RADICALISM at SEA: Literary Pirates in Emmanuel Appadocca to the Scar

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RADICALISM AT SEA: Literary Pirates in Emmanuel Appadocca to The Scar

By Elizabeth Kelly

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

October 2008

ABSTRACT

RADICALISM AT SEA: Literary Pirates in Emmanuel Appadocca and The Scar

Elizabeth Kelly

This thesis explores radicalism at work in M. Maxwell Philip’s Emmanuel Appadocca

(1854) and China Mieville’s The Scar (2002). These novels highlight piracy as a means of rejecting systems of power and social order. Through speculative fiction, each author finds the means to resist the hegemonic power of genre, race, empire, and knowledge that pervade each author’s social and historical milieu. This work examines the historical and literary context of piracy as a metaphor for radicalism, the project of legitimization and resistance to generic categorization of both texts. Emmanuel Appadocca resists racial stereotypes, and both texts exhibit clear resistance to colonial expansion. This resistance is made possible by each author’s use of the sea as the site of insurgency and challenging boundaries of knowledge. Thus both novels lend themselves to interpretation as works of postcolonial fiction.

DEDICATION

This manuscript is dedicated to my unflinching advisor, Dr. Carol McGuirk, my father who wisely advised me to write one page at a time, my mother whose research is a constant inspiration, my patient committee of readers, and to the friends and partner who have so steadfastly supported me throughout my journey.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: What the Sea Allows: Piracy as a Trope for Radicalism ...... 3

Chapter 2: Context, Legitimization and Genre ...... 10

Chapter 3: The Possibility of Parody in Emmanuel Appadocca ...... 18

Chapter 4: Attacks on Colonial Power...... 22

Chapter 5: Spatial Speculation as a Site of Resistance ...... 31

Chapter 6: The Boundaries of Knowledge in The Scar…………….……………………38

Chapter 7: The Struggle Between Marxism and Multiplicity in The Scar……..………..43

Conclusion: The Redefinition of Radicalism in Pirate Fiction…….....…….……………49

Appendix I: The Plot of Emmanuel Appadocca…………………………...…………….51

Appendix II: The Plot of The Scar….……………………………………………………54

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………….………..57

From Philip to Miéville: The Changing Face of Literary Piracy

Michel Maxwell Philip’s Emmanuel Appadocca: Or Blighted Life: A Tale of the Boucaneers (1854) and China Miéville’s The Scar (2002) both radically reimagine our world through the eyes of pirates. The novels’ plots are distinctive and complex, and are explicated in Appendices I and II. Piracy has long been a source of literary fascination and for these two authors offers a site of historical and literary resistance to social norms and normative systems of belief. Throughout human history, as empires have formed and spread, the sea has become the primary route to colonial power. During the colonization of the Americas, the sea became a political and economic resource; as such, it also became a resource for those who resisted such power. In literature, emphases on the lawlessness, relative freedom and rejection of society in piracy allow for

a space of speculation that can help to reimagine the world we live in. The Scar and

Emmanuel Appadocca are very different texts; yet the first resistance they exhibit is to

generic categorization, as I will address in Chapter 2. Both novels also use the

unregulated space of the sea to resist normative assumptions surrounding race, class,

empire and essentialism. In Emmanuel Appadocca, the ultimate resistance that sheds all

ties with colonial power is left unrealized; Appadocca kills himself because he cannot

imagine a future beyond the revenge he seeks. He catches a fleeting glimpse that

speculates about an alternative to his present social condition, but his project of resistance

fails, at least within the text.

