Zeitschrift für Slawistik 2021; 66(2): 249–268

Sonja Novak*
A City of One’s Own: Heterotopias in Ivana
Šojat’s Unterstadt

https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2021-0012

Summary: The paper analyses the phenomenon of heterotopias as they are de-
scribed by Michel Foucault and the way they are employed in literature and thea-
tre. The paper argues that each time an author writes or re-writes, a director stages,
a member of the audience sees and reader reads a fictional narrative that is set into
a non-fictional place (e.g. a city), a heterotopia, “another”, different place is cre-
 

ated by means of conceptual integration. This will be exemplified on the contem-

porary Croatian novel Unterstadt by Ivana Šojat and its stage adaptation.

Keywords: heterotopia, Michel Foucault, city, novel Unterstadt, stage adaptation

1 Introduction
Ivana Šojat (formerly Šojat-Kuči) is a contemporary Croatian writer living and
working in Osijek. In her 2009 novel Unterstadt, Šojat depicts a chronicle of the
city of Osijek through a single family history told by the female members of the
family – great-grandmother Viktorija, grandmother Klara, mother Marija and
daughter Katarina – who have endured the hardships of two world wars, totalitar-
ian regimes and the war in former Yugoslavia in the 1990 s. The novel soon be-
 

came a success in Croatia and has since then been translated into Macedonian,
Italian, German and Bulgarian. In addition to receiving nominations for and win-
ning numerous Croatian literary awards such as the Fran Galović Award (best
book on a regional topic), the Ksaver Šandor Gjalski Award (for novel of the year),
the Josip and Ivan Kozarac Award (for book of the year), the novel was also
adapted for the stage. The stage adaptation was done in 2012 by Nives Madunić
Barišić and Zlatko Sviben. It premiered on July 29, 2012 in Osijek and was very
well received, not only locally, but went on to win national awards for its theatre

*Corresponding author: Dr. Sonja Novak, Assistant Prof., Department of German Language and
Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Osijek, Osijek, E-Mail: snovak@ffos.hr,
sonja_novak@hotmail.com
250 Sonja Novak

adaptation. It was later staged in other cities in Croatia such as Split, Dubrovnik,
Pula and even abroad (Pforzheim, Germany and Belgrade, Serbia).
The depiction of the family saga begins with World War I and ends at the
beginning of the 21st century. In the background of this family’s history, one can
also gain insight into the political, cultural as well as urban history of the city of
Osijek, which is the fourth largest city in Croatia, the biggest in its eastern part,
because the novel contains historiographic facts pertaining to the different peri-
ods described. Since fictitious, literary worlds can be read as worlds within
worlds, this (hi)story of the city written as a literary space can be read as a literary
heterotopia, especially since it depicts a representation of a real-life place/city.
The paper analyses the phenomenon of heterotopias as they are described by Mi-
chel Foucault and the way they are employed in literature and theatre, in this case
in reference to a mid-size European city. The paper argues that each time an
author writes or re-writes, a director stages, a member of the audience sees and
reader reads about a place or city the plot is set in, a heterotopia, “another”, “dif-
ferent” place1 is created by means of conceptual integration. By setting the plot of
a narrative into a certain real and identifiable place/setting, the authors create
this place anew and this place multiplies each time the narrative is being re-writ-
ten/read/performed/viewed etc. Firstly, the authors create their own subjective
mental image of this place. Secondly, when writing and/or rewriting the descrip-
tions of this place, they also physically create the place anew in letters and words
on paper. Furthermore, each time readers read the text, they create their own
mental image of the city, thus creating a multitude of mental images of the place
that increase exponentially with each individual reading and transcend the unity
of the real written or staged place. Moreover, when a narrative is adapted for the
stage, the city is again physically and literally recreated on stage and this recrea-
tion also multiplies; on the one hand, it multiplies with each rehearsal and sta-
ging, i. e. performance and on the other with each member of the audience, both
individually as well as collectively. It is important at this stage to differentiate
between the ‘real” and the ‘imagined’ city. The adjective real in this paper refers
to the factual city of Osijek, situated in eastern Croatia. As such, it is a tangible
place comprised of buildings, parks, inhabitants, vibrant social interactions at a

1 On the difference between notions of space and place, see e.g. Edward Relph's Place and Place-
 

lessness, in which he defines space as “amorphous and intangible” (1971: 8) and place as localized
space with history, uniqueness and meaning (1971: 3). In this paper, the notion of place is applied to
the notion of city i. e. urban dwelling and as a near synonym to social space in terms of Henri
Lefebvre (1991: 26).
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 251

given time; in a nutshell, it is “soundly located and constructed within personal

