The Bellipotent as Heterotopia, Total Institution, and Colony: Billy Budd and Other Spaces in Melville's Mediterranean

Abstract

French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault first defined the con-cept of "Heterotopias" in his 1967 lecture titled "Des Espaces Autres"("Of Other Spaces"). Unlike utopias, heterotopias are real places thatare different from all the sites that they reflect, and they represent a sort ofsimultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live.Michel Foucault famously concluded that the best example of a heterotopiais a boat: "The ship is the heterotopia par excellence," poetically adding:"In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place ofadventure, and the police take the place of pirates." InBilly Budd, Sailor,Melville gives us theBellipotent, the epitome of a negative heterotopia, wheredreams dry up we say goodbye to theRights of Man espionage takes theplace of adventure, and anxiety is produced although not by pirates but bythe police. This ship is a heterotopia not of illusion but of crisis, not ofcompensation but of deviation. This heterotopia is not a great reserve of theimagination but another real space.