HeterotopiaAndtheSpacesofIdeology

Barney Samson

London Consortium 2009-2010

DissertationSupervisor: Michael Rosen

HeterotopiaAndtheSpacesofIdeology

If literature has an influence on children’s behaviour, then the classics may present a problem for parents

and teachers if their contents portrays, sanctions, and even models inequity. What to do about kings and

princesses? About the triumph of the strong and the mocking of the weak? (Kohl 1995, p.4).

Whether or not J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels will ultimately be seen as ‘classics’ of children’s

literature, they have been extremely widely read. Such extensively-disseminated texts have the potential

to influence many children. What, then, is the ideology presented by Rowling?

It has been suggested that fantasy is sometimes seen as a genre for audiences “deemed incapable of

complex aesthetic responses” (Stephens 1992, p.242). However, my experience of reading the Harry

Potter novels as a teenager was that they were ideologically complex. In looking more closely at

Rowling’s series I intend to explore this apparent contradiction and attempt to draw out an analysis of the

novels’ ideological assumptions and implications. Specifically I will examine the ideological potential of

the diegetic space that Rowling creates.

I will argue that the space of the Harry Potter novels - particularly that of the last book, Harry Potter and

the Deathly Hallows - allows for the possibility of mutable subjectivity, intersubjectivity and ideological

complexity. This goes against the assumption that fantasy texts tend to assert eternal moralities in the

Liberal Humanist tradition (Stephens 1992, p.243) and so could be seen as evidence that the Harry Potter

novels mark a paradigm shift in children’s fantasy literature.

I will begin by exploring the apparent ideology of the Harry Potter books, thinking about ideology in

three ways identified by Hollindale (cited in Stephens 1992, pp.9-10): explicit ideological elements that

disclose “the writer’s social, political or moral beliefs”, passive ideology, “the implicit presence in a text

of the writer’s unexamined assumptions”, and “ideology as inherent within language”, which I will

examine in terms of narrativity and focalisation.

I will then go on to suggest that a consideration of Rowling’s diegetic space allows an alternative

ideological reading of the novels. I will consider the nature of the space that Rowling has created and the

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psycho-geographical relationship between the spaces of the fictional Muggle (non-magical) and magical

worlds. I will suggest that between these two ‘worlds’ there can be identified an ‘other’ space, which I

will explore using the idea of heterotopia.

Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia was set out in ‘Des Espaces Autres’ in 1984 and published in

English two years later (Foucault 1986). For Foucault, within the heterogeneous space in which we live

are sites that have “the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites”. Such spaces include

utopias, which are “sites with no real place [...] that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy

with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned

upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces” (Foucault 1986, p.24).

My focus, however, will be on the other kind of heterogeneous space that Foucault identifies:

heterotopias. A Foucauldian heterotopia is “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. [...] [T]hese places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about. (Foucault 1986, p.24).

I will also refer to an alternative definition of heterotopia found in The Order of Things (Foucault 2000).

For Foucault, a heterotopia is a type of space that exists in the real world, and he did not apply this idea to

literature. I will examine how his theory can operate in fiction by looking at spaces in Rowling’s novels

that operate outside of the hegemonic conditions of the diegetic world. In this I will draw on the work of

George Smith, who has used the idea of heterotopia in regard to the fiction of Henry James (Smith 2003).

This investigation will take the form of case studies from Rowling’s books, and an examination of the

narrative space of the final novel, in which Harry Potter with his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione

Granger, embark on a quest to bring down Harry’s nemesis Lord Voldemort. Finally I will consider the

ideological significance of these literary heterotopias and the extent to which this constitutes a paradigm

shift in children’s fantasy fiction.

I will use the following conventions to talk about the different spaces I will be considering. By the ‘real

world’ I mean the world in which J. K. Rowling and her readers exist, and by the ‘diegetic world’ I mean

the entirety of the fictional space in which her novels take place. Within that fictional space I will use the

term ‘magical world’ to describe spaces primarily inhabited by magical characters and events, and the

term ‘Muggle world’ to describe primarily non-magical areas of the fictional space. (‘Muggle’ is the word

that witches and wizards use to describe non-magical people). I will abbreviate the book titles to HP1,

HP2 and so on, both in the prose and in my references.

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Apparent Ideology

I will begin by examining the ideology that the Harry Potter books seem to espouse overtly in the

narrative, and implicitly in language and in assumptions about the world. While bearing in mind that an

author’s intentions are inscrutable, I will examine the ‘messages’ that the text might be seen to transmit to

the reader.

The most explicit way in which ideology is conveyed by a text is through elements in the narrative, and in

the Harry Potter novels there is an overt ideological telos - for Harry (representing ‘good’) to defeat

Voldemort (who is ‘bad’). Within this framework, Rowling seems to endorse a desire of tolerance and

equality which is demonstrated in several ways. Perhaps most apparent is condemnation of the

metaphorical racism of ‘pure-blooded’ wizards who discriminate against those of mixed magical and

Muggle parentage. When Draco Malfoy calls Hermione a ‘Mudblood’, Ron explains that:

‘It’s about the most insulting thing he could think of [...] Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born - you know, non-magic parents.’ (HP2, p.89).

Inequality between different magical species can also be seen as metaphorical of discrimination in the real

world. Hermione is politically active for house-elf rights, founding the Society for the Promotion of Elfish

Welfare (HP4, p.198), while Remus Lupin is befriended by Harry despite being a werewolf, “a metaphor

for people’s reactions to illness and disability” (Fraser, p.22 cited in Nel 2001, p.15). However it must be

said that these are both undermined - Ron refers to Hermione’s organisation by its acronym, ‘SPEW’. In

the final book Lupin himself is glad that his son is not born a werewolf, reinforcing the stigma.

Albus Dumbledore, Harry’s headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is represented -

at least in the earlier books - as an infallible moral guide for Harry (and the reader). He tells Harry that

the Philosopher’s Stone provides:

‘As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all - the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things which are worst for them.’ (HP1, p.215).

This ideological stance on monetary wealth is one that Harry already shares, as shown earlier when Ron

reveals that his family don’t have much money:

Harry didn’t think there was anything wrong with not being able to afford an owl. After all, he’d never had any money in his life until a month ago. (HP1, p.75).

The explicit message, therefore, is that there is nothing wrong with being less well-off: this is the view of

the characters that the reader is intended to sympathise with. However, it is interesting to note that the

reader is shown a newly-wealthy hero and his ‘lower-class’ sidekick, implicitly compromising the explicit

message.

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It is also interesting to consider that Rowling depicts a selective boarding school rather one more similar

to the kind of school that most British children attend. Hogwarts seems technically to be a state school - it

is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Magic - but is very different to the type of school that Harry

previously expected to attend, which is presented negatively:

Harry [...] was going to Stonewall High, the local comprehensive. Dudley thought this was very funny.‘They stuff people's heads down the toilet first day at Stonewall,’ he told Harry. ‘Want to come upstairs and practice?’ (HP1, p.24).

This depiction might be seen to conflict with Rowling’s apparent championing of tolerance and equality,

which doesn’t extend to explicit support for the comprehensive school system. On the other hand, Dudley

Dursley’s more exclusive school - presumably a private school, given that the uniform includes “maroon

tailcoats, orange knickerbockers and flat straw hats called boaters” (HP1, p.29) - is also shown negatively,

although here the message is implied rather than overt. The students

carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren’t looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life. (HP1, p.29).