biography and the physical world” (Stevenson 2003: 113). The imagined city, ac-
cording to Stevenson “seems to defy time, space and identity” (2003: 113). The
representations of real cities in literature are indeed imagined cities, yet they tend
to intersect with the real in that we locate them on our imaginary maps, since it is
human nature to look for recognizable patterns and relations to what is described
and search for anchors to confirm our own position in the social context. Thus,
even in reference to real cities, we use our imagination and “create cognitive
maps of places and spaces according to a vast range of different visual cues asso-
ciated subconsciously with our own and shared experiences” (Kent 2019: 1) be-
cause “[w]e inhabit our actual cities through these personal mythologies, walking
the ghost trajectories of earlier events.” (Anderson 2015: 236)
The discussions on representing space, place, the city etc. in literature, art,
social and political sciences are numerous, especially since the “spatial turn”. To
name only a few: Lloyd Rodwin and Robert Hollister’s collection of essays Cities of
the Mind. Images and Themes of the City in Social Sciences (1984) provides, among
other perspectives, an overview of some of the characteristics of the urban images
in the society (social sciences such as political science, anthropology and sociol-
ogy), albeit in reference to the United States, but the essays show that cities seen
e. g. through the lens of political science as social constructs or products can be
viewed as communities, administrative entities, competitive markets, and seats of
chaos (Schefter 1984: 55–81) or one can talk about cities as bazaars, jungles, ma-
chines and organisms from the sociological perspective (Langer 1984: 97–117).
Moreover, Peter Preston and Paul Simpson-Housley's collection of essays “con-
centrate[s] on the city as seen through the eyes of novelists and poets and their
characters, in order to offer a particular kind of witness to the challenges, oppor-
tunities, stresses and frustrations of city life” (Preston & Simpson-Housley 1994).
Furthermore, Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier states that “novels set in the city have
influenced how scholars in very different academic disciplines have thought
about the city” (Fischer-Nebmaier, Berg & Christou 2015: 1). These, as well as
many other scholarly works on the topic of narrating the city only support the
advocacy of narrative heterotopias by providing analyses of the ways cities and
towns are depicted in works of literature.
In creating her own version of the city of Osijek in her novel, Šojat draws out
similarities between her fictional city and the real city of Osijek. This real and
identifiable place that has been represented i. e. recreated in literature may phy-
sically and mentally resemble the actual site, but is at the same time different; it is
another place. Šojat’s image of Osijek is thus a mirror image of the real place,
which corresponds to Foucault’s definition of heterotopia. The recognition by the
readers who are familiar with the place rises to such a degree that the shift be-
252 Sonja Novak

tween the real and the imagined city of Osijek seemingly fades and even disap-
pears and the reader is confronted with the dual nature of being in a familiar, yet
“other” environment. The mental process behind this phenomenon can be ex-
plained through conceptual blending, which has a crucial role in processing phy-
sical and mental space. According to linguists and researchers in cognitive
science Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, conceptual integration or blending
describes a mental process leading to the construction of a new blended mental
space which is the result of adding at least two different inputs to a generic space
(Fauconnier 2001: 2495). In the context of writing the city, generic space refers to
the existing real place while the two inputs are the mental scheme or mental
space of this place of the narrative’s author (e. g. the author’s knowledge and
subjective perception of the place) on the one hand and the input of his own se-
lection of or contributions to the artistic development of the described place on
the other. In a narrative, both of these inputs project the (author’s) blended space
through the mental process of conceptual integration. This process is further mul-
tiplied by the reader or recipient of the narrative. Blending thus creates “new
meaning, global insight, and conceptual compressions useful for memory and
manipulation of otherwise diffuse ranges of meaning.” (Fauconnier 2001: 2495)
Blended space in the context of a written narrative of a city is thus the result of
interaction of the author, who by extrapolating from and/or by adding inputs into
generic space that is the physical, real place/city creates new, blended spaces.
The same process occurs with the recipient i. e. audience while reading the text
or viewing a performance. In this case, the generic space is again the physical,
real, existing place, input 1 is the image of the 'real' physical place created by the
author, while input 2 is the context of the recipient while reading/performing/
viewing the narrative, which is governed by the vital relations surrounding them,
creating conscious knowledge and associations. When these inputs are com-
bined, for each performer/recipient individually, a new „emergent structure “oc-
curs, a new image of the place, a blended idea of it.

2 Space, place and heterotopia in theory

Michel Foucault (1997) in his preface to The Order of Things employs a term to
describe such „different“ and „other“ places; he calls them heterotopias. Foucault
introduced the notion of heterotopia for those spaces “which are endowed with
the curious property of being in relation with all the others, but in such a way as to
suspend, neutralize, or invert the set of relationships designed, reflected, or mir-
rored by themselves. These spaces, which are in rapport in some way with all the
others, and yet contradict them” (Foucault 1997: 332). According to Foucault,
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 253

there are utopias as unreal places, but there are also places that are real and ef-
fective spaces which are outlined in the very institution of society, but which con-
stitute a sort of counter arrangement, of effectively realized utopia, in which all
the other real arrangements that can be found within society, are at one and the
same time represented, challenged, and overturned: a sort of place that lies out-
side all places and yet is actually localizable. In contrast to the utopias, these
places which are absolutely other with respect to all the arrangements that they
reflect and of which they speak might be described as heterotopias. (Foucault
1997: 332)
Foucault lists examples of heterotopias such as mirrors, cemeteries, cinemas,
theatres, gardens etc. and explains six principles and characteristics these places
possess that make them what they are: 1. all cultures and civilizations have them;
they are universal; 2. They always have a function, although it may vary over
time; 3. They have the power of juxtaposing in a single real place different spaces
and locations that are incompatible with each other, 4. It is linked to bits and
pieces of time (heterochronism); 5. They have a system of opening and closing
and 6. they function in relation to the rest of space (Foucault 1997: 332). Foucault
even refers to texts rather than socio-cultural spaces when defining the term het-
erotopia, so it seems logical to apply the term in describing the process that oc-
curs when transpositioning a city/place in a literary or performance text. A new
notion, both physical and mental, of a certain place/space is created every time a
real, identifiable space is described in a literary text or a play set in a real city is
performed on stage and this occurs on several levels.
Furthermore, Yuri Lotman supports the argument that a writer (re)creates
space when writing about it, when he states that “[l]iterary space represents an
author’s model of the world, expressed in the language of spatial representation.”
(1977: 218) Lotman extended his theory of space within literary studies to the ques-
tion of the relation between the narrative and the real space, claiming that they are
determined by conventions, context and extra-textual aspects and cultural codes.
This inevitably includes the reader into the narrative spatial equation as well.
As explained previously, by writing a place, the author physically creates the
place anew, in letters and words and with each individual reading of a literary
text which is set in a real city, a new mental image of it is created by each reader
individually. When staging i. e. performing a city, it is literally recreated physi-
cally on stage with every rehearsal and with every performance making each pre-
vious staging only a transitional place that exists both individually and collec-
tively with all audience and ensemble members until the next rehearsal and/or
staging. When the performance is set on location, another level of meaning is
added to the specific location within the written city. As such, they possess (al-
most) all of the features of heterotopias. All cultures either write or perform in
254 Sonja Novak

some manner and these texts and/or performances have a function (e.g. cultural,  

aesthetic, entertainment etc.). They are reflections of physical places that, per-
ceived individually, carry different connotations, some of which might be incom-
patible or juxtaposing to the original. They appear in different times and are thus
heterochronic and they have obvious features of opening and closing such as first
and last page and the beginning and end of a play and they function in relation to
other spaces as well.
Peter Johnson describes heterotopias as disturbing places:

