The mirror is... a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting
from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground
of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come
back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to
reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror... makes this place
that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once
absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and
absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through
this virtual point which is over there.