As a metanarrative Emmanuel Appadocca imagines the sea as a space of

freedom and autonomy. The first chapter of this thesis will outline the historical and

literary connection between piracy and radicalism, and the reification of this linkage in

Emmanuel Appadocca and The Scar. Chapter 2 outlines the challenges of legitimization

and generic categorization in both texts. Chapter 3 focuses on the possibility of

categorizing the depiction of race in Emmanuel Appadocca as a parody of sorts, and

Chapter 4 explores each novel’s explicit rejection of colonial expansion. The Scar also

posits speculation and resistance that appear to lead to a rejection of social systems of

belief and government, and ultimately a rejection of consensus reality. This is clear in

the following aspects of the novel upon which Chapters 5 through 7 focus: spatial

speculation as a site of resistance, Miéville’s questioning the limits of the knowable, and

finally the development of the postmodern novel as a result of the rejection of colonial

power and the failure of Marxist revolution. In some ways, Miéville's project of

resistance is more complete than Philip's; Miéville, however, must simulate a reality

within his novel that is outside of the reader’s reality in order to fully stage this project.

It is only the rejection of reality (or our ability to define it) that makes revolution possible

within The Scar. The subtle grace of Miéville is that neither the rejection of a fixed

reality nor the workers' rejection of hegemonic power in the novel provides a utopic

ending: in Bas-Lag, the novel ends with a whimper, and with going home.

Chapter 1: What the Sea Allows: Piracy as a Trope for Radicalism

“The whole of the civilized world turns, exists and grows enormous on the licensed system of robbing and thieving” (Philip 113)

As piracy is a central theme in Emmanuel Appadocca and The Scar, its

representation in each deserves close examination. M. Maxwell Philip refers in his

preface to the “known history of the boucaneers” (xv). In The Pirate Wars, Peter Earle points out that

the pirates of popular imagination, the rovers who rove in novels and films, are more often to be found in American or West Indian waters [….and] were indeed the virtually the only pirates to exhibit those characteristics we expect “real” pirates to have. (89)

Earle also points out that in some senses the piracy common in the West Indies “was then just another example of that piratical imperialism which we have seen as the motor of the expansion of English trade and settlement in other parts of the world” (93). Earle notes that historically the boucaneer ships had “very cosmopolitan crews… [including]

…representatives of the non-white population of the Caribbean – Negroes, Indians ad mulattoes” (100).

In The Many-Headed Hydra, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker explore the idea of hydrarchy, a term coined by Richard Braithwaite as the “designa[tion of] two related developments of the late seventeenth century: the organization of the maritime state from above, and the self-organization of sailors from below” (144). These authors argue that this hydrarchy was a necessary factor in supporting “the military, commercial and financial foundations for capitalism and imperialism” (145). As Peter Earle also

notes in The Pirate Wars, piracy before the 1700s had a dubious history of supporting

the imperial agenda. Maritime labor, which was fundamental to establishing imperial

power on the seas, was also in a unique position to disrupt this power. Linebaugh and

Rediker trace the history of maritime labor as a site of radical engagement with early

labor movements, arguing that “the struggles waged by sailors of the revolutionary era

for subsistence wages and rights and against impressments and violent discipline first

took autonomous shape among the buccaneers in America” (157). Clear parallels exist

between Philip’s political agenda and that of maritime labor movements, demonstrating

the logic behind his focus on piracy in Emmanuel Appadocca.

In this vein, the validity of “the known history of the Boucaneers” (Philip 6) can be traced as the basis for some of the more radical aspects of Emmanuel Appadocca.

Linebaugh and Rediker extend their argument historically by tracing the development of anti-imperial piracy after the middle of the eighteenth century, stating that “Atlantic piracy had long served the needs of the maritime state and the merchant community in

England. But there was a long-term tendency for the control of piracy to devolve from the top of society to the bottom” (156). It is this time period to which Philip refers; his protagonist falls neither in the top or the bottom of society, occupying a more complex space. While Appadocca is educated among society’s elite, he is unable to use his education for social, political, or personal gain because his status as an illegitimate child bars him from the financial support his inheritance would otherwise allow. At the core of his illegitimacy is the issue of race; under colonial Trinidad’s strict social codes,

Appadocca’s wealthy white father cannot legitimize his union with his mulatto mother.

Appadocca’s destitution after his mother’s death leads him directly to seeking justice

against his father as a pirate.

