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Camilla Del Grazia
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Between
Urban fantasy
Remades and their Sociospace in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy
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Essays
2022-11-24
2022-03-31
2022-11-30
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Camilla Del Grazia
2022/11/24
10.13125/2039-6597/5164
183
University of Pisa
2039-6597
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Urban fantasy
202
urn:nbn:it:unica-28847
Remades and their Sociospace in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy
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12
         Remades and their Sociospace
      in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy

                              Camilla Del Grazia

Abstract
      The aim of the present paper is to consider Remades (posthuman
figures who populate China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag trilogy”) as simulacra of
their social milieu, highlighting the interconnection of power and economic
systems which shapes the “remaking” process and ultimately the position
of Remades in society. Two methodological approaches are applied to the
analysis. The first draws from Halberstam, Livingston and Micali to account
for the “posthumanity” of Remades, interpreting them as liminal figures who
physically summarise various categories of inhabitants of the Bas-Lag. The
second moves from Foucault’s reflections on the relation between power and
punishment and on the centrality of the body in this relation to determine
how these categories – power and punishment – work in the context of the
specifically posthuman bodies of Remades. Combining these perspectives
produces interesting results. First, it can account for the “otherness” of
Remades on the level of their physical transformation (from “whole” bodies
to Remades) as well as on the level of their social position (from citizens, to
prisoners, to outcasts). In addition to this, by providing some key examples,
the paper foregrounds that, if the dialectical relationship between Remades
and society is overtly inscribed on their bodies, different societies are likely
to alter them in different ways. As a result, a totalitarian structure will inflict
marks that are not superimposable with those produced by an egalitarian one.

Keywords
     Simulacra; China Miéville; Posthumanism; Fantastic fiction; Urban
fantasy



Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)
issn: 2039-6597
doi: 10.13125/2039-6597/5164
Camilla Del Grazia, Remades and their Sociospace in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy




         Remades and their Sociospace
      in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy

                                 Camilla Del Grazia

      A cursory overview of China Miéville’s oeuvre reveals it to be rife with
simulacra. From the redoubled cities of Un Lun Dun (2007) or The City and
the City (2009), to the uncanny revenants of The Tain (2002) or The Last Days
of New Paris (2016) and the dystopian landscapes of Railsea (2011) and Em-
bassytown (2012), his works of speculative fiction encompass an astounding
variety of distorted, refracted and mutagenic reflections of – and on – con-
temporary reality. His Bas-Lag trilogy (Perdido Street Station [2000]; The Scar
[2002]; Iron Council [2004])1, named after its fictional universe, is perhaps
the most conspicuous example of this, even when limiting the focus on the
creatures that Miéville devises for it.
      The city-state of New Crobuzon, the primary setting of PSS and IC,
is inhabited by an almost infinite variety of beings: from humans to in-
sect-like, frog-like, bird-like, or plant-like humanoids called «xenians», to
Remades (creatures of all species who were physically altered through a
mix of medicine and magic in punishment for a crime) and many, many
more. With reference to Jean Baudrillard’s terminology, these figures can
be interpreted as second-order simulacra, images that mask and denature
reality (Baudrillard 1994: 6). The aim of the present study is to analyse
Remades as an embodiment of the systems which define the relationship
between individuals and their sociospace: to read them, that is, as simu-
lacra of their society. In particular, I propose to combine a “posthuman”
perspective with a focus on the net of social, political and ideological forces
which “create” Remades. In this way, I ultimately wish to evidence how
Remades become the physical embodiment of discursive as well as materi-
al practices that define social living in different spaces within the Bas-Lag
universe. Before delving into this analysis, however, I propose to contextu-
alise the trilogy within the broader framework of Miéville’s fiction and his


      1
       The following abbreviations will be used henceforth: Perdido Street Station:
PSS; The Scar: TS; Iron Council: IC.


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approach to the fantastic. I will then attempt to connect a working defini-
tion of posthumanism as a site of enquiry with a brief recognition of Michel
Foucault’s thought on the issue of discipline and power relations.

