The Parisian department store as a paradigmatic place for interactions between tourism and shopping: the production of a heterotopia

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the department store as a paradigmatic place, through the concept of heterotopia, here produced by the interactions between tourism and shopping in Paris. Whereas Michel Foucault had not evoked the department store in his theory of heterotopia, this article not only allows to enrich the concept by including the consumer places, but above all, it provides a renewal of its geographical approach. The spatial dynamic of the Parisian department store enlightens the fact that it remains a heterotopia whereas some characteristics of the place have changed. Indeed, the department store has been subject to touristification since its invention and was conceived as a heterotopia playing on the continuities and discontinuities with the Parisian space. While this heterotopia from the second half of the 19th century was based on the monumentality of space and a sense of exoticism linked to orientalist imagination for French visitors mainly, the rapid globalization of the department store and an increase in its international tourism development have partially transformed its layout in recent decades. Heterotopia as a place imagined as something “other”, still works through the aim of creating spectacle, but this is now achieved by luxury brands through the dialogism of identity and otherness, the exploitation of the past through heritagization and the enhancement of the creations for visitors in search of authenticity embodied by the French art of living.