A recurring theme in the books is the power of language, as revealed by “the aversion to saying

Voldemort’s name [...] by virtually everyone (including his own followers) with the exception of

Dumbledore and Harry” (Jacobsen 2004, p.97). Dumbledore, established as embodying rationality and

logic, tells Harry:

‘Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.’ (HP1, p.216).

I would suggest that this is an ideological stance as it positions the main protagonist (and his moral guide)

as following principles of rationalism, as opposed to superstition, and so free to make moral choices.

However, other members of the magical world do not display the same rationalism, which Harry finds

uncomfortable. He “was starting to get a prickle of fear every time You-Know-Who was mentioned. He

supposed this was all part of entering the magical world, but it had been a lot more comfortable saying

‘Voldemort’ without worrying” (HP1, p.80).

In fact, Rowling gently sends up the convention that “in fantasy, language has literal power (spells,

curses) [rather than having power] through conversation and allusions to social practice” (Stephens 1992,

p.263):

‘I haven’t got a problem calling him V-’‘NO!’ roared Ron [...] ‘the name’s been jinxed, Harry, that’s how they track people! Using his name breaks protective enchantments, it causes some kind of magical disturbance - it’s how they found us in Tottenham Court Road!’ ‘Because we used his name?’‘Exactly!’ (HP7, p.316).

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What might be seen to compromise this rationalist stance is that some of Rowling’s characters have

names that suggest certain characteristics, thus suggesting a gnostic determinism. ‘Malfoy’, for example,

is a surname that evokes the French for ‘bad faith’ (Nel 2001, p.16).

The Harry Potter series does contain one (central) absolutist tenet - the existence of good and evil, and

the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘dark’ magic:

“I wonder why nobody’s ever rebuilt it [Harry’s parents’ house]?’ whispered Hermione.‘Maybe you can’t rebuild it? Harry replied. ‘Maybe it’s like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can’t repair the damage?’ (HP7, p.271).

Whether or not this constitutes a retrogressive ideological position depends, I think, on whether the

protagonists accept this binary model of morality. Guidance given to Harry by Professor Dumbledore is

revealing about the characters’ ideology: “‘It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are’” (HP2, p.

245). Explicitly, then, one can make choices about how to live, suggesting a mutable individual morality.

However, these choices reveal ‘what we truly are’, implicitly suggesting that identity is in fact more

stable, and that one is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. This contradiction is shown by the Sorting Hat, an animate

hat that decides which school house each student should be in by analysing which suits their character

best. However, Harry is able to choose to join Gryffindor - “Where dwell the brave at heart (HP1, p.88) -

rather than Slytherin, whose members are “cunning folk” who “use any means to achieve their

ends” (HP2, p.88):

Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, ‘Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.’‘Not Slytherin, eh?’ said the small voice. ‘Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that - no? Well, if you’re sure - better be GRYFFINDOR!’ (HP1, pp.90-1).)

Thus ‘good’ and ‘bad’ do exist in the world, but individuals have the agency to decide how to act within

this structure. The somewhat ideologically-absolutist idea that the school houses represent different

characteristics is compromised in later books, when the Sorting Hat sings a new song (HP5, pp.186-7):

Absolute distinctions between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ within the school are seen to be destructive, but this is

in relation to a new ‘external’ evil: the ideological absolutism has been shifted rather than dissolved.

And now the Sorting Hat is here and you all know the score: I sort you into Houses because that is what I'm for. But this year I'll go further, listen closely to my song: though condemned I am to split you still I worry that it's wrong, though I must fulfill my duty and must quarter every year

still I wonder whether sorting may not bring the end I fear. Oh, know the perils, read the signs, the warning history shows, for our Hogwarts is in danger from external, deadly foes and we must unite inside her or we'll crumble from within I have told you, I have warned you... let the Sorting now begin.

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What must also be taken into account is how ideology is conveyed to the audience. For Stephens,

criticism of a book fails to give a full understanding of its ideology if it “attempts to talk about things

without reference to the encoding discourse” (Stephens 1992, p.244).

One way in which the discourse can be considered as ideological (and conflicting with Rowling’s explicit

ideology) is through a negative impression of characters being presented not through their actions but

their physical appearance. This is an example of passive ideology. Dudley Dursley, for example, is shown

as being greedy, but it also seems legitimate for the reader to dislike him because he is overweight:

“Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig”. On the other hand, Luna Lovegood’s

appearance is eccentric and she is bullied for it, but the reader is shown that this is wrong:

‘Hi, Harry, I'm Romilda, Romilda Vane,’ she said loudly and confidently. ‘Why don't you join us in our compartment? You don't have to sit with them,’ she added in a stage whisper, indicating Neville [...] and Luna, who was now wearing her free Spectrespecs, which gave her the look of a demented, multicoloured owl. ‘They're friends of mine,’ said Harry coldly. ‘Oh,’ said the girl, looking very surprised. ‘Oh. Okay.’ (HP6, pp.132-3).

It has been suggested that Rowling’s novels are implicitly sexist:

Harry’s fictional realm of magic and wizardry perfectly mirrors the conventional assumption that men do and should run the world. [...] it is boys and men, wizards and sorcerers, who catch our attention by dominating the scenes and determining the action. (Christine Schoefer cited in Zipes 2002, p.179).

It is undeniable that the leads are all men; a more explicitly feminist text could have a heroine in Harry’s

place, a wise female headteacher, or perhaps a female antagonist instead of Voldemort. However,

Schoefler is wrong to suggest that girls are always “helpers, enablers and instruments”. Hermione has as

much agency as of any of the supporting cast and is perhaps more admirable than Ron, Harry’s other best

friend. Schoefler is also wrong to suggest that “neither women nor girls play on the side of evil” -

Bellatrix Lestrange tortured Neville’s parents so much that they now suffer from mental illness, and she is

eventually killed in a duel with Molly Weasley, Ron’s mother. However, these are exceptions which do

not take away from the lack of a female lead character with the status of Harry, Dumbledore or

Voldemort.

Discourse is also constructed linguistically. Firstly, the reader can be influenced by the narrativity of the

text, for example, by an apparently omniscient narrator who provides commentary on (as well as

description of) the narrative. There are several examples of this in the Harry Potter novels. In Harry

Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (HP1) the reader is told that Harry does “something that was both

very brave and very stupid” (HP1, p.130). Hermione is “a bossy know-it-all” (HP1, p.121) but then

becomes “a bit more relaxed about breaking rules [...] and she was much nicer for it” (HP1, p.133-4).

Says who? This is ideologically-persuasive narration.

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Another way that ideology can be presented is through focalisation, access to a character’s inner mental

processes, which is a common trope in realist fiction (Stephens 1992, p.260). The vast majority of the

Harry Potter novels are focalised through Harry. To take one example, in order to save his daughter

Luna, Xenophilius Lovegood tries to capture Harry and hand him over to Voldemort’s followers: one

might assume that he is a ‘baddie’. However, the reader is encouraged to sympathise with him, as the

scene is focalised through Harry’s own empathy:

‘They will be here at any moment. I must save Luna. I cannot lose Luna. You must not leave.’He spread his arms in front of the staircase, and Harry had a sudden vision of his mother doing the same thing in front of his cot. (HP7, p.340).

Focalisation could be used as a technique to give a unilateral perspective on the books’ narrative but, as in

the example above, Rowling tends to use it to give a multi-perspectival view of events; the reader is

encouraged to see that there are two sides to every story. This is heightened by the few scenes (for

example the opening chapters of most of the books) which are not focalised through Harry. An example is

‘Spinner’s End’, Chapter 2 of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HP6), which narrates events of

which Harry is unaware. Narcissa Malfoy, perceived as a ‘bad’ character by Harry, the reader’s usual

focaliser, is shown distraught at the danger her son Draco is in, and so is humanised:

‘My only son ... My only son ...’ [...]Narcissa gave a little scream of despair and clutched at her long blonde hair. (HP6, p.39).