            Reading “monsters” in Miéville’s oeuvre
      In his interviews and academic production, Miéville seems to assess
the «simulacra overflow» in his body of work by claiming the right to cre-
ate «monsters for monsters’ sake». In a much-quoted interview, he defiant-
ly claimed to be «in this […] business for the monsters […] unfortunately,
you can’t really sell books of monsters to publishers. They insist on stories
linking them» (Anders 2005). Setting aside the obvious provocativeness of
this statement, I wish to stress that a “monster”, whatever its status within
the narrative, holds the potential of being much more than a divertissement
or a functional device. As shown by Haraway (1992), Halberstam (1995),
Csicsery-Ronay (2002) or Kristeva (1980), among others, the monstrous,
the abject, the grotesque can become a site of conflict on which the discur-
sive practices of society are inscribed and transgressed at the same time.
The monster, that is, can be interpreted as a liminal site, an “in-between”
state that holds together in impossible unity a variety of different stances:
it «arises in-between two or more categorical definitions, but its spatial
(physical and/or conceptual) position implies both integration of and resis-
tance to whatever is either side of or outside of the in-between» (Downey,
Kinane and Parker 2016: 6).
      Another possible way to interpret this proliferation of simulacra is
to see it in the light of Miéville’s sustained interest in using the fantastic
to “rethink” reality. Indeed, scholars like Jameson (2002), Burling (2009),
and Saunders (2016), have read his work through the lenses of “Radical
Fantasy”, a category that encompasses works which tend to engage with
present socio-economic issues from a progressive (and often Marxist)
standpoint. William J. Burling describes this category as thematically and
formally distinct from fantasy, deploying «innovative strategies in respect
to setting and characterization that serve to represent the totality of capital-
ism’s opaque operations and the complex personal and social dynamics of
consciousness generated by the rise of posthumanism» (Burling 2009: 330).
      The quoted passage can be useful in highlighting key concepts that
can be applied to Miéville’s works and, more to the point, to reading the
figure of the Remade in relation to the sociospatial setting that the author
devises in the Bas-Lag trilogy. Pointing out that Miéville tends to draw



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from different genres (mainly fantasy and science fiction, but not exclu-
sively) and to combine their strategies, Burling argues that this hybridity
is functional. In his opinion, it reflects and conveys the complexity of two
intersecting issues, one concerning “posthumanism” and the other looking
at the position of the individual within his/her socio-economic environ-
ment. The need to integrate these perspectives emerges clearly from a brief
overview of the tryptic and its settings.
      Perdido Street Station and Iron Council, respectively the first and third
novel in the trilogy, are mainly set in the city-state of New Crobuzon. The
city is ruled by a mayor equipped with almost absolute powers and an
oppressive militia that operates almost undetectably, in an extremization
of the surveillance state. With its capitalist and mercantile economy, New
Crobuzon is frequently at war with neighbouring powers to assert its polit-
ical and commercial dominion. This clear “imperial” structure, along with
the map of the city and some of Miéville’s own comments, have led schol-
ars to interpret New Crobuzon as a sort of simulacrum of London (Jordan
2011; Gordon 2003a; Williams 2016; Veloso de Abreu 2018), a heterotopic
version of the city which exasperates some of its defining socio-political
traits (Gordon 2003b). Its diverse population can be interpreted along sim-
ilar lines, although I would argue that, in this case, one could think of the
citizens of New Crobuzon as simulacra-within-the-simulacrum. Xenians,
in particular, exhibit biological, ontological and cultural differences that
offer a multiplicity of alternative perceptions and perspectives on the city.
At the same time, their interaction and social organisation closely mirror
models which one may find recognisable: for instance, some of these spe-
cies live in separate “ghettos”, wherein they attempt to keep to their tradi-
tions and ways of life, while Remades, branded as criminals, occupy the
last rung of the social ladder, and are shunned by other citizens. In this
sense, these creatures are both fragmentary or distorted representations of
a “primary-world” reality – the reality to which readers belong – and rep-
resentations of their own “secondary-world” reality, as alternative products
of a specific social, ideological and political background.
      The Scar, the second novel in the trilogy, steps away from New Cro-
buzon to focus on the city of Armada, which, being composed entirely of
ships, is effectively a moving fleet. Armada gathers people and vessels
from all over the Bas-Lag, including New Crobuzon. Here, however, the
social structure of the city-state is disrupted and re-formed according to
a different logic. Armada works almost as a federation of semi-indepen-
dent “quarters”, and its people are all considered equal – Remade includ-
ed – and equally called up to contribute to the city’s wealth depending


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on their inclination or strengths. If its social body remains prominently
hybrid, therefore, the relations of power that Armada establishes are of a
different and almost opposite nature with respect to those which rule New
Crobuzon (Freedman 2015: 61). As I will shortly point out, this determines
a transformation in its citizens (as opposed to those of New Crobuzon),
who eventually become reflections of an alternative social, political, and
ideological background.
      It is evident that approaching New Crobuzon and Armada requires
integrating a “posthuman” perspective, so as to reckon with the composi-
tion of its societies, and a socio-spatial one, in order to account for the alter-
native structures that shape these societies as well as individual subjects.
Having recognised the centrality of these lines of enquiry to radical fantasy
and to Miéville, I wish to illustrate how they can be helpful in interpreting
the figure of the Remade in the Bas-Lag trilogy.

