with or without Boats

“ Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of  the  most precious treasures they conceal  in their gardens, you  will  understand why the boat has not only been  for our [western] civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic  development  […], but has been  simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence.  In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.”

Foucault, M. and Miskowiec, J., 1986. Of Other Spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), pp.22-27.