Both overt and implicit ideological readings can be seen to suggest, then, that Rowling’s intention is to

offer a sophisticated and multi-perspectival presentation of morality. This is compromised by the

overarching binary moral structure, and some of the unexamined assumptions in the discourse, which

may be ‘liberal’ but is not subversive.

Space and Liminality

Nikolajeva suggests that “In fantasy literature, the characters are temporarily displaced from modern,

linear time - chronos - into mythical, archaic cyclical time - kairos - and return to linearity at the end of

the novel. [...] Thus, the protagonists of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe live a long life in the

archaic timespace of Narnia, but are brought back and become children again” (Nikolajeva 2003, p.141).

However, the Harry Potter novels are not like that. Unlike Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy - and unlike

many ‘school story’ protagonists - Harry ages at a real-world rate. Indeed, unlike C. S. Lewis’s Narnia

books (in which the wardrobe is a link to a different world) (Nel 2001, p.10), the Harry Potter books are

set in a diegetic world that resembles our real world but contains a secret magical realm.

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As Pennington begrudgingly admits, “the Harry Potter books are doing something other than aligning

themselves with those so-called ‘high fantasy’ worlds defined by Tolkien, Lewis, and

LeGuin” (Pennington 2002, p.85). Rowling’s magical world is situated in - mapped onto - the same

geographical space as the non-Magical ‘Muggle’ world, thus “producing large-scale metaphoric structures

that engage the reader in mapping the whole text on the reader's whole world” (Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., p.

125).

The metaphor produced is of a binary diegetic world, as despite being spatially simultaneous the Muggle

world (as a cypher for the real world) and the magical world are antithetical. The first Harry Potter novel

begins in the ‘Muggle’ world, with an assertion of normality:

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. (HP1, p.7).

This is a place where magic is not welcome. Harry is brought up by the Dursley family, his last living

relatives, who live in the town of Little Whinging, Surrey, and aspire to win suburban best-kept lawn

competitions; this pastiche of ‘Little England’ life (they read the Daily Mail, of course) is clearly not

realist, rather serving as an exaggeratedly non-magical space. The reader is encouraged to take up an

“ideologically-infused subject position” (Stephens 1992, p.288) such that the Dursleys - as a cypher for

all Muggles - should be viewed negatively, thus setting a dichotomy between the Muggle and magical

worlds, a separation enshrined in law by the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy (HP2, p.21).

This dichotomy can, I believe, be seen as distinguishing the Muggle and magical worlds as being

dystopian and utopian respectively. This is not to say that the magical world is perfect, but it is a “society

that is posited as significantly better than that of the reader” (Hintz and Ostry 2003, p.3) and indeed,

‘better’ than the Muggle world that stands as a cypher for the world of the reader. Moreover, it is a space

where right and wrong are clearly differentiated and where Harry is invariably successful, whatever the

task. The utopian nature of Hogwarts school and it’s magical environment has been seen as a reason for

the books’ success: “Perhaps Rowling appeals to millions of reader non-readers because they sense her

wistful sincerity, and want to join her world, imaginary or not” (Bloom 2000). However, this is to

discount the fact that there is more to the diegetic space than the utopian and the dystopian.

On the first day in the narrative the Muggle and magical worlds meet. It is later revealed that the owls and

“strangely dressed people” have encroached into the Muggle world due to an exceptional event - the

attempted (and failed) murder of the infant Harry Potter by Lord Voldemort, which results in Voldemort’s

fall from power. This incursion of the magical into the Muggle world is the first of many events that take

place at the boundary between the worlds, or somewhere in-between them. This boundary is mysterious

and oblique, as suggested by the names of the ‘official’ crossing points between worlds, ‘Diagon Alley’

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and ‘Platform 93/4’. These interstitial nexuses are subject to ritual into which one must be initiated, such

as running at the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 at King’s Cross station in order to get onto Platform

93/4. Harry doesn’t know about this:

Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, like tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. (HP1, p.69).

Harry is a liminal character, having grown up in the Muggle world, but having magical abilities. He

belongs to both worlds and, at the same time, belongs in neither, so is similar to Voldemort, another

orphaned ‘half-blooded’ wizard. Harry has the agency to cross the boundary between the two worlds; the

narrative involves him regularly travelling between the home of his Muggle family and Hogwarts School

of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He belongs to an interstitial zone between the Muggle and the magical

worlds, which is ‘other’ to the rest of the diegetic world. The incongruity of the spatially simultaneous

Muggle and magical worlds creates a liminal but navigable space in-between and alongside them.

Fantasy and Ideology

It is this boundary, the meeting place of the Muggle and the magical, and of the dystopian and the

utopian, that I believe is key to the meaning of the work, and where an alternative construction of

ideology in the books takes place. John Stephens writes that ‘figurative effects’, signposts that tell the

reader that something should be read in a particular way, “are produced by dislocations of surface

meaning, violations of the audience’s sense of empirical reality” (Stephens 1992, p.246). When dealing in

magic, the idea of dislocations of surface reality is complicated by the fact that a reader’s sense of

empirical reality is different to that in the real world.

For Katherine Hume, ‘fantasy’ is a “departure from consensus reality”, a definition that would include

any text involving magic (Hume 1984, p21). Rosemary Jackson uses the word ‘marvellous’ (as opposed

to the ‘mimetic’) to mean the same thing (Jackson 2000, p.34). The use of fantasy or the marvellous does

not necessarily create an unstable sense of empirical reality, as a fictional magical world can have ‘rules’

just as stable as those in the real world. There are rules to what magic can happen in Rowling’s diegetic

world: “rationalism and skepticism, hallmarks of the Enlightenment, are normative cognitive modes in

the Harry Potter books” (Jacobsen 2004, p.97). As Hermione tells Ron:

‘Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air,’ said Hermione. ‘No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigur-’‘Oh, speak English, can’t you?’ Ron said, prising a fishbone out from between his teeth.‘It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some -’‘- well, don’t bother increasing this, it’s disgusting,’ said Ron. (HP7, p.241).

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The reader is reminded of this rationalism in a nice meta-fictional joke about magic and fantasy when

Hermione reads to Ron and Harry from an intertextual storybook, The Tales of Beedle the Bard:

‘“And Death spoke to them -”’‘Sorry,’ interjected Harry, ‘but Death spoke to them?’‘It’s a fairy tale, Harry!’‘Right, sorry. Go on.’ (HP7, p.330).

While these rules within the fantasy world remain stable, magic does not fundamentally change the

world, as the (Muggle) Prime Minister finds out from the Minister for Magic at the beginning of Harry

Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HP6):

‘But for heaven’s sake - you’re wizards! You can do magic! Surely you can sort out - well - anything!’Scrimgeour turned slowly on the spot and exchanged an incredulous look with Fudge, who really did manage a smile this time as he said kindly, ‘The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister.’ (HP6, p.24).

Thus, a sense of empirical reality is established, against which ‘figurative effects’ can be produced. This

takes place with the introduction of the ‘fantastical’ - as opposed to ‘fantasy’. For Eric Rabkin, the “truly

fantastic occurs when the ground rules of a narrative are forced to make a 180° reversal, when prevailing

perspectives are directly contradicted. This is true [...] if the reversal occurs in fantasy or not” (Rabkin

1976, p.12). As Jackson describes, fantastical texts “assert that what they are telling is real - relying on

all the conventions of realistic fiction to do so - and then they proceed to break that assumption of realism

by introducing what - within those terms - is manifestly unreal” (Jackson 2000, p.34).