               Interpreting Remades as posthuman
                  “products” of their sociospace
      Within the vast theoretical landscape concerning posthumanism,
I wish to focus in particular on approaches that dovetail well with a so-
cio-spatial perspective – that is, with considering the individual within the
net of relations that each society establishes in its environment. This out-
look is, in my opinion, almost necessary to consider Remades as a category
of simulacra: as I have hinted above, they are created, or made, by political
power. «Remaking» is a punishment which exists only in New Crobuzon,
and which other political realities consider brutish and shocking: it con-
sists in mutilating prisoners and/or altering them by adding human, xe-
nian, animal or mechanical parts to their bodies, according to grotesque
principles of analogy between crime and punishment. A woman suffering
from post-partum depression and exhaustion who unwittingly killed her
baby, for instance, is sentenced to have the child’s arms grafted on her fore-
head (PSS: 115). In principle, humans and xenians alike can be subjected to
remaking, which thus emerges as a transversal practice for the entire pop-
ulation. In practice, remaking seems to concern humans in the first place,
perhaps because «bio-thaumaturges» (who perform these surgeries with
the help of magic, or «thaumaturgy») are mostly human and do not know
how to work on different species.
      Remades, then, are the result of a combination of human, animal,
and machine as well as an intersection of biology and discursive practice.



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In this sense, I find it helpful to “read” them through posthumanist ap-
proaches which incorporate both of these levels of meaning, and especial-
ly Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston’s framing of posthumanism as
something that «participates in re-distributions of difference and identity»
(1995: 10). In their view, the category of the “human” is predicated on cat-
egorising «difference within the human (whether according to race, class,
gender)» and on reasserting clear boundaries between the “human” and
the “non-human”. On the contrary,

         [t]he posthuman does not reduce difference-from-others to
      difference-from-self, but rather emerges in the pattern of resonance and
      interference between the two. The additive other (who is subordinate
      in several systems at once) is not necessarily the geometrically other
      of the posthuman, who may well be “between between” in a single
      system (ibid.).

      I find this interpretation especially useful in analysing the figure of
the Remade, in that these creatures are precisely ‘additive’ in more than
one sense. Their bodies emerge out of the combination of heterogeneous
limbs (human, non-human, mechanical, male, female, non-gendered),
through an uneasy negotiation between their previous biological form and
the parts that are grafted onto them (and/or removed from them). Simulta-
neously, their social identity arises from the «resonance and interference»
between New Crobuzon’s system of power, its economy, and the social
stratification of the city. As suggested by their name, “Re-mades” undergo
a process of redefinition, of “re-creation” which is forced onto them. As
such, both their physical traits and their position within the nexus of forces
that defines social living in New Crobuzon outline a liminal space – again,
liminal in the sense of bringing two or more “sides” into communication
(Downey, Kinane and Parker 2016: 6). This space juxtaposes their previ-
ous status as citizens with their current condition as punished criminals,
indentured servants (this being fate of almost all Remades), and social out-
casts. In addition to this, it relates their former, cohesive bodies to their
new disjointed and monstrous selves. Finally, it brings into communica-
tion two alternative narrative strategies, as Remades are as much a product
of fantasy as one of science fiction.
      The process of remaking is carried out through bio-thaumaturgy, a
cross between a futuristic medical procedure and magic: «Bio-thaumaturgy
[…] was a polite way to describe an expertise one of whose uses was to tear
and recreate flesh, to bond it in unintended ways, to manipulate it with-


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in the limits dictated only by imagination» (PSS: 210). Bio-thaumaturges
use both surgery and magic to give new shape to existing material: in this
sense, their work is imaginative, as it recombines reality into hitherto im-
possible and unforeseeable shapes. The fantastic «never-possible» is used
to carry the «not-yet-possible» (Miéville, 2002: 44-45) of these inter-species
transplants to fruition: grafting mechanical or animal parts on human or
xenian subjects in such a way as to make them operate as natural limbs is
facilitated by magic, which strengthens the bond created by surgery.
      Interestingly, remaking is therefore both an “artisanal process” and
a massified one. No two Remades can be alike, because magic tends to be
irrational and, as such, unconcerned with the laws of repeatability which
characterise the scientific method. On top of this, the subjects of each re-
making are unique (whether humans or xenians), which renders its results
all the more unpredictable. Yet, there is an element of replication in Re-
mades that is dictated by the economic needs of the city. If in theory each
remaking should adapt to the crime committed by the prisoner, in prac-
tice, precisely because the future of Remades is that of indentured servants,
bio-thaumaurges also purposefully create them to fulfil different roles. For
instance, some Remades are re-created to act as cabs (PSS: 21), or to be
weaponised by the militia (PSS: 317; IC: 338), or to enter the prostitution
market (PSS: 415-416). Others are remade to work on New Crobuzon’s new
railway (IC: 182); others still, presumably, to withstand the hard labour
required of them in Nova Esperium, New Crobuzon’s colony (TS, passim).
      This condition of being at once mass-produced and unique resonates
with Micali’s description of the posthuman simulacrum:

         as a simulacrum, an artificial being is always identifiable with an
     object, a product which has been built or assembled, so it is always
     possible reproduce it in another specimen or in series. At the same time
     though, the simulacrum presents itself as a singularity, a unique entity,
     somehow autonomous from the circumstances of its creation and/or
     its creator, and provided with some set features, specific functions and
     scopes, which are consistent through time (Micali 2019: 121)

      To the system of power which created them, Remades are commod-
ities as well as punished criminals; their new identity is reduced to their
function, so that they become effectively objectified in spite of their “natu-
ral” origin. Remades, that is, are both uniquely “human” or “xenian” (de-
pending on their species) and serialised tools, each similar to others who
share the same purpose. It is worth pointing out that figures like the Re-


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made are not exactly what Micali envisages for the category of simulacra,
which she defines as «artefacts which in different ways artificially imitate
or simulate man’s appearance, behaviour or functions» (ibid.). If anything,
remaking makes these subjects less human, rather than targeted at simulat-
ing humanity. In this light, Remades would be closer to Micali’s definition
of the «subhuman», transgressing or blurring «the borders between differ-
ent species or incompatible categories» (ibid.: 35). Subhumans, specifically,
would be «versions, reproductions, derivations or approximations of Man,
with whom they share physical, psychological or behavioural aspects»
(ibid.). Bringing together different species and even the organic and the
mechanical in an impossible unity, human Remades are for all intents and
purposes ‘derivations’ of Man.
      However, approaching these categories – the simulacrum and the
subhuman – as fluid classifications which can overlap might provide fur-
ther insights into how Remades are characterised in the trilogy and into
their position within the social structure of New Crobuzon. For one thing,
they are not exclusively variations of Man, no matter how rare xenian Re-
mades can be. In addition to this, their dual condition as singularities and
massified objects is integral to their social standing. It is true that Remades
can be thought of as outcasts because they are branded as criminals. Yet,
free citizens of New Crobuzon also find Remades repulsive because of
their indefinability: they are people, but also objects; neither fully human,
nor entirely animal, xenian, or machine; they were once part of the social
fabric, and are now deprived of any right. Their fundamental “otherness”
is doubly uncanny: their original, “natural” bodies are still detectable un-
derneath their remaking, and the massification of the remaking process
makes them uneven, imperfect copies of a non-existent model.
      In addition to this, if the posthuman subject exists «between between»
a variety of systems (Halbertstam and Livingston 1995: 10), “decoding” Re-
mades leads to considering at least those systems which are more overtly
inscribed on their altered bodies. Placing Remades within the society of
New Crobuzon, then, involves both considerations concerning the posthu-
man nature of this class of citizens and their relation to political power. In
particular, their physical modification as an indelible sign of institutional
power and, at the same time, as an expression of economic needs evokes
Foucault’s reflections on punishment and the relationship between the in-
dividual and the social body.