[They] draw us out of ourselves in peculiar ways; they display and inaugurate a difference,
and challenge the space in which we may feel at home. These emplacements exist out of step
and meddle with our sense of interiority. There is no pure form of heterotopia, but different
combinations, each reverberating with all the others [...] but their relationships clash and
create further disturbing spatio-temporal units. (Johnson 2006: 84)

Yet heterotopias need not always be disturbing. Their perception and reception
depends on the individual’s experience and his/her associations with the place
represented. Rainer Warning describes literary heterotopias as places of aesthetic
experience that arise from a convergence of the writing subject with a real place
that the subject has perceived as an “other” (2009: 21). According to Warning
(2009: 29), the status of heterotopia is assigned to a place by the author who has
been inspired to (re)write it by the real place itself and some of its features or
stimuli.
Similarly to Foucault’s idea of the mirror being both like a utopia and a het-
erotopia, a ‘placeless place’, since it refers to real cities represented by authors in
works of literature and then perceived by the readers/audience very individually,
is thus also an actual site that completely disrupts our notion of space. The de-
scribed place or specific site is, at the same time, completely real and unreal,
forming an utter dislocation of itself. In Foucault’s opinion, the theatre is an ex-
cellent example of a heterotopia as it “has the power of juxtaposing in a single
real place different spaces and locations that are incompatible with each other.
Thus on the rectangle of its stage, the theatre alternates as a series of places that
are alien to each other” (Foucault 1997: 334).
In theatres as forms of heterotopias, time and space blend to a certain form of
ritual and create a ‘consecrated’ site of performance in a particular building.
“[T]he theatre consists of the combination of two different spaces: the real space
of the audience and the virtual space of the scene. When the play begins, the
virtual becomes real (and the real disappears); when the play is over, the reverse
happens and we return to so-called reality” (Dehaene & De Cauter 2008: 93). Fou-
cault refers to the theatre as a heterotopia of illusion: “a space of illusion that
exposes all real space, all the emplacements in the interior of which human life
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 255

is enclosed and partitioned, as even more illusory” (Foucault 1997: 335). As such,
this space is limited to a certain space and time and lasts as long as the perfor-
mance of the play, after which it disappears. It is created anew with each new
staging. In this case, it can be highly utilized as a site for expression of social
critique towards a certain social or political phenomenon e. g. from the theatre
director’s perspective who stages a certain play, as will be shown on the example
of Zlatko Sviben’s staging of Šojat’s Unterstadt in the next chapter.
Joanna Tompkins claims that when audiences perceive heterotopia in thea-
tre, they are presented with a sample of what spatial, structural, and political
options might be tried out for evaluation, whether or not they are accepted as
actual possibilities. Even rejecting selections affords the opportunity for audi-
ences to decide which options are a step too far. Heterotopic theatre that is en-
gaged politically – and aesthetically – offers a model for (re)fashioning the pre-
sent and the future. (Tompkins 2014: 7)
In addition to the obvious fact that staging a play set in a real town that the
audience can identify, is a kind of appropriation in itself, it also creates another
layer of existence of this place. Dan Rebellato's argument that “the theatre is a
space of creative reinscription, a space where meaning, like de-territorialized
identity, is not merely made but remade, negotiated out of silence, stasis and in-
comprehension” (2009: 78) supports the claim that the reading i. e. staging of a
narrative which is set in a real city, creates a sort of heterotopia, a place within a
place and a world within a world (both physically and mentally). This leads to the
conclusion that the theatre audience plays a significant role in the creation of
heterotopias, as it creates a multiplicity of individual and collective interrelated
meanings ascribed to the depicted place.
According to Rebellato (2009: 78), “[t]he play in performance has a dual
structure: we both watch what we see and imagine it differently. This is notably
different from the localized form of theatre [...] which demands that what we see
could not be done differently, because it has no meaning anywhere else.” Further-
more, a technique for exploring theatrical space that enacts a ‘laboratory’ in
which other spaces – and therefore other possibilities for socio-political alterna-
tives to the existing order – can be performed in greater detail than Foucault’s
conventional definition of theatre as heterotopic. This enactment of space in per-
formance has the capacity to demonstrate the rethinking and reordering of space,
power, and knowledge by locating world-making spaces and places tangibly, al-
beit transiently. (Tompkins 2014: 6)
Since Foucault (1997: 332) perceives space as a set of relations (or even oppo-
sitions) between, for example, private space and public space, between family
and social space, between cultural and useful space, between the space of leisure
and that of work, it can be concluded that depicting a city in a work of literature
256 Sonja Novak

creates an effect of mirroring, reflecting or inverting it. It does not merely mimic it,
but simulates it as an alternative place that, by being 'displaced', allows and en-
ables a kind of distance, providing space to re-examine reality. The heterotopia or
its variations in literary works and performative arts here, in lack of more precise
terms, referred to as transtopia and neotopia, occurs in the relationship reader-
text-place/city or audience-staging-actors-place/city. In terms of theatre, it cre-
ates an even more complex effect of layering.
In his definition of social space as a social product, Henri Lefebvre points out
the existence of a “double illusion, each side of which refers back to the other,
reinforces the other, and hides behind the other.” (Lefebvre 1991: 27) Literary het-
erotopias bear the same two aspects he assigns to this double illusion: the illusion
of transparency and the illusion of opacity or ‘realistic’ illusion. Thus, Lefebvre
argues that it is necessary to read and decode an existing, already produced space
by means of a set of “codifications” that have been “produced along the space
corresponding with them” (Lefebvre 1991: 17) and explains the way these codes
were created and how they disappeared:

