Who Owns the City? China Miéville’s The City and The City as an Urban Gothic Dystopia

Abstract

The paper considers China Mieville’s novel The City and The City from the point of view of geography of space suggesting that the capital is the dominating force that shapes urban reality. The novel builds on the traditional Victorian Gothic ideas of the city as a place of dual existence and exploits the topoi of the noir, but instead of focusing on the individual and the issues of psychological doubling and existential plights of a detective, it is more concerned with the modes of production and the way that capitalism continuously re-invents itself by its use of space without making itself known. The plot elements and aesthetics of film noir add to the mystery of murder, of the twin cities’ identity, and highlight the false consciousness of the masses which enables the ideology’s effectiveness.