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                 Remaking as supplice: inscribing
                 the sociospace onto the criminal
       In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault remarks
that punishment always involves the body and its forces, «their utility
and their docility, their distribution and their submission» (1995: 34). This
would be true of all punishment, regardless of its kind: whether a supplice,
a torture or material violence publicly inflicted to the criminal, or a more
modern form of sentence, such as the prison. Remaking evidently seems
to evoke the first kind of punishment, especially in that it fits the criteria of
permanently marking its victim (ibid.). In this way, the supplice fulfils two
functions: first, it provides an indelible reminder of the criminal’s guilt, so
that criminality becomes a permanent trait of the prisoners (irrespective of
the length of their sentence). Secondly, it reaffirms and consolidates pow-
er by making it plainly visible as a physical sign on the prisoner’s body.
Moreover, according to Foucault, the supplice is also characterised by being
public and ritualised, as well as a prerogative of institutional power.
       Remaking, as previously hinted, partially fits this description: Re-
mades do have their identity obliterated and reconfigured by their supplice,
which makes them social outcasts, when not indentured servants. In New
Crobuzon, however, remaking is carried out almost in secret, in factories
devoted to this function. As a result, although the process is purposefully
drawn out to maximise pain and its effects are publicly advertised by Re-
mades, the torturing itself remains “out of sight”. This is consistent with
how power operates in New Crobuzon, i.e. through a constant and secre-
tive surveillance of its citizens, resembling in a way Foucault’s notion of
the panopticon, the power which sees all and is not seen (ibid.: 208-209).
       Another deviation from the category of the supplice is that remaking
is not a prerogative of the state – although it lawfully should be. Criminal
organisations produce their own Remades to answer their needs and the
illicit requirements of New Crobuzon, from creating specialised guards
to supplying the prostitution market (PSS: 46; 416; 597). Such an illicit
remaking once again makes the link between the city’s system of power
and its economy explicit. Remades, that is, tend to fulfil a double function.
First, they exist to demonstrate the strength of whichever power created
them (whether institutional or unlawful): they are living symbols, made
to reassert a certain “order”. As a consequence, their social function shifts:
they become outcasts, forever branded as “other than” – other than “inno-
cent” citizens, other than “honest” ones. Secondly, they effectively become



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goods to be traded and labour to be exploited, whether as convicts or as
indentured servants. The boundary between these two identities, that of
the criminal and of the commodified body, is as blurred as the one between
the heterogeneous parts which physically mark Remades.
      As Jonathan Newell suggests, «Remaking is not just a physical pun-
ishment for a wrongdoing but rather the social and discursive effect of a
technology of power, an instrument of domination and civic control» (2013:
500). To this, however, I would add that it is the social and discursive ef-
fect of an economic system which is intimately and inextricably connected
with a specific power structure. Indeed, Foucault begins his discussion of
the systems of discipline and punishment by remarking that the political
and economic circuits both invest the body with «relations of power and
domination» (1995: 25). This, it is worth pointing out, is not strictly true
of criminals or “punished” bodies, but rather of all bodies, of all individu-
als. Remades are an exceptional case because they make this link explicit,
plainly visible via their additional parts or mutilations. For instance, many
of the Remade prostitutes working in New Crobuzon’s brothels were es-
pecially altered in the city’s factories (and not by criminal gangs) to fulfil
«strange carnal desires» (PSS: 416), thus exposing the close connection be-
tween discipline and economic interest.
      Remades, then, appear to incarnate the interconnected systems of
power shaping their sociospace. An additional line of reasoning, however,
is raised by the rebellious Remades described in PSS and IC, in that while
their “monstrous” bodies do not change, their “decoding” does.

   Rebellious Remades and their sociospatial decodings:
               the case of Jack Half-a-Prayer
      In IC, Remades exploited for their work in the construction of a new
railway unionize and later rebel with human and xenian workers, escaping
on a train that can never stop. In the democratic society that the rebels es-
tablish on the train (the titular Council), Remades have an equal standing.
What is more, their physical abilities are vital to the progress of the train:
mechanically altered Remades are able to assemble and disassemble its
tracks as the train goes, making its route unpredictable. The same alterations
that were inflicted to Remades by the city as a way to combine punishment
and profit are now used to counter its power and to find refuge from it 2.


      2
          For a thorough discussion of insurgent Remades and their socio-political


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       In PSS, rebellious Remades gather under the name of «fReemades»:
a remade name itself, in which the addition of one consonant changes the
significance of the entire word, just as the grafting of limbs alters the very
essence of former citizens. Their leader, Jack Half-a-Prayer, was remade by
having one arm substituted with the claw of a praying mantis – hence his
moniker. Part of Jack’s reaction against the system which oppressed him
is to target spies and informers who work with the militia, summarily exe-
cuting them with his claw (PSS: 250). The signs he leaves on his victims are
unmistakable: «a woman died of massive puncture wounds to both sides
of her neck, as if she had been caught between the blades of huge serrated
scissors. […] The word went out. Jack-Half-a-Prayer had struck. In the gut-
ters and the slums, his victim was not mourned» (ibid.).
      Jack’s executions represent more than a damage to New Crobuzon’s
militia, although, for every covert agent he eliminates, many more remain
operative. Rather, their significance lies in how Jack weaponizes his remak-
ing to ends that are directly opposed to those of the institutional power.
First, Jack reveals what is supposed to remain hidden, namely the panoptical
power concealed in unsuspected parts of the city. Second, by redetermining
its function, Jack re-signifies his own posthuman body. No longer a liv-
ing confirmation of the city’s institutions and of their implacable “justice”,
his claw becomes the symbol of rebellion, one that everyone recognises. So
much so that, at the moment of Jack’s capture and public killing, his claw is
removed: «they’d given it to him in the punishment factories, but he’d used
it against them, so they took it away» (IC: 69-70). Ironically, then, the city’s
authority is questioned by the very sign which was supposed to uphold it.
      However, on a closer inspection, this re-signification is undertaken
by replicating the same structure deployed by institutional power. Jack’s
executions are carried out in secret, much like the militia’s; the two mod-
els are juxtaposed in chapter 18 of PSS, in which Jack’s assassination of a
militia woman is made to follow a similar killing performed by the militia
itself, in a clear parallel between them (PSS: 250). Moreover, much like
the city’s institutions, Jack reveals his activities to the world through the
unmistakable marks left on the bodies of his victims. Immersed as he is
in the sociospace of New Crobuzon, it is perhaps unsurprising that Jack
would in some form mimic its structures, even in the attempt of breaking
them down. As suggested by Lefebvre (1991), Soja (1989), or de Certeau
(1988), the relationship between individuals and their sociospace can be