When codes worked up from literary texts are applied to spaces—to urban spaces, say—we
remain, as may easily be shown, on the purely descriptive level. Any attempt to use such
codes as a means of deciphering social space must surely reduce such space itself to the
status of a message, and the inhabiting of it to a status of a reading. [...] Yet did there not
at one time, between the sixteenth century (the Renaissance – and the Renaissance city)
and the nineteenth century, exist a code at once architectural, urbanistic and political,
constituting a language common to country people and townspeople, to the authorities
and to artists – a code which allowed space not only to be 'read' but also to be con-
structed? (Lefebvre 1991: 7)

Lefebvre explains that social space is “produced” (1991: 26) by a process that oc-
curs in heterotopias as well, since it can be argued that a physical ('real') place
depicted through a code (language) produces an infinite number (equal to the
number of readers, performances and viewers) of both social and mental places.
This concurs with Lefebvre’s theory on produced space and its multiplication:
“We are thus confronted by an indefinite multitude of spaces, each one piled
upon, or perhaps contained within, the next: geographical, economic, demo-
graphic, sociological, ecological, political, commercial, national, continental,
global. Not to mention nature's (physical) space [...].” (Lefebvre 1991: 8)
Since “social space is a social product” (Lefebvre 1991: 26) and, as such, has
the power to dominate and manipulate, in literary terms, its intent is to steer as-
sociations and emotions in a certain direction. At the same time, it is a mental
place for each and every reader/viewer (un)familiar with the physical place. This
mental space i. e. its image is constituted by the individual's aggregation of sen-
 

sory information, previous experience, factual knowledge of the space, but also
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 257

subjective associations and relations to it, so it is both real and unreal; in Lefebv-
re's terms it creates an illusion of transparency as well as opacity and in Fou-
cault’s terms, it creates heterotopias.2
It can be concluded that the intention and purpose of literary heterotopias is
instrumental. Since literature can be viewed as communication between author
and reader via the medium of text and conveying a certain message, the proposed
tool for explaining the phenomenon of literary heterotopias is the conceptual in-
tegration theory by Fauconnier and Turner, where the result is a blended space
created by each individual. Conceptual integration theory3 according to Faucon-
nier and Turner describes a mental process, i.e. basic mental operation that leads
 

to new meaning, global insight, and conceptual compressions useful for memory
and manipulation of otherwise diffuse ranges of meaning. [...] The essence of the
operation is to construct a partial match between two inputs, to project selectively
from those inputs into a novel 'blended' mental space, which then dynamically
develops emergent structure. It has been suggested that the capacity for complex
conceptual blending ("double-scope" integration) is the crucial capacity needed
for thought and language. (Fauconnier 2001: 2495)
Terms important for understanding Fauconnier and Turner’s conceptual inte-
gration theory are generic space, input 1 and input 2 as well as blended space. The
generic space when applied in this case refers to the mental scheme or shared
mental space in which the physical place exists (e.g. the author's knowledge of
 

the surroundings i.e. their own subjective perception of the place/space) and their
 

own contributions to the artistic development of the idea of the described place.
These two notions can be identified as input 1 and input 2. In the process of writ-
ing, i.e. reading the narrative, both of these inputs project the (author’s) blended
 

space through the mental process of conceptual integration.

The idea is that blended space – heterotopia – is the result of interaction of
the author, who by extrapolating from and/or by adding different inputs (ideas,
elements, other media etc.) into generic space with input 1 as basis, which is the
'real' place referred to in the narrative, creates new, blended spaces – a kind of
first-level narrative heterotopia. The same process occurs with the recipient i.e.  

2 One needs to differentiate between heterotopias and 'non-places', which is a term by Marc Augë
(1992: 122) referring to places of transience which have no history or anthropological meaning for
groups or communities such as motorways, airports or hotel rooms which can be perceived as
places of anonymity and loneliness.
3 A systematic study of conceptual blending was initiated in 1993 by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark
Turner, who discovered the structural uniformity and wide application of the notion. Since then,
important work has been done on the theory of conceptual blending and its empirical manifesta-
tions in mathematics, social science, literature, linguistics, and music etc.
258 Sonja Novak

audience while reading the text or viewing a performance. In this case, input 1 is
again the image of the ‘real’ physical place, while input 2 is the context of the
recipient while reading/performing/viewing the narrative, which is governed by
the vital relations surrounding them, creating conscious knowledge and associa-
tions. When these two inputs are combined, for each performer/recipient indivi-
dually, a new “emergent structure” occurs, a new image of the place, a blended
idea of it.
Vital relations playing a part in conceptual integration and blending, i.e. in
 

perception of the process of creation by the author or perception by the recipient

are based on a system of interacting principles of these relations. Fauconnier and
Turner distinguish, among others, the following vital relations: identity, time,
space, cause-effect, part-whole, analogy, disanalogy, similarity, uniqueness, in-
tentionality etc. (Fauconnier & Turner 2002).
If applied to narrative or literary heterotopias, it could be argued that this
process of conceptual blending occurs on several levels, as explained previously.
Firstly, on the level i.e. relation between the author and the real, physical place;
 