Linebaugh and Rediker realize the development of alternative systems of

justice within American piracy:

common seamen were building a tradition of their own, at that time called the Jamaica Discipline or the Law of the Privateers. The tradition, which the authorities considered to be the antithesis of discipline and law, boasted a distinctive conception of justice and a class hostility toward shipmasters, owners, and gentlemen adventurers. It also featured democratic controls on authority and provisions for the injured. (157-8, emphasis added)

In Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, Hans Turley explores the relationship between historical

and fictive pirates, noting the “connection between historical pirates themselves […] and

authors who write about them,[…] who mythologize the pirates for their own ideological

purposes” (31). Citing Hill’s “Radical Pirates?” Turley points out that “the buccaneer

differs from the pirate because he was an outlaw-made-nationalist hero. The buccaneer

was heroicized because of his daring raids on Spanish colonial soil” (29).

Philip’s identification with Trinidad is evidenced by his moving description of

the land in the Preface to his novel. For Africans in the Caribbean colonies and their

descendents, there was no existing model for national identification, and the rejection of

colonial power was the first step in imagining a Caribbean national identity. Like the

Caribbean buccaneers Turley describes, Philip, like his characters, was one of Trinidad’s

“free thinkers and dissenters” (31). His reference to “the known history of the

Boucaneers” can be interpreted as a direct linkage to the buccaneers’ violent resistance to

colonial power. While a known history of anti-colonial radicalism may not be the focus

of much of the known history of the buccaneers, Philip is accurate in linking his love of

Trinidad to a historical tradition of national (not colonial) identification among the

Boucaneers.

In discussing the relationship between romantic depictions of piracy and

historical documentation, Turley notes that many romantic pirate novels emphasize

“heroic pirates who self-consciously construct radical, democratic worlds in direct

opposition to the monarchical governments of Europe” (31). In some sense, this reading

applies to Emmanuel Appadocca. Philip’s narrator describes Appadocca’s crew as having

separated themselves, by their deeds, from the world, the world’s sympathy, and the world’s good and bad, that [they] had actually turned their hand against all men, and had expected, as they had probably frequently experienced, that the hand of all men should be turned against them. (43)

The crew has consciously stepped outside the bounds of society, but only because they

have already experienced a society that is turned against them. This separation from

social convention allows a space for radical reimagining of power and justice that was not

possible for colonized people during Philip’s lifetime.

Appadocca himself presents an interesting interpretation of a portion of maritime history that is often ignored: the proliferation of free, black pirates and seamen during the nineteenth century. In Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (1997),

W. Jeffrey Bolster argues that “maritime work not only provided wages and allowed

widely dispersed black people a means of communication, but also affected the process

through which free people of color shaped their identities” (5). Bolster’s thorough

examination of the history of black maritime labor suggests that it offered opportunities

for freedom, equality, and autonomy that were more widely available at sea than

anywhere on land. Both state-sanctioned and illegal privateer vessels were used as means

of obtaining freedom, escaping colonial justice, and breaking landbound constraints in

travel. Bolster notes that “one higher-stakes alternative to such limited freedom-seeking

within the commercial system then [also] existed” (13): piracy. Like Turley, Bolster

argues that pirates “created an egalitarian, if ephemeral, social order that rejected imperial

society’s hierarchy and forced labor” (13). On the seas, Bolster argues that social

hierarchy was “made by men with vested interests in a certain social order that,

coincidentally, did not depend on race for its perpetuation” (74). This ideology, however

problematic it may have been, offered some alternative to African Americans in terms of

finding a space where race was not the primary driving force behind their social

circumstances. Bolster places piracy firmly in the struggle for both abolition and

Caribbean independence, furthering the historical connection between Philip’s focus on

piracy and his own political agenda.

