"The Big Open"? Heterotopias and Colonial Expansion in North America
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F25%3A10506695" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/25:10506695 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=qUHDBQPL6H" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=qUHDBQPL6H</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.14712/23362685.5075" target="_blank" >10.14712/23362685.5075</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
"The Big Open"? Heterotopias and Colonial Expansion in North America
Original language description
Modernity is characterised by a substantial transformation of space. The closed medieval space defined by a hierarchy of fixed places gives way to the open and infinite space of modern science and imagination. According to Michel Foucault, modern space "is presented to us in the form of relations of emplacement." In contrast to fixed places, most emplacements are mobile and functional, yet not all of them are determined by their specific functions. For instance, "heterotopias" undermine the functional status of other emplacements. Moreover, heterotopias engender "heterochronias", which attract attention to discontinuities of space and conventional time. As heterotopias, modern ruins unsettle the discourses of redemption and progress, and testify to the failures of economic or technological power. This is especially true about the "ghost towns" emerging during the colonisation of the American West as one of its major symbols articulating the space of the "Big Open": the West as both an "exceptional" and a "national" region, historical as well as mythical experience. As discursive and material objects, ghost towns oscillate between the function of historical monuments of the Gold Rush, prosperous industrialisation or local settlement, and the squalor and obscurity of trash, which, however, can be fetishised or even monumentalised. From its outset, the colonisation of North America has been represented and justified by means of religious, as well as secular, apocalyptic narratives constructing the continent as a space of revelations (of the future destiny of nations or the end of history). As "spectres" (Jacques Derrida), ghost towns reveal an important feature of North American colonial expansion - the imaginary, illusory, but also real nature of the Frontier. Moreover, they may turn our attention to the functioning of modern borders, especially migration flows and social divisions.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>ost</sub> - Miscellaneous article in a specialist periodical
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60205 - Literary theory
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/EH22_008%2F0004595" target="_blank" >EH22_008/0004595: Beyond Security: Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)
Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Prague Journal of English Studies
ISSN
1804-8722
e-ISSN
2336-2685
Volume of the periodical
14
Issue of the periodical within the volume
1
Country of publishing house
CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC
Number of pages
14
Pages from-to
9-22
UT code for WoS article
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EID of the result in the Scopus database
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