Heterotopias of identity in Sex and the City

by, Vaia Doudaki

Abstract

This article looks at how space and its temporal dimensions interrelate with female identity building within late modernity, in the television series Sex and the City. As elaborated throughout the analysis, which profits from Foucault’s work on heterotopias, the spaces of New York -to which the show pays homage- fluid and contradictory, both enable and curtail the possibilities of identity transformation. Time adds to the fluidity of space, as its signification can transform space from utopia/eutopia to heterotopia and vice versa. Late-modern consciousness is largely heterotopic, pointing to or being in relation with other places of consciousness and identity. The main characters of the show are aware of and largely accept their heterotopic condition, with all its fallacies. New York, their preferred heterotopybearer, offers this multitude of other spaces, inconsistent, fragmented, even broken, for the four women to choose the pieces to form their selected heterotopias, which, under special circumstances, may become enacted eutopias.