Although their role is less directly related to historical and literary piracy,

Miéville’s Armadan pirates speak to a radicalism that reaches beyond that of M. Maxwell

Philip. As Joan Gordon points out in “Hybridity, Heterotopia and Mateship in China

Miéville’s Perdido Street Station” (2003), Miéville’s work “literalizes the metaphor [of

hybridity] in its fantastically chimeric people and in its fantastically accreted city” (456).

He imagines a radical version of multiculturalism. Although Gordon refers to the city of

New Crobuzon, the same reading can be clearly applied to the floating pirate community

of Armada in The Scar. Citing Brian Stross, Gordon utilizes a definition of hybridity that

includes “a culture, or element of culture, derived from unlike sources” (457). Armada is

certainly the site of unparalleled cultural blending, a “city [that] is the sum of hundreds of

cultures” (The Scar 103). The sources of these cultures are diverse in terms of the

geographical homelands of the individuals residing in Armada, the maritime history that

is apparent in the ships that make up the city, and the knowledges, technologies and

powers present in Armada’s population. When she arrives, Bellis’ astonishment at

meeting people from so many far-flung places is in part due to the fact that they represent

several cultures that are lost, unheard of, or thought of as mythic. Among these cultures

are the Witchocracy (her friend Carianne’s homeland), High Cromlech (the homeland of

Uther Doul and the Brucolac), and the Ghengris (a mysterious land to which Silas Fennec

has traveled). These places all present alternative systems of order and power that

coexist in Armada.

The Armadans, like Emmanuel Appadocca’s crew and like historical Caribbean

pirates, develop their own systems of justice. Their system of government, to be discussed further in Chapter 7, is certainly a departure from the limited depictions of other systems of government in Miéville’s novels. Remaking, or the surgical altering of criminals, is the primary system of criminal justice in the city of New Crobuzon, but is not practiced in Armada as a form of punishment. Although its system of justice differs from New Crobuzon’s, Armada engages in “a mumming of legality” (82) and incarcerates prisoners who do not appear to adjust well. The centers for “assessment” and “reeducation” (82) present a complex depiction of Armada – it is not a simple utopia.

The presence of what Althusser refers to as the “Repressive State Apparatus” (19), which reinforces power through violence, refutes any reading of Armada as a perfect place, as does its use of “maritime discipline, the lash” (82). Like the alternative systems of justice noted earlier in Emmanuel Appadocca and historical piracy, Armada’s system of justice presents an alternative to normative justice.

The final and most important form of radicalism seen in the pirates of Armada is

found in their relentless search for alternative systems of power. Very little in Armada

conforms to the boundaries of knowledge in Bas-Lag (at least as they are voiced through

Bellis Coldwine). Armada, a place filled with legends come to life, seeks in the Scar a

rift in reality that leaks possibilities outside the malleable reality the pirates already

experience in their floating city. There are no limits to the powers that they can access,

no limits to knowledges they seek, and no limits to the reality they can experience. The

boundaries of knowledge sought by Miéville’s pirates will be further discussed in

Chapter 6.

Chapter 2: Context, Legitimization and Genre

“The point for me is that the construction of a paranoid, impossible totality is at least potentially a subversive, radical act, in that it celebrates the most unique and human aspect of our consciousness” (Mieville 2003).

Neither Emmanuel Appadocca nor The Scar have received much critical recognition. Each novel resists generic categorization and simplistic interpretation. For

Emmanuel Appadocca, legitimization of M. Maxwell Philip as an author and Emmanuel

Appadocca as a text appear to be of historical critical concern, and for The Scar, a much

more recent novel, the density of the text and its generic categorization as fantasy

complicate its critical analysis. China Miéville’s other novels have received some critical

attention; yet The Scar, although well-received, has not. The limited critical attention to

these novels, particularly that which focuses on generic categorization, can be useful in

tracing the authors’ resistance to literary and social conventions.

