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Popov E.A. Cemetery as a heterotopia. ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2026. Issue 3 (49). P. 100-117

The cemetery phenomenon has a multiplicity of meanings that arise at the level of everyday life, as well as in the relationship between the hypostases of human existence—life and death (vital and thanatal). It is important to explore the phenomenon of cemeteries as heterotopias. As a basis, Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia is taken. Its meaning lies in the restructuring of space, in which there occurs a change in certain meanings associated with the existence of the cemetery. It is shown that the basis of the cemetery’s heterotopia should be sought in the semiosis of the subject’s life and death. To achieve this aim, the following tasks are consistently addressed: the actualization of the cemetery’s polyfunctionality, which presupposes its interpretation in terms of the ambiguity of the corresponding meanings; a review of sources dealing with issues of the vital and thanatal, life and death as the main semiotic structures of the cemetery as heterotopia; a theoretical and methodological justification for interpreting the cemetery in terms of its heterotopia; and an analysis of possible semantic shifts in interpretations of the cemetery phenomenon from the standpoint of the semiosis of life and death. The methodological support of the research involves a set of methods used in the field of visual semiotics and the semiotic field of social and humanitarian research. In particular, in relation to the study of the cemetery as a heterotopia, the following methods and analytical procedures are chosen: the method of studying the visual world, semiotic diagnostic procedures, as well as methods used to identify the properties of real and conditional spaces. The key approaches include the provisions of the semiotic, hermeneutic, and frame approaches. The material for the study consisted of images of active cemeteries in Arlington (a military cemetery), St. Louis III Cemetery in New Orleans, and others. The main results of the study show that the analysis of such a semiotic structure as a cemetery in the aspect of heterotopia significantly expands the possibilities of visual semiotics, since its optimum is achieved in revealing complex, multilayered phenomena in semantic expression—a category that should include the cemetery. Its meanings can replace or overlap each other, depend on the structuring of space, and correlate with everyday life. However, the main perspective for the study of the cemetery as a heterotopia is the semiosis of the vital and thanatal. The scientific novelty of the conducted research lies in the formation of a conceptual perspective of visual semiotics that approaches the cemetery phenomenon not so much as a cultural phenomenon with its own pronounced ethnonational specificity, correlated with specific traditions and rituals, but rather as a heterotopia that changes people’s ideas about the boundaries of life and death in existence.

Keywords: heterotopia, cemetery, semiosis of life and death, vital and thanatal, semiotic structure