ABSTRACT
Heterotopias are kinds of mirrors to utopias, a counterpoint of the real to the unreal, in which the utopic glance returns to reconstruct the real, in a new way of seeing. Heterotopias are the conceptual space in which we live, they allow a slippage of meaning, they produce a kind of imaginative spatial play, out of which can emanate a new kind of semiotic, new practices, and by extension, new kinds of identities and subjectivities. His Dark Materials leads the reader forward through powerful empathetic identifications into a deliberate reinscription of the narrative of the Fall, a rewriting of shame. The His Dark Materials trilogy is immersed thematically with the various perils of separation, isolation, and seclusion, the daemon-less are detached from the collective good and existentially lost, in loops of shame, unable to reconnect. His Dark Materials is an extended dissertation on human limitations and moral accountability.
