Heterotopias of Higher Education: Technology, Power, and the (Re)Construction of Classroom Space

Abstract

Abstract In drawing upon traditions of critical geographies and the spatial turn in educational theory, this paper argues there are opportunities for expanding spatial modes of educational analysis to digital topographies. Technology facilitates alternative modes of social and spatial ordering in higher education in ways that promote freedom, but that are also are uniquely vulnerable to market capture and the neoliberal logics of the university. In particular, Zoom classrooms constitute an example of Foucault’s heterotopia. By exploring each tenet of a heterotopic space that Foucault outlines in his piece “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” this paper argues that bringing Foucault’s theoretical toolkit to bear on these digital environments offers inroads for leveraging critical, normative critiques of the role of technology in higher education.