Architecture of Punishment: Dystopian Cities Marking the Body

Bouet, Elsa

Abstract

This chapter investigates the ways in which China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, Alastair Reynolds’ Terminal World and Christopher Priest’s Inverted World represent governments which enforce submission by creating monstrous architectural structures and violent forms of bodily punishment. Recalling Henri Lefebvre’s claim that urban centres are favourable environments to the formation of authoritarian power, the depicted dystopian governments foreclose utopian aspirations through spatial control and exhibit their power in threatening architectures which are mirrored in the deformed and branded bodies of those who have been punished. The chapter therefore explores the ways in which the city and the body exist in a dystopian “cobuilding relationship” (Elizabeth Grosz) and argues that the novels suggest that movement, diversity and openness are the utopian solutions offered to the fixedness of the city.

Citation

Cityscapes of the Future (49-65). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361317_005

• Acceptance Date: Jun 1, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Feb 27, 2018
• Publication Date: Feb 27, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 26, 2018
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Pages: 49-65
• Series Title: Consciousness, Literature and the Arts,
• Series Number: 53
• Series ISSN: 1573-2193
• Book Title: Cityscapes of the Future
• Chapter Number: 4
• ISBN: 9789004361317
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004361317_005
• Keywords: Architecture, punishment, government control, dystopia, utopia, spatial control,
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/953793