En stad utanför staden

Sammanfattning: This essay is a study of space and place in Sara Stridsberg’s novel: Beckomberga – ode till min familj (english title: The Gravity of Love). The essay is an analysis of Stridsberg’s image of the mental institution Beckomberga through Michel Foucaults ideas on heterotopias: other places or realized utopias. The main focus has been Foucaults term heterotopia of deviation, a term of which the mental institution is the main example. The essay strives to show that a place in literature is never just a place to be populated by characters; a place can be a different place for every different character and it has the power to be both subversive and submissive.