Emmanuel Appadocca is historically significant for some scholars as "the first

piece of prose fiction in the Anglo-Caribbean literary tradition" (Cudjoe xiv). Yet as

William Cain notes that in 1997, the year of the edition he is introducing:

it [was] rarely cited by critics and [was] not taught in English and American colleges and universities. There ha[d] been no detailed study of the text, nor ha[d] Philip's distinguished legal career in Trinidad been traced. This holds true not only for scholarship on American and African American literary and cultural history, but for studies of Caribbean and West Indian literatures as well. (xvi)

Since its re-publication, the novel has seen a critical revival of sorts, including Leah

Reade Rosenberg's discussion in Nationalism and the Formation of Caribbean Literature

(2007), Gesa Mackenthun’s in Fictions of the Black Atlantic in American Foundational

Literature (2004) and Gregory Wilson's "Between Piracy and Justice: Liminality in

Maxwell Philip's Emmanuel Appadocca" (2004). Philips’ novel has also been

overlooked in bibliographies and reference materials for African American and West

Indian literature, although it is mentioned in the latest edition of Africana: the

Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (2005). Philip is also

cited in some works on Caribbean and African American philosophy, to be discussed

below. Emmanuel Appadocca is currently taught in several American and European

universities, including the University of Florida, St. John's University, Florida Atlantic

University and Johannes Guttenberg Universität in Germany. Nonetheless, as a classic

work in the Caribbean literary cannon, it remains relatively neglected.

This may be one of the reasons that Selwyn Cudjoe’s preface to the novel focuses

primarily on M. Maxwell Philip's biography, devoting only a brief section entitled "A

Note on the Text" to the story itself. Because Emmanuel Appadocca was the first

Anglophone Caribbean novel, and because it "draws on romantic formulations" (Cudjoe

xiv), Cudjoe's emphasis on the author's legal and civil service career can be considered an

attempt to establish the legitimacy of the text through highlighting the prominence of the

writer in his other professional activities. Cudjoe highlights the fact that Philip "always

rued the fact that he never received the recognition he deserved and would have received

had he been white" (xii), grounding the novel's emphasis on justice firmly in the

experience of the author. It is ironic that the discrimination Philip faced in his legal

career can also be seen in the literary treatment of his novel. Emmanuel Appadocca

never received the same critical attention as the works of his white contemporaries, which

include Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

(1851), and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).

In Beyond Boundaries: The Intellectual Tradition of Trinidad and Tobago in the

Nineteenth Century (2003), Cudjoe links Emmanuel Appadocca to other Caribbean

literature of its time, including the anonymously written Adolphus: A Tale (serialized in

the Trinidadian in 1853), Jean Francisco Manzano’s The Early Life of the Negro Poet

(Cuba, 1840), and his ancestor Jean-Baptiste Philipe’s Free Mulatto (1824). Cudjoe thus

places Philip’s work in a growing literary tradition:

Although Michel Maxwell Philip’s Emmanuel Appadocca was not the first novel to examine the subject of miscegenation, it was the first Anglo- Caribbean novel to do so from the point of view of a colonized person. (123)

William Cain's “Introduction: Emmanuel Appadocca in its American Context”

(1997), to date the most detailed discussion of the novel, also points out Philip's concern

with rooting his text both in his native country of Trinidad and in "the classic and

canonical literary and cultural touchstones" (xvi) of Western literary tradition. Philip’s

epigraphs for every chapter are taken from classic and Western literature, placing his own

work within the canonical context he quotes from. Cain points out that Philip's preface

and epigraphs are "bold for a twenty-four year old law student" (xv), setting up high

expectations for its readers. Cain indicates that Philip used European literary traditions as

well as the newly developing Caribbean literary tradition: "Philip’s goals are all the more

striking when one remembers the doubts in the nineteenth century about African

Americans' capacity for authorship" (Cain xl).