Moreover, “the purely fantastic text establishes absolute hesitation in protagonist and reader: they can

neither come to terms with the unfamiliar events described, nor dismiss them as supernatural

phenomena” (Todorov, cited in Jackson 2000, p.27). The internal rules that govern the Harry Potter

diegetic world are broken by anomalies that do fracture the ‘empirical reality’ of the world, incursions of

the ‘fantastical’ that act as dislocations of surface meaning and create ‘hesitation’ .

The space between the magical and Muggle worlds is the space in which this ‘hesitation’ arises, as it is a

zone which does not follow the established rules of the diegetic world. As such, it is a space that is other

to the normative space of the novels. I will now discuss several spaces within this liminal zone and

suggest that they can be seen as Foucauldian heterotopias, and that such a reading allows them to model

an ideological reading other than that discussed above.

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Heterotopia: The Pensieve

The pensieve is a stone basin in which one can store and review memories which, when extracted from

the mind, take on a liminal form: Harry “could not tell whether the substance was liquid or gas” (HP4, p.

507). When viewing memories in a pensieve, Harry experiences them as if present within the memory:

The tip of his nose touched the strange substance into which he was staring.Dumbledore’s office gave an almighty lurch - Harry was thrown forwards and pitched headfirst into the substance inside the basin -But his head did not hit the stone bottom. He was falling through something icy cold and black; it was like being sucked into a dark whirlpool -And suddenly, he found himself sitting on a bench at the end of the room inside the basin. (HP4, p.508).

I suggest that the pensieve constitutes a heterotopian space. It is “capable of juxtaposing in a single real

place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible” (Foucault 1986, p.25). As it

contains specific memories of past events, the pensieve is clearly “linked to slices in time” (Foucault

1986, p.26), and given the method of entry to the memories contained within, the pensieve also has “a

system of opening and closing that both isolates [it] and makes [it] penetrable” (Foucault 1986, p.26).

The pensieve is useful - it allows narrative exposition through flashbacks, particularly when Dumbledore

and Harry are searching for Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Harry visits memories belonging to his headmaster as

well as several characters connected to Voldemort. However, I am concerned with two occasions on

which Harry sees the memories of his least-favourite teacher, potions master Severus Snape.

Harry knows that Snape hated Harry’s father James when they were students together. In Harry Potter

and the Order of the Phoenix (HP5), Chapter 28 (‘Snape’s Worst Memory’) Harry finds himself alone

with the pensieve full of Snape’s memories; he looks, and sees his father bullying Snape as a sixteen-year

old, in front of Harry’s mother, Lily:

James whirled about: a second flash of light later, Snape was hanging upside-down in the air, his robes falling over his head to reveal skinny, pallid legs and a pair of greying underpants.Many people in the small crowd cheered; Sirius, James and Wormtail roared with laughter.Lily, whose furious expression had twitched for an instant as though she was going to smile, said, ‘Let him down!’‘Certainly,’ said James and he jerked his wand upwards; Snape fell into a crumpled heap on the ground. (HP5, pp.570-1).

Two novels later, Harry again looks at Snape’s memories in the pensieve, this time having been given the

memories by the dying Snape. In an extended sequence Harry - and the reader - is shown memories that

retrospectively explain various characters’ behaviour. Moreover, the reader is encouraged to sympathise

with two characters who have never elicited sympathy before. Firstly it is revealed that Snape was in love

with Harry’s mother (who is represented by a doe) from childhood until his death:

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‘Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe [...]’ ‘But this is touching, Severus,’ said Dumbledore seriously. ‘Have you come to care for the boy after all?’‘For him? shouted Snape. ‘Expecto Patronum!’From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: she landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.‘After all this time?’‘Always,’ said Snape. (HP7, p.551-2).

Harry is prompted to reconsider the power that Snape has always asserted over him, and his

understanding of his potions teacher as being a dominant character. When Harry sees Snape as a child,

his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too-short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smock-like shirt. (HP7, p.532).

‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked.A little crease appeared between his eyes.‘Fine,’ he said.‘They’re not arguing any more?’‘Oh, yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape. (HP7, p.535).

The reader is also compelled to question their perception of Petunia Dursley, Harry’s aunt, when Harry

sees Petunia remembered as a child with her sister, Harry’s mother, who has transfigured a flower:

‘It’s not right,’ said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower’s flight to the ground and lingered upon it. ‘How do you do it?’ she added, and there was definite longing in her voice. (HP7, p.533).

‘ ... I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen -’ She caught her sister’s hand and held tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away. ‘Maybe once I’m there - no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!’‘I don’t - want - to - go!’ said Petunia, and she dragged her hand back out of her sister’s grasp. ‘You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a - [...] a - freak?’ [...]‘You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you.’ (HP7, p.536-7).

Before this the reader has a very different - and uninterrogated - idea of Petunia’s views on magic:

‘I was the only one who saw her for what she was - a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!’ (HP1, p.44).

The pensieve puts Harry in the position of other characters, giving him the ability to (literally) see things

from a new perspective. In phenomenological terms, both Harry and the reader are forced to abandon “the

myth of isolated mind” (Stolorow and Atwood 2002, p.7), belying ideas of stable or unambiguous

morality by introducing intersubjectivity. Thus the pensieve acts as a space “of alternate ordering” as

Kevin Hetherington has defined heterotopias. “That alternate ordering marks them out as Other and

allows them to be seen as an example of a different way of doing things” (Hetherington 1997, p.viii),

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Heterotopia: The Lightning Scar

Intersubjectivity for Harry is also induced by the scar that links him with Voldemort. Voldemort attempted

to murder Harry as an infant, but his Killing Curse rebounded, almost destroying him but leaving Harry

mostly unharmed. Harry was given only a lightning-shaped scar that remains a connection between Harry

and Voldemort throughout the novels, up until Voldemort’s final defeat in Harry Potter and the Deathly

Hallows (HP7). These two characters are very much a literary ‘pair’, acting as mirrors of one another.

Both are of mixed Muggle/magical descent but grow up as orphans. They both find a sense of belonging

for the first time at Hogwarts school, where they gain some measure of acceptance and praise. Their

pairing is explicit:

‘I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather - just one other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother - why, its brother gave you that scar.’ (HP1, p65).

Before it was appropriated by Foucault, the word ‘heterotopia’ was a medical term referring to “the

displacement of a bodily organ from its normal position: it denotes “parts of the body that are either out

of place, missing, extra” or “other”” (Hetherington 1997, p.42). I would suggest that Harry’s scar and its

functions can be seen as heterotopian, the ‘space’ of the heterotopia being Harry’s consciousness.

The scar gives Harry pain when he is near to Voldemort or, later, when Voldemort is feeling particularly

angry or happy, or is thinking about Harry; this link seems to have a “system of opening and

closing” (Foucault 1986, p.26). The scar’s other function is to allow Harry and Voldemort access to each

other’s current situation and emotions:

The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.[...]Harry tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before he had awoken. [...]There had been a snake on a hearth rug...a small man called Peter, nicknamed Wormtail ... and a cold, high voice ... the voice of Lord Voldemort. Harry felt as though an ice cube had slipped down into his stomach at the very thought. (HP4, pp.20-1).

