NEO-MARXIST VERSION OF REVOLUTIONARY IN THE NOVEL “IRON COUNCIL” BY CHINA MIEVILLE

Abstract

The author analyzes the artistic realization of revolutionary situation in the world-building series by British fantasy writer China Miéville, in particular — in the novel “Iron Council”. Based on the research of the writer’s essays, literary and critical reception of his novels it was spotted his sympathy to neo-Marxist ideas, including in the theory and practice of art. Left interpretation of society, the class struggle is read in the writer’s creations on both the fable and the symbolic level. The author argues that the “Iron Council” presents the classic version of the formation of a revolutionary situation: it shows the city-state, burdened by racial, class and foreign confrontations. Unlike in other novels of the cycle, China Miéville showed an effective model of community’s exclusion from capitalist society, the destruction of the traditional structure of society and the alienation of labor from the worker. The impossibility of the obvious success of the revolution for the city of New Crobuzon was decided in the form of symbolic translation into a timeless state of confrontation.