Bakhtinian-Miévillean festivity: ab-carnivalism and xenosomatic degradation in the speculative fiction of China Miéville

Hussain, Kamran (2026) Bakhtinian-Miévillean festivity: ab-carnivalism and xenosomatic degradation in the speculative fiction of China Miéville. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis examines how the speculative fiction of China Miéville registers modified variants of two concepts posited by Mikhail Bakhtin: carnival and grotesque realism. Belonging to folk culture, carnival is a licensed suspension of established socio-hierarchical structure and the norms, values and laws associated with it. Grotesque realism is a literary mode in which images of the human body eating, drinking, defecating and copulating—that is, images of ‘the material bodily principle’—reflect the ethos of carnivalistic folk culture via degradation: an act of destruction–regeneration. This thesis fills a Bakhtinian-Miévillean lacuna in scholarship by demonstrating how Miéville’s speculative fiction contains modified versions of Bakhtinian carnival and grotesque realism: ab-carnivalism and xenosomatic degradation, respectively. Ab-carnivalism is an occasion in Miéville’s speculative fiction when commonfolk or slaves resist authority figures via unlicensed modes of phenomena that Bakhtin assigns to carnival. Ab-carnivalism is variously a species of activism or radical politics, functioning as a hyper-transgressive and spatiotemporally flexible alternative to Bakhtinian carnival. Xenosomatic degradation transpires in Miéville’s speculative fiction when humanoid or inhuman bodies affect the sensuous or abstract world by exercising grotesque realism’s carnivalistic destruction–regeneration. Chapter One is dedicated to a critique of ab-carnivalism in six Miéville fictions: Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council, Kraken, ‘‘Tis the Season’ (2004) and Un Lun Dun. It demonstrates that ab-carnivalism can accommodate flexible methods of mobilisation against oppressive authority figures and, by doing so, inspire radical change. Chapter Two examines the interrelation between ab-carnivalism and renegopoleis, or renegade cities, in Iron Council. It lays bare how both the Iron Council and the New Crobuzon Collective possess renegopolitan cultures that spring from, and are moulded by, ab-carnivalism. Chapter Three discusses how an interplay between Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia and carnivalism of the Bakhtinian and ab- variety disrupts the familiar, putatively inflexible mechanisms of the alien language featured in Embassytown. Chapter Four analyses xenosomatic degradation in a selection of Miéville fictions: four novels (King Rat, Perdido Street Station, Embassytown and The Scar), one novella (The Last Days of New Paris) and three short stories (‘Säcken’, ‘Jack’ and ‘The Familiar’). It exemplifies how xenosomatic degradation’s carnivalistic destruction–regeneration mechanism enables its users to reconfigure their lives, worlds or both. At its core, this thesis serves to unveil how Miéville’s speculative fiction radicalises the conceptual frameworks that Bakhtin attributes to carnival and grotesque realism.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism; P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Sangster, Professor Matthew and Creasey, Dr. Matthew
• Date of Award: 2026
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2026-85904
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 12 May 2026 14:19
• Last Modified: 12 May 2026 14:20
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85904
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85904