The 'Other Spaces' of Exile in Dubravka Ugrešić's The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
The 'Other Spaces' of Exile in Dubravka Ugrešić's The Museum of Unconditional Surrender

Summary/Abstract: My essay investigates the way heterotopic spatial and cultural experiences shape the concepts of space and the spatial practices of exile, as well as their narrative representation in Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender. Following Foucault’s approach, heterotopic spatial experiences can be described by the localizability and at the same time the in-betweenness and the placelessness of space, by its relational aspect and by the capacity of heterotopias to juxtapose in a single real place several spaces that are in themselves incompatible. In Ugrešić’s novel the museum, the zoo, the flea-market can be identified as heterotopic spaces which are not ontologically given, but are constituted by spatial, discursive and corporeal practices. This essay examines how the subject experiences not only the otherness of the Other, but also her/his own disquieting ambivalence in the discontinuous spaces and heterotopias of exile. The paper also reflects on the question whether the text functions as an act of critical re-mapping with both aesthetic and ethical consequences.

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