them up and then to see whether they can be legitimately reformed; or whether other groupings should be made; to replace