Foucault defines heterotopias, in contrast to utopias, as a "mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live" (353). In this sense we can see "heterotopias" as conjunctions of real and unreal practices within a given space. Because human society can never achieve the utopic vision of space it finds in the mirror, which is destined to remain illusory yet ever attractive, there are always heterotropic spaces in which the intended practices converge with all manner of malfunctions, non-intentions, sabotage, subversion, accident, and imaginative re-visioning. The always unreal space of the mirror combines with the real existence of the mirror creating a "mixed" space containing both what is "real" and factual but also what is imaginary and contrary to the facts within a spacial configuration where different (un)realities contest with one another, conflict, and produce friction for the readers (and dwellers) of this space. The person standing in front of the mirror, gazing at themselves, is within a space of friction occuring between the conjugation of an unreal image (or illusion) of themselves and their "real" self (or selves). This friction that exists in all heterotopias, no matter of what kind, produces a complex of real-unreal which, as Foucault describes them, maintain systems of "opening and closing" so that each scene of (un)reality, so to speak, which composes the heterotopia becomes penetrable to the others. The innate friction of heterotopic existence is an existence which can be infected by other existences according to the kind of friction it is exposed to. In this light, heterotopic spaces are the very engine of change and renewal both in human imagination and in reality.
To apply this to Woolf I would like to think of Orlando as manifesting a strong heterotopic nature as it generates friction for readers. This friction, I think, is carefully calculated in order to disturb genre realities, sexuality realities, and social realities, among other things. Yet what I want to focus on is not so much the a thematic heterotopia in the novel, which can be clearly seen, but on a more grammatical, formal heterotopia which Woolf creates by at the level of sentences. To do this I want to look at the very first sentence of the novel, the front door to the heterotopia of the book itself. The first sentence, "He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing the head of a moor which swung from the rafters" (11), in its heterotopic nature falls neatly into what Foucault calls "hetorochronisms": "The heterotopia enters fully into function when men find themselves in a sort of total breach of their traditional time" (354). We find in this first sentence just such a total breach of traditional time. The sentence constructs what could almost be called a freeze frame in terms of the fictional narrative but also the contrary sense of duration brought about in the act of reading, which we like to traditionally suppose as coinciding with some sort of action in the fiction. We see "him," and we find that we cannot doubt his sex or as it were the very first word, "he," though we do not know who "he" is. It is almost hard to say that the interjection is an interruption since Woolf interjects before any action has taken place. Nothing has been interrupted in terms of the narrative flow, time is still at a full stop. Yet, Woolf certainly knows of the heterotopic effect this sentence structure will have on the reader who is expecting an action. Before we have begun we are delayed by a seemingly useless interruption (of nothing). The reader, knowing the subject of the sentence, will "naturally" anticipate the action but is momentarily denied that grammatical progression of time. The effect is grating, it creates a kind of friction between the author's control of time and the reader's expectation. Woolf capitalizes on this to the utmost. Who would ever doubt the word "He" at the beginning of a novel? There is no cause for it like there is no cause to tell the reader not to doubt. Of course Woolf uses this to initiate the reader into the many plays on sexuality throughout the novel, but its more immediate formal effect is of productive frustration, the creation of a heterotopia composed of the author's sense of how things should be and the reader's. The first is a sense of time that is at ease with the unexpected, the other is not.
After her interjection, Woolf reveals the "action," but it is not an action or at least not a representation of the action. It is not properly a recounting or a retelling. "He... was in the act of slicing..." As reader's we want to imagine the dynamic action of slicing at the Moor's head. We want to imagine Orlando making an effort, energetically slashing back-and-forth at the Moor's head hung from the sealing, but this is not how Woolf conveys it. She gives it in the past tense succeed by prepositional phrase. She did not write, "He was slicing" which we could take to be a fairly "mimetic" construction conveying action. But "He was in the act of slicing" conveys action only within the prepositional phrase. Properly, Orlando was only "in the act." Nothing is happening. The only verb of action "slicing" is tucked away inside two prepositional phrases, only describing the noun "act," secluded from main structure, which creates a heterotopic experience of time. On the one hand, nothing action is taking place, but on the other hand we are given a taste of action in word "slicing." It is as if Woolf simultaneously gives us action and takes it away. This, I would argue, creates friction in as much as it is a heterochronism. There is the sense of stasis maintained in the structure of the sentence, but there is also the dynamic action taking place in the imagination. You cannot read the sentence without imagining Orlando actively slicing away at the skull, but the sentence offers us only a static image. It creates a peculiarity to be sure, an odd sentence. Yet the friction between the time that is static given by the narrator inevitably (and intentionally) conflicts with the reader. There is the "reality" of what we intuit in our imaginations as readers with the sentence juxtaposed with the unreality of the narrator's static time which encases movement. Sentence time does not match with reader time and thus creates a heterotopia of time which expands and complicates throughout the novel.
Of course, this plays into Woolf's divergence from mimetic narrative. The fact that we see this already in the first sentence, that Woolf refuses any mimetic chronology for a peculiar static-action borne out of her unreal imagination creating friction on the reader's mind, infecting them with its unhinged sense of time and space, suggests that this sentence is the herald of many things. Not only does it suggest the thematic heterotopia of gender and sexuality which runs throughout the novel, where gender is too a point of friction, it also initiates a brilliant play of frictive, heterotopic literary forms which duel with the reader like a mirror that talks back. It is odd, disturbing, shocking, unnerving, but always creative in the unlimited possibilities it holds within its heterotopic structure.
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