The link between Harry and Voldemort is used by each of them to their advantage, exhibiting the second

principle of heterotopias, that “the same heterotopia can, according to the synchrony of the culture in

which it occurs, have one function or another” (Foucault 1986, p.25). When Voldemort becomes aware of

the connection, he plants in Harry’s mind a false vision of Sirius Black (Harry’s godfather) being tortured

(HP5, p.641). In the final novel, the connection has developed and Harry can enter Voldemort’s

consciousness with, as it were, a first-person perspective. He learns that he can control the connection and

use it to his own advantage by observing Voldemort’s whereabouts and activities, helping Harry to find

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and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes. This has a narratological function as the hunt for Horcruxes, the

dispersed parts of Voldemort’s fragmented soul, is Harry’s task in HP7. However, the psychological link

between Harry and Voldemort also creates intersubjectivity: like the pensieve full of memories, the scar

connection allows Harry an alternative view of events, that of Voldemort. It also has a more complex

function, as Harry sees not only Voldemort’s perspective, but his perspective on Harry. The gaze that

Harry has of himself from his double’s perspective is like the mirror function of the heterotopia:

Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. (Foucault 1986, p.24).

That this reconstitution can take place in fiction has been explored by George Smith, writing about Henry

James, whose protagonist in The Beast in the Jungle has a moment of realisation that takes place in a

(heterotopian) cemetery when he is caught looking at another mourner. For Smith, this heterotopian

discovery and reconstitution of oneself “from the standpoint of the mirror” (Foucault 1986, p.24) is an

example of Nachtraglichkeit: “an experience allegorically reproduces the primal scene, triggering the

mnemonic reactivation of the primal scene itself” (Smith 2003, p.83):

it is through this mnemonic catastrophe that we are resubjectified. Which means that there is no such thing as the fixed, centered identity idealized by the humanist tradition. [...] Hence the postmodern subject. Each time we revisit the primal scene, each time we re-witness ourselves in the crisis of meconnaissance [...] we see ourselves differently than we did the last time around. (Smith 2003, p.85).

I would suggest that an analogous “suddenly-determined absolute of perception” (James 1964, p.151)

takes place in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry has an internal vision of Voldemort, who is

searching for the all-powerful Elder Wand (one of the titular ‘Deathly Hallows’) but thinking about

Harry:

His true surroundings vanished: he was Voldemort, and the skeletal wizard before him was laughing toothlessly at him; he was enraged at the summons he felt - he had warned them, he had told them to summon him for nothing less than Potter. If they were mistaken ...‘Kill me, then!’ demanded the old man. 'You will not win, you cannot win! The wand will never, ever be yours -’And Voldemort's fury broke: a burst of green light filled the prison room and the frail old body was lifted from its hard bed and then fell back, lifeless. (HP7, 382).

This flash of green light echoes Harry’s earliest memory, the green light as Voldemort killed Harry’s

parents. The self-reconstitution that this elicits in Harry is the subsequent decision to turn his back on his

own search for the Deathly Hallows and instead to continue to look for Voldemort’s Horcruxes:

Harry hesitated. He knew what hung on his decision. There was hardly any time left; now was the moment to decide: Horcruxes or Hallows? “Griphook,” Harry said. “I’ll speak to Griphook first.”His heart was racing as if he had been sprinting and had just cleared an enormous obstacle.(HP7, p.392).

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So a consideration of the heterotopian nature of Harry’s consciousness (or wherever it is that his scar

‘functions’) suggests that the reader is shown both intersubjectivity - Harry sees from Voldemort’s

perspective - and Harry’s changing subjectivity or reconstitution. Again, the heterotopian nature of the

scar allows it to operate as a space “of alternate ordering” (Hetherington 1997, p.viii),

Further, the scar-connection between Harry and Voldemort complicates ideas of good and evil in the

books, as it is revealed a part of Voldemort’s soul was also lodged within Harry, which disrupts his own

identity:

It happened in a fraction of a second: in the infinitesimal pause before Dumbledore said ‘three’, Harry looked up at him - they were very close together - and Dumbledore’s clear blue gaze moved from the Portkey to Harry's face.At once, Harry's scar burned white-hot, as though the old wound had burst open again - and unbidden, unwanted, but terrifyingly strong, there rose within Harry a hatred so powerful he felt, for that instant, he would like nothing better than to strike - to bite - to sink his fangs into the man before him. (HP5, p.419).

Rather than simple binaries in terms of morality, the heterotopian space of Harry’s divided consciousness

here illustrates complexity. As Marina Warner has suggested: “The classical idea of soul migration [has

been used as] a vehicle to express a new, psychological state of personal alienation, moral incoherence,

and emptiness” (Warner 2004, p.120). At the same time Harry and Voldemort are doubles, which

expresses “intimations of inner demons, of being multiple rather than integrated” (Warner 2004, p.165).

The scar that represents this state of multiplicity and complication stands for Harry’s liminality. It marks

him out as being different to both Muggles and other wizards. He is, as Christopher Craft describes

Narcissus, that other mirrored protagonist, “somewhere between man and boy [...] already caught in and

as a series of perplexing middles, or intermediate states; he is at once neither/nor and either/both” (Craft

2005, pp.109-10).

Heterotopia: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The heterotopias I have discussed so far have been metaphysical sites located in space: the pensieve full

of memories and the scar that links Harry with Voldemort. Now I will suggest as heterotopian a space that

is interstitial in a different way, and which provides a setting for the climactic narrative events of the

Harry Potter series.

Jack Zipes has suggested that each Harry Potter novel follows a familiar pattern: (1) Harry lives in the

prison-like Dursley family home; (2) Harry returns to Hogwarts; (3) Harry is tested, pitted against

Voldemort in or around Hogwarts; and (4) “Exhausted, drained, but enlightened, Harry is always

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victorious by the time summer recess is about to begin. Unfortunately, Harry must always return to the

banal surroundings of the Dursley home” (Zipes 2002, pp.176-7).

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (HP7), Rowling’s final novel, is a departure from the formula

established in the preceding books. Harry and his two best friends Hermione and Ron leave school

(against all expectations of a generic ‘school story’) and hunt ‘Horcruxes’. Harry’s liminality extends to

Hermione and Ron here, as they travel through and between Muggle and magical places, divested of their

ties to either world:

‘Wait a moment,’ said Hagrid, looking around. ‘Harry, where’s Hedwig?’‘She ... she got hit,’ said Harry.The realisation crashed over him: he felt ashamed of himself as the tears stung his eyes. The owl had been his companion, his one great link with the magical world whenever he had been forced to return to the Dursleys. (HP7, p.61).

The diegetic space of HP7, then, becomes the space in between the Muggle and the magical worlds, the

space of a journey, a space between the utopian and the dystopian. This is no longer “Billy Bunter on

broomsticks” (Anthony Holden cited in Chevalier, p.404).

The narrative of HP7, as Zipes would expect, does begin in the Dursleys’ house. Here though, the

liminality extends to the Dursley family, who are forced to go into hiding as magic intrudes into the

Muggle world. In this context Dudley Dursley, Harry’s hitherto oafish and bullying cousin, is moved to

speak out against his parents, having individual agency for the first time; like Harry, he is growing up.

Hestia Jones, a witch who has arrived to escort the Dursleys to safety, asks Harry:

‘Don’t these people realise what you’ve been through? What danger you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the anti-Voldemort movement?’‘Er - no, they don’t,’ said Harry. ‘They think I’m a waste of space, actually, but I’m used to -’‘I don’t think you’re a waste of space.’ [...]‘Blimey Dudley, [...] did the Dementors blow a different personality into you?’‘Dunno,’ muttered Dudley. ‘See you, Harry.’ ‘Yeah ...’ said Harry, taking Dudley’s hand and shaking it. ‘Maybe. Take care, Big D.’Dudley nearly smiled, then lumbered from the room. (HP7, pp.39-40).