secondly, on the level or in the relation of each individual reader to the physical
place as well as the place described in the narrative; thirdly in the relation be-
tween the physical place and the adapted stage text, fourthly between the physi-
cal place and the staged setting of the performance and in addition to that be-
tween these and the performers and the audience and so on, indefinitely. At least
two different inputs are blended through the process of adaptation – the physical
place and the author's own re-interpretation of it – creating new meaning con-
taining contents from both inputs, representing a new, “blended” mental space
perceived by the recipient. This occurs by introducing paradigmatic or syntag-
matic changes in the contents of the basic input which is the familiar physical
place, accentuating other aspects by introducing new and original elements (the
second input). This creates a new generic space in which two inputs coexist by
activating the recipient's knowledge or familiar idea of an existing place, such as
the descriptions of Osijek in Šojat’s novel Unterstadt. Upon reception of the result
of her language adaptation of the city as input 2 and original idea (physical place
of the town of Osijek) as input 1, no matter in what order, the recipient creates his
or her own blended space with new meanings.
Conceptual integration or blending results in “partially matching the two in-
puts [perception of physical Osijek as input space 1 and perception of the city
within the novel as input 2, or vice versa; S.N.] and projecting selectively from
these two input spaces into a fourth mental space, the blended space.” (Faucon-
nier & Turner 2002: 58–59) It is purely individual and left up to the recipient to
activate his or her association networks in order to create their own blended space
based on the author's intended focal points of the creation. This pattern comple-
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 259

tion allows the recipient to construct an individual blended space by “importing a

familiar background frame” and “[t]he emotions that go with it. This construal is
emergent in the blend.” (Fauconnier 2001: 2497) The same process occurs with
intercultural or historical transfer of narratives, i. e. in translations, localizations,
adaptations etc.

3 Heterotopias in Šojat’s Unterstadt

Šojat’s novel Unterstadt can be described as a novel of (cultural) memory (Sabljić
& Varga Oswald 2016; Durić 2014), a history novel (Primorac 2010), a novel on the
emancipation of female protagonists (Primorac 2010; Gajin 2010: 47) and a novel
thematising the destiny of German minority in contemporary Croatian literature
(Mautner 2009; Geiger 2012).
The title of Šojat's novel is Unterstadt (Donji grad), which is also the German
name for the lower part of the city of Osijek, Croatia. The local inhabitants and
anyone with some knowledge of local history will immediately recognize that the
story is set in a specific place of the city of Osijek (as well as a specific time) –
where and when the population of the city of Osijek was dominated by Germans,
more precisely the Danube Swabians, at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century.
It can be argued that this is a kind of onomastic appropriation of the name4, but
since it can be proven that the novel is partly based on facts and depicts relations
of Osijek to other cities in Croatia (e.g. Zagreb) or in Europe (e.g. Vienna), this
   

particular narrative is a mix of fiction and verifiable facts, both an illusion and a
representation of reality, so it can be argued that its intention is to create hetero-
topias.
The female protagonist Katarina begins the story in the present time by re-
porting that she is on her way from Zagreb to Osijek because her mother had just
died. By realistically depicting her protagonist’s train ride from Zagreb through
Koprivnica and finally to Osijek, and reminiscing about her first arrival in Zagreb,
Šojat emphasizes her attempt to create a realistic narrative, one that relates to the
abovementioned cities: “sjetila sam se sebe kada sam se s nepunih devetnaest
iskrcala na glavnome zagrebačkom kolodvoru, kada sam ispred sebe ugledala
prostrani krak Lenucijeve potkove [...].” [I remembered when I was nineteen and
I disembarked the train at the main train station in Zagreb for the first time. I saw

4 The novel uses authentic language, characteristic for the second half of the 19th and first half of
the 20th century in Osijek: namely, at the time, Osijek was a multi-ethnic city then, where the spo-
ken Croatian, German and Hungarian language mixed, resulting in an endemic dialect, the so
called „Esseker dialect “. Essek is the Hungarian version of the name of Osijek.
260 Sonja Novak

before me the vast stretch of Lenuci's horseshoe (...)]5 (Šojat Kuči 2009: 8). This
narrative thus meanders between fiction and facts and between the objective and
subjective, between the individual and the collective, creating a multi-facetted
notion of the city in question.6 With this, Šojat places her depiction of Osijek into
the broader context of and relation to known space, which is, according to Fou-
cault (1997: 332) a feature of heterotopias.
After the main protagonist Katarina returns to Osijek, the city that should be
familiar to her appears strange and unfamiliar at first glance, evoking a feeling of
estrangement with the audience as well:

A nisam prepoznala grad koji mi se na trenutak nasmiješio zumbulima. Sve je nekako bilo
drukčije, za dlaku promijenjeno, kao blago pomaknuto u stranu. Pokraj kolodvora više nije
bilo one samoposluge u kojoj su studenti i nogometni navijači prije odlaska na studij ili
povratka kući ispijali piva pa se klatili i povraćali po vlakovima. [...] Prvo sam pomislila kako
ću Radićevom ulicom otići do tramvajske postaje i odvesti se do Donjeg grada [...] Zato sam
se zaputila prema Divaltovoj [...] Vukla sam se mračnom, nikad pošteno osvijetljenom uli-
com koja se uz prugu protezala sve do Klajnove. Pomislila sam: ništa se nije promijenilo, ova
mi ulica i dalje ulijeva strah. Pomislila sam kako je rat došao i prošao, kako je sve zapravo
ostalo isto, kako je grad poput tvrdoglava starca nastavio svojim putem, vratio se starim
navikama. [...] Gotovo sam trčala sve do Divaltove.

