What a joy to find a long overlooked theory article! I know everyone writes that theory is over, but every now and then that old rush returns when I pick up an unfamiliar masterpiece written decades ago.
I had spent years reading Foucault and after relying on him to structure my dissertation turned into first book, I thought a break was in order. That first book was so thoroughly defined by my allegiance to Foucault. "The hand of the master is little too obvious," one of my writing group buddies said back then. Ok so I over compensated, avoided Foucault just as I had avoided Adorno and Benjamin after graduate school.
And then that little essay, really just a bunch of lecture notes, "Of Other Spaces," brought back all the old happiness. After nine years sitting in the wilderness, what a pleasure to read that old style intense language where every paragraph spawns a book. No more rambling current events blogs, no more unconnected contextualisations—no a short burst of closely packed ideas, strung together as assertions, almost commandments to reflect upon and critique.
Sure, I knew the essay was out there, sure lots of people give a passing footnote to his heterotopias. But those footnotes were always so pro forma, so empty of specifics, just a nod in the direction of Paris that I never felt drawn to the essay, until yesterday in the mad panic to construct a syllabus.
Boom, now I am loaded with a whole new terminology, all my geographical/spatial mutterings have a kick, that once upon a time surge of walking around the neighborhood packing, even its just my own basement study.
To read a fine essay, even as lecture notes published posthumously, brings to mind how dull things have become since the theory heads sailed away across the ocean of eternity.
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