That this new order has the potential to be subversive is indicated by examining the books using Farah

Mendlesohn’s four categories of fantasy:

the portal-quest, the immersive, the intrusive, and the liminal. These categories are determined by the means by which the fantastic enters the narrated world. In the portal-quest we are invited through into the fantastic; in the intrusion fantasy, the fantastic enters the fictional world; in the liminal fantasy, the magic hovers in the corner of our eye; while in the immersive fantasy we are allowed no escape. (Mendlesohn 2008, p.xiv).

For Mendlesohn, the Harry Potter novels “typically begin as intrusion fantasies [...], but very rapidly

transmute into almost archetypal portal fantasies, reliant on elaborate description and continual new

imaginings” (Mendlesohn 2008, p.2). This seems accurate, as Harry lives at first in a world similar to the

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real world but discovers that he is a wizard when he receives letters from Hogwarts school (intrusion)

(HP1, p.42). He then enters the magical world where he completes a task (portal-quest) before returning

through the portal back to the Muggle world.

In HP7, Harry is collected from his Muggle home by an escort of wizards and witches from the Order of

the Phoenix (who intrude on the Muggle world). They travel by means of a magical transport device (a

portal) to the Burrow, Ron’s magical family home. So far, so paradigmatic. From here on in, however,

things are rather different. When danger approaches, he, Hermione and Ron ‘disapparate’ to Tottenham

Court Road, back in the Muggle world. Here they are attacked again, and are forced to move on. This,

then, is no longer a portal-quest fantasy, where “Crucially, the fantastic is on the other side and does not

“leak.” Although individuals may cross both ways, the magic does not” (Mendlesohn 2008, p.xix).

This is an in-between case, partly intrusion fantasy (the magical happenings are going on in the Muggle

world) but not fitting comfortably into that category as a good part of the narrative does take place in the

magical world. This could, then, be seen as an immersive fantasy that “invites us to share not merely a

world, but a set of assumptions” (Mendlesohn 2008, p.xx). However, there is still a Muggle world where

magic does not ‘belong’. Mendlesohn’s categories are not intended to be prescriptive or definitive, and I

don’t wish to treat them as such. Rather, I consider it to be instructive that with the collapse of the

established structure, the final book can be seen to stand outside of Farah Mendlesohn’s four categories of

the fantastic, and outside what the reader is used to in terms of interpreting the text.

The divergence in HP7 from the structural paradigm of the earlier books removes the centrality of

Hogwarts, around which the previous narratives have unwound. With this in mind I will suggest that the

diegetic space of the last book be examined with a different conception of heterotopia, that found in

Foucault’s The Order of Things, which is concerned more with the “linking together of things that are

inappropriate” (Foucault 2010, p.xix) than a “function in relation to all the space that remains” (Foucault

1986, p.27).

For Neil Easterbrook, Samuel R. Delany’s science-fiction novel Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia is

heterotopian because the protagonist Bron “wants to be “at the center” within a culture with none; Bron

wants to be “the only one” in a place based on multiplicity” (Easterbrook 1997, p.67). As such it recalls

The Order of Things, where Foucault describes heterotopias as being:

disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy ‘syntax’ in advance, and not only the syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another) to ‘hold together’. (Foucault 2010, p.xix).

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For Easterbrook, the syntax that is shattered is not the literary grammar (as in Borges: Foucault 2010,

p.xix), but the diegetic doxa, the “social syntax [...] the foundational order that allows us to conceptualize

our world” (Easterbrook 1997, p.67). Taking Bourdieu’s sociological conception of doxa, I will suggest

that the same is true in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

For Bourdieu, doxa is the syntax that allows the world to appear “as self evident”, defining “the universe

of possible discourse” (Bourdieu 1977, pp.164, 167). I would suggest that the doxa of the Harry Potter

novels is the understanding that the Muggle and magical worlds are separate and largely discrete. Harry,

Ron and Hermione rupture this syntax in their heterotopian wanderings through a liminal zone “in which

fragments of [...] possible orders glitter separately in the dimension” (Foucault 2010, p.xix). The trio

cross the magical/Muggle boundary at will, defying the doxastic divisions of space.

This syntagmatic shift moves the action into a zone where the established binaries of Muggle/magical,

dystopian/utopian, good/evil are no longer present, and so both for the protagonists and for the reader

there is no stable structure within which to frame moral or ideological judgements. This can be seen as

subversive, in that Rowling has removed the interpretative tools that the reader has hitherto been provided

with, making the diegetic world unfamiliar for the reader as well as for the protagonists. Given that it is

the novel in which the series reaches its climax, perhaps it could be argued that Rowling prioritises this

heterotopian society over the binary model within which the action has taken place in earlier books.

Harry, Hermione and Ron are now nomads, recalling Deleuze and Guattari’s model of ‘nomadology’ that

is linked to heterotopia by Easterbrook: “the anarchist nomad or postmodern hero travels easily between

microdiscourses, acknowledges the usefulness of each while privileging none: revels in a sort of

schizophrenia” (Easterbrook 1997, p.69). This space of microdiscourses is, for Deleuze and Guattari, a

rhizome space, which “has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing,

intermezzo” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.25). The ideological implication of this rhizome space is “an

episteme that structures itself as an infinite labyrinth of possibilities rather than an arborescent

hierarchy” (Easterbrook 1997, p.69).

In this liminal space, then, Harry can no longer rely on the “prevailing interpretative system” of the

earlier books (Jenkins 2003, p.35). He must learn to form decisions and come to understandings that are

contingent, no longer being told what is wrong and what is right. This ‘bottom-up’ model of morality is in

stark contrast to the utopia of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia, which is bound to an allegory, so is ideologically

unambiguous. The ambiguity of HP7 offers the reader an alternative model of apprehending the world,

which I will illustrate with two examples.

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Hermione makes explicit that in the heterotopian space of HP7, ideas of right and wrong are conditional

rather than absolute. As the three friends prepare to start their search for Horcruxes, she casts a spell to

make sure that their conversation can’t be heard:

‘Muffliato,’ she whispered, waving her wand in the direction of the stairs.‘Thought you didn’t approve of that spell?’ said Ron.‘Times change,’ said Hermione. (HP7, p.111-2).

This provisory legitimisation of behaviour previously considered to be ‘bad’ extends to Harry, who in the

narrative of the final novel uses two of the three ‘Unforgivable Curses’. When attempting to locate a

Horcrux at Gringotts Bank he places a wizard and a goblin under the Imperius curse, putting them under

his control (HP7, pp.428-30). Later he uses the pain-inducing Cruciatus curse on a supporter of

Voldemort. In earlier books Harry had attempted to use this curse on Bellatrix Lestrange (HP5, p.715) and

Severus Snape (HP6, p.562) but was unable to cast it with full strength. Now it seems that the situation

calls for him to do so, and he can. (I mean not to pass judgement on the character’s actions, but to point

out that he now has greater agency).

Harry also learns in the heterotopian space of HP7 about the instability of notions of truth. His

relationship with Albus Dumbledore had always been one of trust (one might even say faith) in his

headmaster’s inherent ‘goodness’ up until his death at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

(HP6). At the beginning of HP7, Harry reads a newspaper article about his headteacher that complicates

his perspective of a person he had previously considered without ambivalence:

DUMBLEDORE - THE TRUTH AT LAST?Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by many to be the greatest wizard of his generation (HP7, p.25).

