Thoughts From a Private Island

Written 3/12/18

Above: The View of Venice from San Servolo

I am loving every minute of our time in Italy. One facet of our trip that differentiates it from a typical tourist vacation is our living arrangements while in Venice. Staying on the private island of San Servolo provides us with a secluded and comfortable sanctuary to return to after roaming the streets all day, and a phenomenal view of the ocean. When I first woke up in San Servolo and I went outside, it felt like a dream. Lush grass speckled with wildflowers beside a misty ocean and a very faint outline of Venice in the distance. I could hardly believe a place like this one existed, especially compared to the familiar cornfields of the Midwest. As I wandered the path among trees, art installations, and the wall surrounding the island, I started to think about how Foucault would have classified San Servolo.

For starters, San Servolo does not have the long and colorful history that the rest of Venice does. Dr. Felluga told me that it started as a quarantine island for a tuberculosis hospital and the island was later the location of an insane asylum. It is currently home to Venice International University where we have been having staying and having class.

The island is surrounded by a wall. If Foucault were to visit, he might suggests that this evokes the “…space of emplacement…(22)”, which was typical of medieval cities. Of course, San Servolo does not date back to the medieval period and the wall was constructed for different reasons than the wall encompassing medieval cities were. San Servolo has no need for a defensive wall because it is surrounded by water on all sides.

Because San Servolo is a modern island, its internal layout is very logical and makes effective use of the space available. Today, one expects everywhere to be easily navigable, but this is very much a Renaissance idea. That said, San Servolo could also be placed into the category of a typically Renaissance “city”.

Thinking back to Foucault’s article, I mulled over what ways Foucault would define our gem of a temporary residence. He says, “Of course one might attempt to describe these different sites by looking for the set of relations by which a given site can be defined (23).” As San Servolo contains a university, it could be defined as a site of learning. It could be grouped in with Purdue, libraries, and museums. Because we are also living there temporarily it could be compared to hotels, hostels, perhaps even a vacation village. It is also, fundamentally, an island. San Servolo could be contained in a category containing the Galapagos, Hawaii, and Crete. San Servolo can be defined multiple ways by its multiple characteristics, each lending itself to a very different categorization than the next. This multiplicity denies San Servolo the ability to fit easily into a narrow box of categorization.

Foucault also describes places in terms of utopic and heterotopic. I questioned which one San Servolo would be classified as for a few days. Foucault says “Utopias are sites with no real place (24)”. Of course, San Servolo is a real place. It is a tangible place that can be reached by vaporetto and has its own longitude and latitude coordinates. It does exist, but sometimes it almost doesn’t seem like it. Each day is very busy, full of learning, maneuvering the hustle and bustle of Venice and getting lost ~on purpose~. When the vaporetto stops at San Servolo and one sets foot on the island, it is easy to think “This doesn’t seem real”. It takes just ten minutes to gain the ability to walk with all the personal space your heart desires in total silence, save the melodic chirping of the birds and the roll of the waves. It totally sounds too good to be true. As hard to believe as it is, San Servolo is a real place, and therefore cannot be classified as a utopia according to Foucault. By the slang of popular culture, however, San Servolo is definitely a utopia. Oasis and paradise would also be suitable words to use to describe the island.

Once I decided that San Servolo wasn’t a utopia, I questioned if its traits qualified it as a heterotopia. Foucault describes a heterotopia as “Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality (24)”. This sounds more like how I was describing San Servolo earlier. It is real, but it is so far removed from the energy of Venice that it feels detached. Heterotopias are also places that represent all other places in the society it resides in, quoth Foucault and Dr. Felluga in lecture. The society that San Servolo is a part of is Venice, and to a larger extent Italy. We’ve learned all about Venice, Milan, Florence, and the Italian Renaissance inside the classroom at San Servolo, so its larger society has been represented at many different snapshots in time. Thinking of Foucault’s analogy of a glass mirror as a heterotopia, San Servolo also functions in this way for us. We start our days in class at San Servolo looking at Venice and the Renaissance from an uninvolved perspective. If we had our lectures in the heart of Venice, I do not believe we would be able to take such a passive position.

My final argument for San Servolo as a heterotopia comes from a quote from Foucault. “In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible to the public. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures (26)”. San Servolo is not accessible to the public as a place to live. We were granted special permission and we needed to buy a vaporetto pass to even venture to its location.

In sum, I believe that Foucault would be inclined to classify San Servolo as a heterotopic place and I would classify it as a personal utopia.

--Ally

Sources

Focault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. “Of Other Spaces”. Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1,1986. Pp. 22-27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/464648