Breach! The law's jouissance in Mieville's The City and The City

Article

Hourigan, Daniel. 2013. "Breach! The law's jouissance in Mieville's The City and The City." Law, Culture and the Humanities. 9 (1), pp. 156-168. https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872111404849
Article Title

Breach! The law's jouissance in Mieville's The City and The City

ERA Journal ID33569
Article CategoryArticle
Authors
AuthorHourigan, Daniel
Journal TitleLaw, Culture and the Humanities
Journal Citation9 (1), pp. 156-168
Number of Pages13
Year2013
PublisherSAGE Publications Ltd
Place of PublicationUnited Kingdom
ISSN1743-8721
1743-9752
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872111404849
Web Address (URL)http://lch.sagepub.com/content/9/1/156
Abstract

This article critically examines the construction of law in China Mieville's weird detective narrative The City & The City (2009). The discussion charts the excesses of law's embodiment in Detective Tyador Borlu of the Beszel policzai with and against the primordial natural law discourse of the Law of Breach, and carefully examines the ways that this Law interdicts the common law in both parts of the fictional split city Beszel-Ul Qoma. Using the psychoanalytic concept of jouissance, this article unveils some of the modulations of authority presented by the novel's unusual arrangement of politics, common law, and natural law.

KeywordsChina Mieville; Jacques Lacan; Jouissance; law and culture; psychoanalytic philosophy; The City and The City
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020470530. Stylistics and textual analysis
500320. Psychoanalytic philosophy
480499. Law in context not elsewhere classified
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Byline AffiliationsGriffith University
Institution of OriginUniversity of Southern Queensland
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