Homogeneous / Heterogeneous Structure and Forms of Dialectics

Abstract

The notion of utopia which is came from ancient to the present day in a historical perspective as an unreal place and which is intended to reach to perfection by the effect of social realities could not provide the critical environment necessitated for the 20th-century problems. Patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism and other realities which hold on in historical perspective touch the formations of gender, race or class consciousness off around feminist theory, and they make them the focus of the epoch. The narratives of the late 20th century rather than search for the ideal, achieve perfection, they destroy all positions not only search for those who are different from all positions but also aim to create a critical environment by seeing the irreducible together.

Michel Foucault draws attention to fantastic, untroubled and homogeneous structure of the concept of utopia and liken utopias to the flowing order with the distinctive features of the language. The late 20th century formations and the environment required by these formations are expressed as the desire to construct polyphonic, heterogeneous environments and he defines these environments as heterotopia. If the narratives of the ancient period are discussed through the concept of utopia, the narratives of the late 20th century are discussed through the concept of heterotopia that is a new formation pointed out by Foucault, the texts of different periods which exhibit structurally very different positions (homogeneous and heterogeneous) are structured by collaborating on dialectical thinking. Dialectical thought continues to exist on the basis of the way of thinking both in the late 20th century narratives and in ancient texts. Getting a foothold of vague, ambiguous, transient forms which exist in the environment to human thoughts provides clues about dialectics. The human creates a series of binary oppositions, during thinking in order to find meaning in it with the motivation of rationalization. This study aims to trace different forms of dialectical thought through the texts of the different epoch (homogeneous / heterogeneous), which exhibited very different stances from each other.

Considering the structural differences between antiquity and late 20th century texts, how do the limitlessness and limits of dialectical thought between binaries play a role in the construction of these differences (homogeneous/ heterogeneous)? For highlighting these differences, the narrative of The Republic of Plato as a homogeneous text is examined comparatively with the late 20th-century heterogeneous text of  Triton with regard to fictionalizing dialectics over sex / gender binary opposition which is the notional focus of the late 20th-century.