characterisation in Iron Council, see Newell (2013).


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Camilla Del Grazia, Remades and their Sociospace in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy



thought of as dialectical, because space can be interpreted as the product
of a specific society (and its economic system), and, vice versa, individuals
can be considered as at least partially the product of their environment. A
fReemade of New Crobuzon, Jack turns against the city the same weapons
that the city had once used on him and replicates the latter’s disciplinary
style, signalling that this reciprocal influence is very much active.
      To test this theory further, I wish to ask an additional question, which
is: would changing the setting, and therefore the sociospace in which Re-
mades are immersed, alter them in different ways?

                        Changing the sociospace,
                    changing the (posthuman) subject
      Set in a different city-space, The Scar can perhaps offer some answers
to this question. As previously mentioned, TS is mainly set in Armada, a
pirate city made of ships. If New Crobuzon expands by waging war on
neighbouring territories, Armada grows by annexing more ships to the
hundreds which are already joined together to form the floating city. Per-
haps by virtue of this process of gradual accretion, Armada functions as a
federation of semi-independent quarters, each composed of several ships
and under the authority of a “local” ruler who is in turn part of a council
led by the Lovers, the de facto leaders of the city. When a new ship is board-
ed, its passengers are either executed or incorporated into the social body
of Armada as full-fledged citizens. Moreover, they are given an occupation
as consistent as possible with their training and inclinations, so that they
might contribute to the prosperity of the city to the best of their abilities.
This is true of every individual that becomes part of Armada, whether hu-
man, xenian, or Remade.
      When changing their status, from citizens of New Crobuzon or a dif-
ferent state to citizens/sailors of the mostly egalitarian, nomadic Armada,
newly co-opted Armadans necessarily have to redefine their own social
identity. If, that is, «(social) space is a (social) product» (Lefebvre 1991: 26)
in the sense that each society (including its system of power and economy)
creates a certain kind of space and this space in turn shapes social living
(ibid. et passim), the community of Armada, radically different from that of
New Crobuzon, will demand a substantial adjustment of its new citizens.
Each addition, moreover, will then contribute to further altering the city,
making it culturally hybrid (as testified by the abundance of periodicals
linked to a variety of traditions, from ornate obituaries to something akin



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to comic strips up to news [TS: 306-307]).
      In comparison to other new citizens, however, Remades have to per-
form a further negotiation. Once free (however free one can be in New
Crobuzon) and whole, besides being inhabitants of the totalitarian New
Crobuzon, they were remade by institutional power into heterogeneous,
criminalised, and enslaved entities, and then objectified as goods to be
traded. Their culture, the set of tools by which they engaged with the world
around them (see Ekman 2013: 129-130), had already undergone a seismic
shift, as did their sense of self and their social status. Entering Armada,
therefore, first entails recovering at least a part of their previous identity,
such as their former jobs or activities, with a view to joining the city’s pro-
ductive force. Secondly, they are to learn to live with their supplice – their
bodily alterations – in different terms. In Armada, their torture can no lon-
ger be a symbol of institutional power and, as such, a confirmation of their
“criminality”, because that institution currently holds no power, being
substituted by the systems that rule Armadan society. Given that torture is
no longer a mark of social ostracism, Remades are openly welcomed as citi-
zens of equal standing with the rest of Armadans. Therefore, the Remades’
posthuman bodies end by signifying something different – something that
needs to be discursively redetermined.

