Breach! The Law’s Jouissance in Miéville’s The City & The City

Abstract

This article critically examines the construction of law in China Miéville’s weird detective narrative The City & The City (2009). The discussion charts the excesses of law’s embodiment in Detective Tyador Borlú of the Besźel 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 Besźel-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.