| Popis: |
In Foucault’s ‘Of Other Spaces’ (1986), we are introduced to heterotopias: spaces of ‘otherness’ that reveal the shadows of everyday life. One of these heterotopias that Foucault discusses is rest homes, which he describes as a place that exists on the border between being a heterotopia of crisis (a forbidden place) and a heterotopia of deviation (a place to house individuals that display behaviour that is irregular to the norm). In this paper, I explore Foucault’s notion of the rest home as heterotopia, through a close examination of the social worlds of ten older Australians, living in a residential aged care home in Queensland, Australia. Through a combination of repeated in-depth interviews and participatory visual methods, I unpack the social factors that regulate various heterotopian qualities of aged care. Centrally, I make the case that while heterotopias can be oppressive and sites ‘...in which humans experience their limits of existence’ (Hetherington, 1997:46), they can also be places of resistance, as demonstrated by the ways residents utilise habit in pushing back against institutional practices. |
