FINDING A NEW PERIPHERY

Throughout history, cemeteries and associated typologies have had their place at the periphery of human habitation - yet at the same time they exist at the periphery of the mind as well. One could argue that they cannot function properly anywhere else.

In the essay ‘Des Espace Autres’ Michel Foucalt discusses the term ‘heterotopia’ as...

...places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.

The cemetery is one of his examples, yet as he examines other such heterotopias, one begins to wonder at what separates these sites from the real sites. It cannot be merely psychological, as that psychology would irresistibly find itself expressed in space. Is it a distance travelled, up or down or outwards or is there some form of mediating boundary - a liminal zone of sorts?

If a horizontal boundary is no longer viable then another physical form of mediator must be found, one that function adequately for the particular type of heterotopia that is the burial place.