I couldn’t recognize the city that appeared to have smiled at me slightly with its hyacinths.
Everything was somehow different, somewhat changed, as if a tad shifted to the side. The
supermarket that used to be next to the main station, where the students and football fans
used to buy and drink loads of beer before going to college or to a football match only to get
wasted and throw up all over the trains, was now gone [...] At first, I thought I’d go down
Radić Street and then take the tram all the way to Lower Town [...] so I headed towards Divalt
Street. [...] I dragged my feet along the dark, always badly lit street that stretched along the
tramline all the way to Klajn Street. Nothing had changed, I thought, this street still made me
feel fright. The war had come and gone, I thought, but everything had stayed the same. The
city had continued along its own path like a stubborn old man going back to his old habits.
[...] I almost ran all the way to Divalt Street. (Šojat Kuči 2009: 9–11)

The readers familiar with the layout of Osijek will be able to retrace the steps of
Šojat's protagonist Katarina, but this path will not be the physical streets of Osijek
that Šojat lists, nor will it be the same idea that the author (or her protagonist for
that matter) has in mind, but their own path. Even the readers unfamiliar with

5 Since there is no official English translation of Šojat Kuči's novel, the translations of the original
text have been done by the author of the paper solely for the purpose of this analysis.
6 In addition to creating heterotopias, depicting real cities in literature also creates heterochroni-
city. Representing and depicting a city in a literary work, especially in one that proves to be of
canonical value, also creates an elaborate trans-generational multi-layered abundance of parallel
places across not only space, but also time.
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 261

these streets or with the town of Osijek will create their own mental images of this
place, a kind of new, blended space for each new reader.
The places Šojat chooses to describe correspond to Foucault's characteristics
of heterotopias. Firstly, they are universal and have a specific function, such as
streets, paths, tram stations. Secondly, they seem to juxtapose different places at
the same time because Šojat describes them both as familiar, yet distant to her
protagonist Katarina. By referring to well-known places in Osijek such as the main
station, Martin Divalt Street, Stjepan Radić Street etc., the author describes her
own experiences and feelings connected to these places, calling to mind also
those the readers might have had if they are familiar with them. In this process,
the reader's/the audience's different inputs multiply and blend, creating again
new mental spaces and images of the described places.
Interestingly enough, even the characters in the narratives are described to
have experienced their own city as estranged, as a heterotopia: “Gotovo se nasmi-
ješila kada su zakoračile u Psunjsku baštu [...]. Osobito kada je pogledom okrznu-
la sjenicu ispred koje ju je Peter zaprosio, no onda je, posve iznenada, sasvim
neodređeno, shvatila da grad više nije isti, da se nešto pomaknulo. Kao da ga je
netko nakratko prisvojio, ukrao i vratio joj ga izmijenjenog.” [She almost smiled
when they stepped into Psunjska [...], especially when she glanced at the gazebo
in front of which Peter proposed to her. But then, quite suddenly and indetermi-
nately she realized that the city is not the same any more. It was as if someone had
appropriated it for a second, stolen it and then returned it to her, changed.] (Šojat
Kuči 2009: 341) In some instances, Šojat also expresses criticism towards certain
public services provided by the city officials, such as street lights or cleanliness of
the city, referring to these problems as facts that are well-known to the inhabi-
tants, such as which streets were poorly lit in the evening and which ones were
well lit (Šojat Kuči 2009: 20), some of which might even be universal, i.e. applying  

to all cities.
Furthermore, Foucault mentions that heterotopias are linked to specific peri-
ods of time, which is what Šojat also incorporates into her descriptions of the city
as she plays with time lapses in the narrative. She takes the readers back and forth
in time and chooses to emphasize different historic periods in the life of the city.
In cases where Šojat attempts to bring to mind more glorious days of life in the
city and accentuate a joyous moment in her protagonist's family history, she em-
beds into her narrative a reference to famous sites for lovers (Šojat Kuči 2009:
140)7 or to places for important social and cultural events from the past: “Godinu

7 The Pejačević Well that Šojat refers to was a famous site where lovers would meet in the evening
and exchange kisses and embraces. Furthermore, Šojat makes further references to the view point
262 Sonja Novak

su dana Viktorija i Rudolf hofirali i 'vodali se' po zelenilu Gradskog vrta, gdje su
se jedne nedjelje i upoznali, subotom odlazili na balove koji su se redovito održa-
vali u dvorani smještenoj na ulazu u osječki „Schönbrunn“, kako su Osječani od
milja nazivali svoj najraskošniji park.” [Viktorija and Rudolf went steady for a
whole year and always walked hand in hand in the green City Garden where they
had met for the first time. They went dancing every Saturday to the ballroom si-
tuated at the entrance of the Osijek „Schönbrunn“ as the townspeople used to
flatter their most luxurious park.] (Šojat Kuči 2009: 26) Again, the readers ac-
quainted with these places might remember their own experiences on site and/or
create a visual/mental image of them.
When describing ground-breaking events, such as the beginning of the Sec-
ond World War in Osijek, the author deliberately chooses the central part of Un-
terstadt [Lower Town] to place one of her protagonists in. The crossroads she finds
herself at reflect her life situation, i.e. the physical place reflects her inner dichot-
 

omy: “Točno na Veliki petak, 11. travnja 1941., dok je Klara šećući s trogodišnjim
Antunom prolazila ispred hotela Tomislav pa prema kapelici Gospe Snježne, u
Osijek je nahrupio rat.” [It was on Good Friday, 11th April 1941, as Klara was walk-
ing with her three-year-old son Antun and passing by the hotel Tomislav towards
the Chapel of Our Lady of the Snow, that war came to Osijek.] (Šojat Kuči 2009:
198) She finds herself in front of a church and a hotel, the former signifying being
at peace, stability, home and the latter signifying travel, i. e. running away.
 