                       The case of Tanner Sack
      This is precisely what happens to Tanner Sack, one of TS’s main char-
acters, when the Terpsichoria, a vessel headed to Nova Esperium with a
cargo of Remade slaves, is captured by Armada. Tanner was punished by
having tentacles grafted onto his chest, for mysterious reasons – a «patron-
izing allegorical logic» (TS: 115) – that he does not understand. Shackled in
the cargo hold, he is aware that the tentacles feel numb, hanging lifelessly
off him and slowly rotting away; the future that awaits him, moreover, is
one of hard labour and servitude.
      Armada gives him a new chance: trained as an engineer, he is espe-
cially valuable to the city, which is in constant need of repairs, and it is
easier to train an engineer to dive than to teach a diver the skills of an en-
gineer (TS: 116). This “piece” of Tanner’s former life, his job, is not simply
as productive as it was in New Crobuzon, but more so: Armada’s stability
and its smooth sailing depend on these abilities. Tanner, therefore, is val-
ued both socially, as his usefulness to the city is openly recognised, and
economically, as he is corresponded a wage for his work, as opposed to the



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servitude to which he had been condemned.
      In parallel with his socio-economic identity, his remade body im-
mediately responds to the change: as he immerses to perform his repairs
and inspections, the sea brine begins healing his tentacles. At first, it cures
their sores and infections; then, movement and sensation begin to animate
them; finally, he starts to learn how to control them, how to move them by
choice (TS: 115-116).
      Yet, Tanner’s tentacles are not particularly useful for the performance
of his task: his remaking (which was carried out by a different social appa-
ratus) is not aimed at fulfilling a need of Armada. Rather, it is his new work
itself that presents him with a welcome change, a healing he would never
have experienced on dry land. The specific sociospace of Armada, which is
organised around life at sea, proves to be an environment in which Tanner
can thrive both physically and socially. Focusing on how the individual
materially experiences the world around him (what Lefebvre calls «per-
ceived space», 1991: 40), Tanner’s life in Armada changes his perception
by healing the fracture between his human body and his non-human ad-
ditions. This physical healing seems to be the symbol of a social one: just
as he becomes able to control all his bodily parts – the “natural” and the
remade ones – so does he regain agency as an individual, passing on from
a “commodified criminal” to a full-fledged citizen who is appropriately
compensated (and valued) for his work.
      As he progressively adapts to Armada, however, this initial healing is
no longer enough for Tanner, who feels torn between his life on the city’s
decks and the one he leads while working in the sea. While his tentacles
have adapted and are «as strong and almost as prehensile as his arms and
hands» (TS: 176), autonomy remains the crux of the matter. Tanner wishes
to move as freely in the sea as he does on board of the city; he then decides
to be further remade, this time voluntarily, into an amphibian creature,
at home in seawater as well as in the open air. As his body becomes more
“monstrous”, less human, it increases rather than loses in cohesiveness. It
becomes something fully “other”, while connecting the two components
which make up Tanner’s identity, i.e. his desire to explore the sea and his
life on the ground. No longer having to choose between one or the other,
Tanner swims in-between, well-adapted to both.
      In a way, Tanner’s new form replicates the double nature of the am-
phibian Armada, in which the activities that take place beneath the surface
level are integral to the movement of the city, just as those that take place
above it contribute to its prosperity. In this sense, his (further) remade
body can be decoded once again as a symbol of the sociospace he inhab-


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its: just like the city, Tanner exists on two levels, above and beneath the
surface. Additional considerations should of course be made concerning
the relations that his re-fashioning establishes with the city’s institutional
power and its economic system.
      Armada is, as previously remarked, a mostly egalitarian city-state, a
federation of independent quarters which have come together to ensure
the city’s stability and security, in direct opposition to the autocratic sur-
veillance state of New Crobuzon. Tanner’s first remaking was intended as
a punishment, it was a torture imposed to him by New Crobuzon, which
then commodified him as a good to be sold. The second one is voluntary,
carried out by an individual as a way to better fit his new sociospace. Ac-
cordingly, the conditions under which this remaking takes place are rather
different: Tanner amasses savings to pay for it, although he is sure that the
docks would have subsidized him, «gaining an infinitely more efficient
worker to do their bidding» (ibid.: 177). His resolve is clear: he does this
«not because he was ashamed that he would not ask for money, nor be-
cause he was proud, but only because the process and the decision were,
completely and uniquely and without confusion, his own» (ibid.). To Tan-
ner, the process of self-remaking is effectively one of self-determination,
a way to claim ownership over himself not as a human, but as a Remade
and as a citizen of Armada. The act of paying out of his own pocket – with
his savings earned by working for the city – symbolically corroborates the
autonomy of his decision.
      Yet, this is also a representative choice of Armada’s socio-economic
system: although new citizens are generally conscripted, their contribu-
tions to the city’s wealth are mostly voluntary. By remaking himself into
an amphibian, Tanner exponentially increases his economic worth in the
eyes of Armada – so much so that he is the first to notice that its authori-
ties would have gladly subsidized him. Relations of power and economy,
therefore, become inscribed on his body not as overt symbols of political
power but in a more subtle way: they push him in the direction of ad-
aptations which will serve his environment. Healing and enlivening his
tentacles was a byproduct of Tanner’s new job, but it did not affect his job;
transforming himself into an amphibian, on the other hand, is something
that greatly benefits the city.
      On this topic, Carl Freedman remarks that «Remaking, which in New
Crobuzon stands for cruelty, mutilation, degradation, and slavery, can in
Armada stand for collectivist solidarity and free, dignified labor» (2015: 52).
This seems indeed to be the case, because the process of Remaking appears
to work as a “reflection” – or simulacrum – of the social system wherein it


