ABSTRACT
Foucault (1986) writes of how the spaces in which we live always have a degree of heterogeneity. This is because life is by necessity taking place inside a set of relations that lead to the emergence and delineation of “sites” that are irreducible. The Internet is also one such “heterotopia.” Among the many dimensions – social and spatial – of twenty-first century life, the duality of online versus offline, virtual versus material, cyberspace versus meatspace has become increasingly highlighted throughout the last decade. This is partly because some understandings of the informational age are caught up with maintaining this distinction and partly because the inevitable and continuous blurring of this distinction is now at the center of a number of noteworthy socio-cultural debates (over sexualities, identities, copyrights, privacy, politics, etc.). In his essay on “other spaces,” Foucault (1986: 24) outlines an approach to heterotopias that takes as its object,
the study, analysis, description, and “reading” (as some like to say nowadays) of these different spaces, of these other places. As a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live, this description could be called heterotopology.