Šojat’s descriptions of the city stem from different time periods. When step-
ping into a different time (in this case this is always the past), Šojat changes the
onomastic features of the city of Osijek: she starts using street names from the
past. This can be considered as another feature of heterotopias Foucault describes
as opening and closing. This code-switching in the onomastic sense thus serves to
shift between the depictions of different historic periods in Osijek’s urban history,
but also to trigger the opening and closing of literary heterotopias. So, for exam-
ple, instead of Županijska Street as it is called today, she uses the German, i.e.  

Esseker name for this street from the turn of the 19th into the 20th century and
refers to it as Komitats-Gasse (Šojat Kuči 2009: 132). By doing this, she not only
creates a heterotopia, but also heterochronicity. The reader is immediately and
deliberately displaced both in space and in time. To those familiar with the his-
tory of the city of Osijek, the German name Komitats-Gasse will be a signal for the
change in the temporal setting of the plot. The temporal reference features a tear
at this point and causes a kind of Verfremdung, amplifying the feeling of distance

that existed in Gradski vrt then, from where one could see the part of town then called Majuri and
Neustadt.
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 263

to the described place. Similarly, even for those unfamiliar with Osijek’s past, this
will be a point where questions arise about the switch in the onomastic features of
the city from Croatian into German. In both cases, the readers form a new emer-
gent structure about the described place, a kind of heterotopia.
Šojat's descriptions of the city reflect the inner state of her protagonist or em-
phasize it in an attempt to evoke the same with the readers/audience. After the
funeral of her mother, the female protagonist Katarina describes a part of the city
as follows:

Veoma polako hodale smo prema Donjogradskome groblju, smještenom na uzdignutome

dijelu pjeskovite obale, tamo gdje Drava skeće udesno, pa vjetrovi zimi vrište i zavijaju kao
demoni, kao nespašene duše u paklu. Da, tako su stari Osječani prozvali to mjesto: Pakao.
Tamo su po nalogu austrijske krune podigli groblje, daleko od naseljenog mjesta. Mrtvi su
od grada pobjegli u Pakao, no grad se prelio preko njih, narastao je kao plima.

We walked very slowly towards the cemetery in the Lower Town. The cemetery was located
on an elevated part of the sandy river bank where the river Drava meanders right and where
the winds during winter time howl and scream like demons, like the damned souls in hell.
Yes, that's what the old townspeople called this place: Hell. The Austrian Crown had ordered
to erect a cemetery there, far away from the town at that time. The dead had fled away from
the living to Hell, but the city flooded over them and grew over them like the tide. (Šojat Kuči
2009: 304)

The adjectives that the author uses to describe the cemetery mirror the protago-
nist's emotional state: empty, hellish, windy, demon-like.
On the other hand, when Katarina comes to terms with the death of her
mother, the city becomes familiar and friendly again, albeit in a dream: “Sjedile
smo u parku, mislim onom kralja Petra Krešimira, pokraj Doma zdravlja, na klupi,
u mirisnoj sjeni japanske trešnje.” [We were sitting in the park, I think it was the
Petar Krešimir Park, next to the Healthcare centre. We were sitting on one of the
benches bathed in the fragrance of the Japanese cherry blossoms] (Šojat Kuči
2009: 293). Šojat also uses references to the city when using figures of speech and
literary devices such as metaphors or similes. She uses references to specific sites
within the city of Osijek that the community is familiar with to depict strong
images. These similes are her own new formations, but need no elaborate expla-
nation for those living in the city, and at the same time, provide details about
local life to those unfamiliar with it: “Štamplice su poskočile, a ono malo rakije
koja je preostala na dnu boce zaljuljalo se i uskomešalo kao stara Drava po kojoj
vikendima klize čiklovi.” [The schnapps glasses bounced and the little schnapps
that was left in them rippled like the waves created by the small boats gliding
along the river Drava on weekends.] (Šojat Kuči 2009: 94) or “U crnoj muslinskoj
haljini mama je bila blijeda kao duh, a oči su joj bile sive, kao prljave, kao Drava
264 Sonja Novak

pokraj Kožare.” [Mother looked as white as a ghost in her black muslin dress; her
eyes were as grey and dirty as the river Drava down by the Leather factory] (Šojat-
Kuči 2009: 99).
Šojat's novel has been dramatized first as a radio-play by Nives Madunić Bari-
šić as well as a prize-winning theatre play directed by Zlatko Sviben and Bojan
Marotti and it was later staged on different locations. It was first staged during the
Osijek Summer of Culture in the Osijek Citadel [Tvrđa]. Then it was staged at the
Croatian National Theatre in Osijek. The third location it was staged at was in
Dubrovnik, during the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and later it toured to Rijeka
and abroad.
Each of the stagings and performances recreated parts of the city of Osijek
and its surrounding area with the physical scenography, which in itself literally
multiplies and shifts or dislocates the depicted places. The scene (scenography by
Miljenko Sekulić) was divided into three parts representing not space, but time:
present-day space, historical space and a space for the dead. This literally corre-
sponds to Foucault's notion of heterotopia as described in the introductory part of
the paper. The play premiered 2012 in the open space of Osijek's Citadel, depicting
an authentic, Osijek-based narrative, creating literally and figuratively a multipli-
cation of spaces and times during the performance. As opposed to the novel, Svi-
ben’s staging emphasized not the history of the urban narrative of the city of Osi-
jek, but the systematic oppression of Germans after the Second World War in this
region – a topic that has not been openly discussed and processed. Koprolčec and
Živić state that Sviben’s interpolations are based on historical events, such as the
previous difficult experiences of the Swabians and Jews in Galicia, once an Aus-
trian land and presently a part of Ukraine, the Allies’ bombardments, executions,
and property confiscations committed by the Partisans in Osijek’s Municipal Gar-
den neighbourhood, the deportations of Danube Swabians and Jews to the labor
camps at the Tenja turnpike, Krndija and Valpovo, their travails during the Way of
the Cross, and the like. (Koprolčec & Živić 2017: 382)
Sviben emphasizes some of the events Šojat evokes in her novel by centring
his dramatic conflict to and around places of suffering of Jews and Germans dur-
ing and after the Second World War to e.g. the former “Mursa Mill, a concentra-
 