Harry’s reaction is a desire for either/or ideas of significance, which continues to be frustrated: ‘Muriel

said stuff about Dumbledore at the wedding. I want to know the truth’ (HP7, p.153). However, by the

conclusion of the novel, Harry is able to read texts (including what other characters tell him) with respect

to their particular structure of meanings, and come to his own conclusions. He has negotiated a dialectic

of contrasting texts; for example, Harry tells Albus Dumbledore’s brother Aberforth:

‘The night that your brother died, he drank a potion that drove him out of his mind [...] It was torture to him, if you'd seen him then, you wouldn't say he was free.’ (HP7, p457).

By learning that significance is “frail, contingent and constructed within social practice”, Harry is able to

draw conclusions outside of the binary discourse of the dystopian/utopian paradigm (Stephens 1992, p.

265). Harry has grown up and, crucially, this process has occurred outside the hegemonic spaces of the

novels. It is the fact that Harry is, at this point, located outside of that binary that allows him this

perspective on it; the hegemonic magical and Muggle worlds are “the space that remains” outside of the

heterotopian liminal space (Foucault 1986, p.27).

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Heterotopia: King’s Cross Station

At the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry comes to the conclusion that the only way he

can defeat Voldemort is to sacrifice his own life in order that the part of Voldemort’s soul residing in him

can be killed. Voldemort aims a Killing Curse at Harry, and Harry is suddenly in a dreamlike limbo state:

“His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapour; rather the cloudy vapour had not yet formed into

surroundings” (HP7, p.565).

Returning to the model set out in ‘Of Other Spaces’, heterotopias “always presuppose a system of

opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is

not freely accessible like a public place” (Foucault 1986, p.26). This is the case here, as Harry enters this

space after being hit by a curse that causes his quasi-death. Eventually the surroundings take on shape:

‘It looks,’ he said slowly, ‘like King’s Cross station.’ (HP7, p.570).

As Alice Jenkins has suggested, the train in children’s literature (she discusses the Hogwarts Express) is

very much aligned with Foucault’s description of heterotopia, and with the idea of liminality I have

discussed:

Like all enclosed means of transport, a train is a miniature world that is both part of and distinct from the larger world surrounding it [...] This capacity for ambiguous power relations allows trains to be used as quasi-magical spaces, moving between two worlds and often creating a third within themselves. (Jenkins 2003, pp.27-8).

The interstitial zone that Harry has entered is the station rather than the train, but I suggest that this space

can also be seen as heterotopian. There Harry encounters an incarnation of (the deceased) Albus

Dumbledore, and “the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-

looking” (HP7, p.566). It is implied that this is part of Voldemort’s soul, which co-exists in space with

Harry’s consciousness. In a metaphysical sense, then, this space is “capable of juxtaposing in a single real

place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible” (Foucault 1986, p.25).

Being the result of Harry’s figurative death, this space is a ‘crisis heterotopia’, available in a time of non-

hegemonic existence: “the heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of

absolute break with their traditional time” (Foucault 1986, p.26). The reader is also subtly told by

Dumbledore that Harry’s entry to this space signifies a transition into adulthood:

‘Harry [...] You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk.’ (HP7, p.566).

I want to consider this idea of transition together with Foucault’s last trait of heterotopias, that “they have

a function in relation to all the space that remains” (Foucault 1986, p.27).

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Writing after the publication of the first three Harry Potter books, Nicholas Tucker suggested that:

Harry himself is pleasant enough but hardly a well-rounded personality. His adventures so far are largely external to himself; there are few moments of inner exploration or any serious reorganization of values, priorities, or relationships. (Tucker 1999, p.229).

Tucker does admit, though, that “To criticize [the books] for moral simplicity without knowing the whole

picture would [...] be unfair” (Tucker 1999, p.230). Indeed, as has been observed in the preceding

discussion, Harry does exhibit moral complexity and a mutable subjectivity, as he is forced to confront

the idea that things and people are not always what they seem.

The significance of this heterotopian space that resembles King’s Cross station is that Harry’s transition to

adulthood is made manifest. The fact that Harry is now an adult is shown in the fact that a station is not

only liminal but - like the space that remains - manifold:

The realisation of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.‘I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?’‘That is up to you.’‘I’ve got a choice?’‘Oh yes.’ Dumbledore smiled at him. ‘We are in King’s Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to ... let’s say ... board a train.’ (HP7, p.578).

Thus this heterotopian space provides Harry with a better understanding of his ‘real’ world, in that he

must choose his actions. In this central position at the climax of the whole series of novels, I would argue

that this is an ideological prioritising of choice and ambiguity over determinism and unilateralism. This is

highlighted in that the nature of this liminal space remains ambivalent:

‘Tell me one last thing,’ said Harry. ‘Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?’Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.‘Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?’ (HP7, p.579).

This ambiguity for Harry is shared by the reader and can, I believe, be seen as embodying Freud’s idea of

the uncanny, “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long

been familiar” (Freud 2003, p.124). King’s Cross station is a place that Harry knows well, but is now

made strange. The reader simultaneously both understands the significance of Harry being in King’s

Cross station (he can choose which ‘journey’ to take) and doesn’t understand the nature of this station-

space: is it a psychological manifestation, or a ‘real’ space? I would suggest then, that here the reader is

presented with the fantastic (as opposed to fantasy) in a space that is both heimlich (familiar) and

heimlich (secret). “Heimlich thus becomes increasingly ambivalent until it finally merges with its

antonym, unheimlich” (Freud 2003, p.134).

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This heterotopian space, which is between/beside the dystopian and utopian, complicates the fabula of the

diegetic world: like E.T.A. Hoffman in The Sandman, Freud’s prototypical uncanny text, Rowling

“creates a kind of uncertainty by preventing us [...] from guessing whether [s]he is going to take us into

the real [diegetic] world or into some fantastic world of [her] own choosing” (Freud 2003, p.139). This

can be seen as ideologically subversive: the distinction between the utopian and the dystopian is broken

down - there is no longer a binary model in Harry’s world that he (or the reader) can rely on.

Paradigm Shifts

It could be suggested, then, that Rowling’s novels mark a paradigm shift, and I suggest that this can be

usefully considered in the context of the ‘school story’ genre. At one level, Hogwarts can be seen as

operating in a similar way to the Rugby school of Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. Jeffrey

Richards suggests that such school stories prioritise “the socialisation of the schoolboy” (Richards 1992,

p.3). They are “high on moral didacticism” and promote “manliness and chivalry through the ideas of

team spirit, leadership, loyalty, bravery, fair play, modesty in victory and humility in defeat” (Richards

1992, p.4, p.6). I would argue that Hogwarts also advocates these values, and so can be seen as

“cementing the ideas and beliefs of society, enforcing social norms and exposing social

deviants” (Richards 1992, p.1).

However, Hogwarts, even within the utopian role that I have suggested it fulfils, plays with these generic

expectations. As Annie Hiebert Alton has observed, genre

has taken on significance as a communication system. Because of their conscious or unconscious awareness of the various genres fused in the books, readers gain the delight of recognition as they read something that feels familiar in form - they know the conventions of the game, or the story, before they begin. (Alton 2009, p.221).

Thus the established ‘school story’ setting can be played with, and Rowling does this, for example

subverting the idea of the traditional school song:

‘And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!’ cried Dumbledore. [...] ‘Everyone pick their favourite tune,’ said Dumbledore, ‘and off we go!’ (HP1, p.95).

