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permission or make certain gestures. Sixth, heterotopias have a function related to all remaining spaces.
I mainly focus on Foucault’s discussion of otherness and heterotopia. In History of Madness, Foucault addresses the gap between and the entanglement of reason and
unreason. In the Potterverse, wizards often see Non-Magical people as lacking ability and knowledge; even wizards who are fond of Muggles are proven to have this ambiguous quality. Conversely, Non-Magical people in the Potterverse often think that magic represents unreason and abnormality. This paradoxical relationship between the Wizarding and Non-Magical societies not only shifts the definition of otherness to its limits, but also illuminates an innovative blend of reason and unreason. Building on Foucault’s discussion in “Of Other Spaces,” I examine the interplay of the Wizarding and the Non-Magical worlds through these six principles of heterotopias. In the Potterverse, people are divided into Wizardkind and Muggle because of their nature, yet the binary world cannot be maintained well since they also share the same geographical map and recourses. That is to say, the boundary between the Wizarding and Non-Magical world is not that strict naturally. This thesis further analyzes several Magical items that help build the complicated structure of the Potterverse. This thesis argues that a shifting structure is necessary for the organic construction of a stable society, a fluid and complex system that finds expression in and of the Potterverse, thereby exposing various social issues in the readers’ reality.
1.4 Chapter Organization
In addition to the first chapter, which serves as the introduction, my thesis is divided into three main parts. In the second chapter, “The Fluid Concept of the Other,” I analyze different concepts of the other in the Magical and the Non-Magical societies as
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well as otherness within the Magical society itself. The interwoven relationship between the Magical and the Non-Magical societies highlights various aspects of otherness. The Wizarding world’s social structure acts as a mirror of the social structures in both the Non-Magical society, the representation of the real world of the reader. By providing the Wizarding world with political and economic systems that are already familiar to readers, Rowling creates a society in which wizardry and witchcraft feel more likely to exist parallel to the readers’ everyday world. In this regard, many critics have stated that the Wizarding world is more likely to embrace otherness than its counterparts. However, the extraordinariness that Wizardkind accepts is magic, which is actually ordinary from the perspectives of wizards and witches. Several subgroups, including foreigners, beasts, hybrid creatures, ill people, and criminals, are still viewed as the other in the Wizarding society. The Wizarding Community’s treatment of Otherness invokes Foucault’s
discussion of the treatment and the understanding of the other. Comparing the Magical Other and the Non-Magical Other reveals that the concept of otherness in the Potterverse is fluid and shifting.
In my third chapter, “The Fluid Concept of the Self,” I primarily explore ideology and identity in the Wizarding society. By discussing mainstream ideologies espoused by leading subgroups and individuals, I examine how the concept of the self is shaped by external and internal factors in the Wizarding society. External factors are related to the Non-Magical Society (the other society). Internal factors include social hierarchies, school houses, and family backgrounds. Internal factors are the cause of external factors.
Internal factors affect one’s attitude toward the other society. Afterward, I focus on the effect of personal choices by discussing Harry Potter’s and Tom Riddle’s self-identities.
The concept of the self in the Wizarding world is fluid and shifting because these external categories can be correlated to personal choices.
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The fourth chapter, “Fluid Spaces and Boundaries,” relates the fluid concepts of the self and the other to the discussion of shifting spaces and boundaries in the
Potterverse. First, I analyze the shifting internal structures of three central Magical institutions: a prison, a hospital, and a school. I also explore these institutions’ fluid relationships with the external spaces that their locations. These institutions and spaces are more fluid in Magical areas than in the Non-Magical ones; this fluidity highlights the concept of a Foucauldian heterotopia. In addition to these places, several Magical items create subspaces that express features of a heterotopia as well. Secondly, I discuss the juxtaposition between the Magical and Non-Magical sites to analyze how these spaces construct and connect the fluid concepts of the self and the other in the Potterverse. I also explore the gateways that simultaneously segregate and connect these two societies.
These juxtapositions demonstrate fluidity with their magical and changing characteristics.
I use Number Four, Privet Drive and Number Twelve, Grimmauld as examples to illustrate how spaces exemplify magical awareness in the non-magical world. These spaces objectively concretize the relationship between Wizardkind and Non-Magical people and help construct the Potterverse’s fluid concept of the self and the other.
The final chapter of this thesis, the conclusion, discloses how this scholarly work enriches existing academic studies about the Harry Potter universe. Since the Potterverse is still expanding, there is a promising future for a continuing research project that focuses on fluidity in the Potterverse.
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Chapter Two
The Fluid Concept of the Other
The concept of the other in the Potterverse is closely linked to the fictional setting in the novels. In Rowling’s novels, from the vantage point of the Non-Magical society, things related to magic often seem to be the other. From the flip side, however, Wizardkind often see things without magic as resulting from a primitive and odd culture. People in both societies firmly believe that they are “normal” because “I, who think, cannot be mad.”4 In fact, the idea of the other is not completely different in these two societies; the worlds of Magic and Non-Magic sometimes share a common sense about what or who qualifies as the other. That is to say, the concept of the other is fluid between these two sites. Each of these societies excludes the other society and considers “the other” paradoxically, despite both these two societies being connected to each other in some degree. Rowling cunningly merges these two communities as Moebius strips,5 which exemplifies the blurred boundary between these two societies. This chapter centers on the Wizarding community’s
perspective, and discusses the fluid concept of the other from the external and the internal conflicts in the Wizarding society. The external conflict is mainly presented by the
complicated relationship between the Wizarding and the Non-Magical societies; the internal conflict is how the minor groups are taken as the other in the Wizarding society, such as magic-capable foreigners, beasts, patients, and criminals. I focus on how characters’
4 In his Second Appendices of History of Madness, “My Body, This Paper, This Fire,” Foucault mentions Descartes’s statement about the relationship between the knowledge of sensory and madness (550).
5 Moebius strips is a surface with only one side and one boundary.
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perspectives affect the concept of the other in the Potterverse, since this concept often relates to the “gaze of the others” and the “process of the gaze” according to Foucault’s study of madness (488). The first section deals with the shifting idea of the other from both Wizarding and Non-Magical perspectives. The second section explores the otherness in Wizarding world as observable in internal narrative conflicts.