tion camp in Tenja, in the vicinity of Osijek, which was operational in 1942 as a
stop for the Jewish detainees prior to their final deportations to Auschwitz or Ja-
senovac.” (Koprolčec & Živić 2017: 383) Sviben’s adaptation thus repositioned and
displaced the plot to labour camps for Danube Swabians such as Krndija, Gakovo
and Valpovo. By evoking these places and staging them, albeit not always and
necessarily via scenography, but sometimes incorporated into dramatis personae
such as inmates, the apparition of an angel or even Tito himself etc., the staging of
Šojat’s Unterstadt creates heterotopias with cathartic effects. A great contribution
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 265

to the cathartic effect of the stage adaptation was achieved by the scenography.
“Spatially, the scenographer, Miljenko Sekulić organized the scene in three parts,
having it divided in a present-day space, a historical space, and a space of those
who have passed away.” (Koprolčec and Živić 2017: 395) This in itself implies a
multitude of simultaneous time-spaces intertwined with each other at the mo-
ment of the performance.
The first performance was held at an open-space in Osijek’s old part of town
called Tvrđa, which also contributes to the temporal displacement of the plot and
catapults the audience into the past, distant times. It is precisely this distance that
employs the audience to objectively observe and analyse the performed events
and to rethink their own individual and collective past. Sanja Nikčević (2012: 27)
analyses the adaptation as a Brechtian political play that resists succumbing to
emotions and makes you think and act. Yet Nikčević states that the staging could
not avoid evoking emotions, because the audience was comprised of people who
have themselves gone through similar, when not these exact events and who can
identify and connect with the characters (2012: 27). They could recognize the
places depicted, the surroundings in which the staging was set and they could
not avoid the fact and fiction blending in this theatrical ritual, constructing a
one-time experience that was at the same time real, yet unreal, that was there, but
not there. Another, later performance was moved into the building of the Croatian
National Theatre in Osijek with similar effects: The building of the theatre became
all the labour camps for Germans established in this region 1945–1947: Josipovac,
Valpovo, Velika Pisanica near Bjelovar, Krndija near Đakovo, Šipovac near Na-
šice, Pusta Podunavlje in Baranja and Tenja/Tenjska Mitnica (Tunjić 2012: 33).
The artistic freedom allowed the theatre director Sviben to employ his own extra-
polations of places and events mentioned in the novel to question totalitarian
regimes and emphasize the guilt of the oppressors (Partisans) over the oppressed
(the Germans), whereas Šojat’s novel depicts the suffering and traumata of all
parties under totalitarian regimes and wars equally. Both Šojat and Sviben thus
employed space to rethink and reorder power and knowledge, which is, according
to Tompkins (2014: 6), one of heterotopia’s possibilities.

4 Conclusion
Depicting or referring to real places such as towns in narratives serves the pur-
pose of conveying a certain message. In the analysed example, the author Ivana
Šojat refers to and describes her home town of Osijek in her novel Unterstadt with
the purpose of effective emphasizing of the inner state of her literary characters
and to achieve the cathartic experience of the audience/readers, who by recogniz-
266 Sonja Novak

ing the places depicted, connect with Šojat's characters. At the same time, the
readers employ their own associations with the places they recognize and thus
create a multitude of new mental images or blends of different inputs. These men-
tal images at the same time represent the physical place they depict, but can never
be these places, only their reflections, a kind of heterotopia in Foucault’s terms.
The purpose of this phenomenon is instrumental – to convey the author’s mes-
sage, to enhance and emphasize certain aspects of the narrative, to fulfil a cath-
artic function etc.
These heterotopias are created by each alteration or literary reference to the
non-fictional place, always creating something new, be it by modifying the med-
ium or adjusting it to a new cultural setting (spatial or temporal). These “blended”
mental spaces are results of a merger between at least two input spaces, starting
with the author and their idea and mental image of the real place and any of their
subjective connotations added in the written description. Then each recipient
forms their own structure of the place individually while reading. Each time the
text is read, it always includes a mental process in which the readers associate
their own subjective personal experiences with the recognized places, creating
these places anew. By blending the non-fictional and the fictional imaginary
space i. e. combining at least two input spaces, the existing knowledge and cul-
tural experience, and the newly added elements of the readers, a new construct is
formed which is in its interpretation unique for each medium as well as cultural,
geographical, and time setting, meaning that the number of levels on which het-
erotopias are created increases with each translation or localization, adaptation
etc. For example, with each rehearsal and staging of a performance, a number of
simultaneous heterotopias is created that multiply exponentially with each new
performance. Since writing, reading, performing and viewing a narrative include
mental and emotional processes all the participants undergo, thus making the
participants, i.e. the recipients the central figures and the addressees, the pro-
 

posed methodology of investigation of these phenomena is Rezeptionsästhetik.

This research raises questions worth further investigating: Is this cognitive
process of creating heterotopias detaching us from the real place or linking, con-
necting us closer to it? Is it distancing us from the depicted place or making us
embrace it? What is the relationship between the narrative and our mental navi-
gation through space and time? Do we create alternative cognitive maps? In any
case, this process makes us reposition ourselves in relation to the real place.
 Heterotopias in Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt 267

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