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takes place. In other words, Tanner’s second remaking still answers a need
expressed by his sociospace. Rather than being made to answer it, he choos-
es to do so, but this is also consistent with the alternative political systems
in which the remaking takes place, namely the autocratic New Crobuzon
vs. the egalitarian Armada. True, his new additions, no longer decoded as
marks of torture, are presented as symbols of his Armadan identity. This
identity, however, springs out of a negotiation involving multiple discur-
sive practices, to the forefront of which remain the structure of his society
and the individual’s position within it, to say nothing of the economic forc-
es (the demand for specialised work).

                                       Conclusion
      As previously argued, Remades, with their hybrid bodies, seem to
clearly call for a “posthuman” reading. If, however, this interpretation is
complemented with a focus on their relationship with the sociospace in
which they are immersed, additional insights can be gained into their role
within the complex structure of the Bas-Lag. What I tried to underscore
through these examples, and especially through Tanner Sack, is that the
Bas-Lag trilogy tends to present Remades as simulacra of their socio-spa-
tial context as a whole. They remain liminal figures on multiple levels: as
individuals, they connect humans and xenians, animals and machines,
to the extent of objectifying a cohesive recombination of these elements
that expresses something utterly new (in Tanner’s case, for instance, an
amphibian individual). As parts of a social body, Remades often bear the
signs of the interconnection of forces that actively shapes this society: from
the totalitarian and exploitative system of New Crobuzon to the rebellious
groups that act at its outskirts, to the federal, democratic one of Armada.
      In other words, the body of the “monster” is not simply the product of
actions performed on, to, or by it, but it exists at the crossroads of the forces
that shape society. In keeping with Foucault’s suggestion, all bodies are,
to a certain extent, an expression of «relations of power and domination»
(1995: 25). If this is true, as far as Remades are concerned, the interconnect-
ed narrative modes of science fiction and fantasy help to make this nexus
of forces plain to see and, therefore, open for discussion.
      Remades offer a clear and tangible proof of how individuals are at
least partially the product of a discursive negotiation, integrating power
and economic structures in a continuous redefinition. As simulacra, fic-
tional reflections of fictional societies, they tend to mirror the underlying



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structures that define such societies, bringing them to light. At the same
time, they showcase the dynamic interaction of such structures: for in-
stance, in moving from New Crobuzon to Armada, Tanner’s body adapts
and changes as his socio-economic position within each city shifts. Instan-
tiated in each Remade, in sum, is the complexity of the worlds built by
Miéville, where these figures epitomize interpretive keys to decoding the
relations of power defining these sociospaces.




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                                The Author
     Camilla Del Grazia

     Camilla Del Grazia earned her PhD degree in English Literature at
the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics, Pisa University.
In 2019, she completed a PhD student visiting period at the University of
Glasgow. Her current research focuses on contemporary fantastic fiction



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Camilla Del Grazia, Remades and their Sociospace in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy



and its deconstruction of traditional narrative strategies in the framework
of the metropolis. She has also worked on late Victorian fiction, and has re-
cently published a monographical study titled No Ghosts Need Apply: Gothic
Influences in Criminal Science, the Detective and Doyle’s Holmesian Canon.

       Email: c.delgrazia@studenti.unipi.it



                                       The Article
      Date sent: 31/03/2022
      Date accepted: 31/07/2022
      Date published: 30/11/2022



                              How to cite this article
      Del Grazia, Camilla, “Remades and their Sociospace in China
Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy”, Entering the Simulacra World, Eds. A. Ghezza-
ni - L. Giovannelli - F. Rossi - C. Savettieri, Between, XII.24 (2022): 183-202,
www.betweenjournal.it




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