Moreover, as has been discussed, that the three friends leave Hogwarts in the final novel undermines its

status as a ‘school story’. It is at this point that Harry is imbued with the moral complexity and

intersubjectivity I have observed. Thus it could be argued that the deviation from the genre undermines

the centrality of the school in terms of defining the meaning of the whole series, as it is on leaving school

that the young protagonists are given agency. However, I will reserve judgement on whether or not this

constitutes a subversion of the genre until after a consideration of the conclusion of the final novel and

therefore the entire series.

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Coming Home

What, then, is the overall significance of the heterotopian spaces in the Harry Potter novels? I have

argued that the resulting changing subjectivity, intersubjectivity, moral complexity and syntagmatic shift

in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (HP7) are subversive. Can the series as a whole, then, be seen

as subversive children’s literature? I believe not, on the basis of how the books’ narrative is ultimately

resolved. When he leaves the ethereal ‘King’s Cross station’ space in the penultimate chapter of HP7,

Harry chooses to return to the battle rather than ‘boarding a train’ and ‘going on’, as Dumbledore suggests

he could. Back in the Hogwarts School grounds, Harry pretends that the curse has killed him: lying still,

his body is taken by Voldemort to be displayed to Harry’s allies. They, however, refuse to admit defeat

and the battle restarts.

Back in the magical world, though, the moral complexity of the fantastical, heterotopian space has gone.

In choosing to return to utopia, it seems that Harry has reinvigorated the binary structure of morality that

had been collapsed by the earlier syntagmatic shift. A clear distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ springs

back into operation, and is enacted in ways so fitting that they seem pre-determined. It is brave, under-

appreciated Neville who kills Nagini the snake (Voldemort’s last Horcrux). Hagrid defeats Walden

Macnair (who four books earlier had tried to execute Hagrid’s pet hippogriff), and Ron’s ministry-

employed father and brother overcome Voldemort’s puppet Minister of Magic, Pius Thicknesse.

Eventually Harry and Voldemort are the only two opponents left duelling, and it is hinted that a

subversive conclusion might still be reached. The reader has been informed earlier in the book that

Voldemort could undo the damage he did to his soul when he split it into Horcruxes:

‘How do you do it?’ asked Harry. ‘Remorse,’ said Hermione. ‘You’ve got to really feel what you’ve done.’ (HP7, p.89).

Harry tries to allow Voldemort this chance for reconciliation rather than unilateral defeat:

‘I’d advise you to think about what you've done ... think, and try for some remorse, Riddle ...’‘What is this?’Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this. Harry saw his pupils contract to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes whiten.‘It's your one last chance,’ said Harry, ‘it's all you've got left ... I've seen what you’ll be otherwise ... be a man ... try ... try for some remorse ...’ (HP7, p.594).

Rowling, however, does not pursue this potentially-subversive ending - in fact it is only briefly glossed

over - and Voldemort does attempt to kill Harry. The Killing Curse is deflected by Harry’s Disarming

spell and rebounds, killing Voldemort. Ultimately, the embodiment of ‘evil’ remains ‘evil’ and is defeated

rather than reformed. Harry, serving such moral absolutism, can no longer be seen as an anarchist nomad.

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Rather, he is viewed by his fellow victors as thoroughly ‘good’, even messianic: “their leader and symbol,

their saviour and their guide” (HP7, p.594).

Such mythic, religious language is fitting if one considers Hogwarts as the centre of a utopian realm, a

“wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world” (Eliade, p.11 cited in Jacobsen, p.82).

Jacobsen sees Hogwarts as the central “cosmic pillar” of the magical world as a “sacred order predicated

on hiddenness, irregularity, asymmetry, unpredictability, caprice, and historical nostalgia” (Jacobsen

2004, pp.82-3). This centrality is exactly what is removed when Harry, Ron and Hermione leave

Hogwarts in HP7, and it is what is restored when they return in that novel’s concluding chapters.

Rowling does make some gestures towards multiplicity following Harry’s victory and Voldemort’s defeat.

After the battle, “nobody was sitting according to house any more: all were jumbled together, teachers

and pupils, ghosts and parents, centaurs and house-elves” (HP7, pp.596-7). The Malfoy family, Harry’s

enemies, remain at the end of the book, “huddled together as though unsure whether or not they were

supposed to be there, but nobody was paying them any attention” (HP7, p.597) (although it could be

argued that this is only because they attempted to redeem themselves to Harry before Voldemort’s defeat).

Such anomalies notwithstanding, Harry’s victory is undoubtedly an unequivocal “restitution, a

restoration, [...] a homecoming” (Tony Watkins cited in Rosen 2009, p.15). To return once more to Farah

Mendlesohn’s categories of fantasy, Harry’s adventures have been resolved as a portal-quest would be,

concluding with “restoration rather than instauration (the making over of the world)”, which “narrows

the possibilities for a subversive reading” (Mendlesohn 2008, p.3). The reader is told in the epilogue

‘Nineteen Years Later’ that Harry has married Ron’s younger sister Ginny, and they have children who

now attend Hogwarts: Harry now resides wholly in the magical world (HP7, p.603). Made whole by the

destruction of the part of Voldemort’s soul that had existed within him, Harry’s liminal, heterotopian

existence (along with the syntagmatic shift it implied) has been replaced with life in the magical utopia.

In declining to change the structure of the world and choosing instead for a victory for the side of

uninterrogated ‘good’, Rowling can be seen as being “in the company of Tolkien and Lewis in

constructing their fantasy worlds as a lament for old England, for the values of the shires and for a

“greener” and simpler world” (Mendlesohn 2002, p.166). I would adapt this to suggest that Rowling

establishes a simple world, then collapses that paradigm, but ultimately returns to it. Harry seemingly

concludes that the Muggle world is as bad as he ever thought it was, so now he has defeated the ‘baddie’

he can take up his rightful place in utopia. As such Rowling’s novels are ultimately “hostile to the “real”

world but not subversive of it” (Mendlesohn 2002, p.167).

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Conclusion

Popular fiction can “both [reflect] popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions and [generate] support for

selected views and opinions” (Richards 1992, p.1). I would suggest that J. K. Rowling attempts to

generate support for what might be called a progressive, liberal ideological outlook through the explicit

behaviour of the characters with whom the reader is expected to sympathise.

More radical, however, is the extent to which “popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions” are

established but then exploded. The syntagmatic shift of the last novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly

Hallows, removes the binary model of perception that had earlier been erected, creating a space in which

morality and ideology are contingent. This space is alongside and in-between the two primary spaces in

the diegetic world, the Muggle world and the magical world. A liminal, interstitial, heterotopian zone, this

‘other’ space operates to endow Harry with an identity and subjectivity that are mutable and multiple,

allowing him a moral outlook that is complex and flexible rather than binary and pre-formed. However,

that this ideological re-negotiation takes place in the ‘other’ space means that they are operative only

while those heterotopias are central to the narrative and discourse. It is on this that the ideology of the

series turns.

At the close, Harry returns to the magical utopia and it is here that the narrative is resolved, unilaterally

rather than through reconciliation. The moral absolutes and binary view of the world are resurrected,

denying the possibility of the novels marking a paradigm shift within children’s literature. This isn’t to

say that the Harry Potter novels are necessarily less subversive than other children’s literature (just as

their subversive features are not unprecedented) and their popularity has surely led to their ideological

implications being put under more scrutiny than Rowling might originally have expected. Ultimately,

though, Rowling comes down on the side of the established order, and the epilogue concludes with a

happy ending that negates the complex, subversive heterotopian ideological space that the reader has

glimpsed:

The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well. (HP7, p.607).

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