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Foucault, Michel.  "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986), 22-27.

In this essay, based on a lecture given in 1967, Michel Foucault contests the traditional notion of linear time, asserting that concepts of time have been understood in various ways, under varying historical circumstances.  Foucault's idea corresponds with our understanding of space(s) over time. He establishes two unique sites -- utopias and heterotopias -- which are linked to other spaces, yet are also in contradiction to those other sites to which they are linked.  A utopia is a fundamentally unreal space.  In contrast, a heterotopia a real space, which is simultaneously mythic and real. All cultures are heterotopias, according to Foucault, who provides two categories and five principles to explain the concept's application in reality. The categories include the heterotopia of crisis and deviation, respectively. The first refers to sacred and forbidden places, including the site of the bride's "deflowering" on the honeymoon trip.  The second refers to places where people are placed when they do not conform to the norm, including rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, and prisons.  His five principals are as follows: 1.) All cultures constitute heterotopias; 2.) Heterotopias can change function within a single society; 3.) They may take the form of contradictory sites, such as the representation of a sacred garden as a microcosm of the world in the patterns of a Persian rug; 4.) They are linked with a break in traditional time, identifying spaces that represent either a quasi-eternity, like museums, or are temporal, like fairgrounds; 5.) Heterotopias are not freely accessible, they are entered either by compulsory means, such as jail, or their entry is based on ritual or purification, like Scandinavian saunas, and Moslem hammans. [H. Nasstrom Evans.]