Cain argues that "Philip signals us how to begin the work of knowing Emmanuel

Appadocca when he refers in its preface to the impact of American slavery on black

mothers and their children" (xxiii). Through focusing on conventional ideologies surrounding motherhood and the family that were pervasive during his time, Philip is able to comment on the institution of slavery through discussing the sanctity of family, a

theme that left little room for critique from his contemporaries. Furthermore, Philip is

able to pose Appadocca’s tale as a romantic story, to which he brings a radical

examination of ideologies surrounding family, justice, and slavery to an audience that can

accept his work as an adventure narrative rather than a political commentary. He sets his

novel on the seas, a place outside law and social convention, in order to imagine freedom from ideology as well. In a 1931 Beacon article, reprinted in Reinhard Sander’s From

Trinidad: An Anthology of Early West Indian Writing (1978), C.L.R. James points out that Philip was “an individual born with special aptitudes for a certain kind of political activity and fortunate enough to find his sphere” (268). As his discussion of Philip is largely biographical, the sphere he refers to is Philip’s legal and civil service career.

James provides only a brief mention of Emmanuel Appadocca, merely citing Philips’ own status as an illegitimate child and rejection by his white father. James mentions that he will “write about [the novel] on some future occasion” (255), but he never did so. The aptitudes he ascribes to Philip - intellectual rigor, oratorical skill, dignity and wit - also enabled Philip to write and publish his novel with some success, and perhaps such traits lend themselves to the implicit political activity of writing. James finds Philip “not radically active” (268). In 1999, however, Cudjoe argued that Philip "saw himself as part of an emancipatory tradition; a descendant of a family that included Jean Baptiste Philipe, author of Free Mulatto" (6). Cudjoe also points out in Beyond Boundaries (2003) both

Philip’s political agenda and Caribbean literary influence are seen in Emmanuel

Appadocca, which was

Written in solidarity with the African American liberation struggle and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in the United States[. T]he novel is informed by the historical romance, the African American slave narrative, and the ideology of piracy. (123-124)

Although Philip’s choice to comment on the conditions of slavery and colonial rule using

the conventions of the romantic novel was unique in his time in the Caribbean, his use of

genre sets a precedent for a new kind of discourse in the literature of the growing

Caribbean national and anti-slavery movements.

Sander notes in his introduction to From Trinidad: An Anthology of West Indian

Writing that “the struggle for political independence and the creation of a national

literature went hand in hand” after “the emergence of […] a strong working-class

movement after World War I” (4) and the growth of such publications as Trinidad and

The Beacon. Yet the roots of the black Trinidadian struggle for freedom and the

emergence of national literature certainly date back earlier to Philip’s writing. In The

Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy discusses W.E.B. DuBois's notion of double consciousness,

which he argues is produced by "the struggle to be both European and Black" (1), saying

that "occupying the space between [these two identities] had been viewed as a

provocative and even oppositional act of political insubordination" (1). Yet Philip, with

his links to European literary tradition and to Caribbean nationalism, much earlier

occupied just such a space.

Emmanuel Appadocca can be linked to a specific literary context and can be

considered part of several genres: the romance, the neo-slave narrative, Black Atlantic

fiction, and, I would argue, speculative fiction. This generic multiplicity presents another

facet of the liminality that Gregory Wilson identifies within the text itself. While the

novel is clearly linked to romantic themes of nature, heroic ideals and maternity, its

preface would have the reader imagine it as linked to the named history of buccaneers,

and its content bears witness to slavery. Philip creates a fictional space not only to

imagine an alternative system of justice, but to imagine in piracy a space of multiculturalism outside of the hegemony of colonialism. Emmanuel Appadocca is both

literally and figuratively able to imagine the Atlantic as a place free of slavery and

empire.

Similar complexities of genre classification are apparent in considering China

Miéville’s The Scar (2002). While this novel is categorized as Science Fiction/Fantasy,

in an interview with Joan Gordon, Miéville cites weird fiction as his strongest influence,

because for him “its location [is] at the intersection of sf, fantasy, and horror” (358).

Miéville cites several influences on his work, including film, gaming, horror, ghost stories, and of course, world-creation fantasy and science fiction. In light of his 1998 article “The Conspiracy of Architecture: Notes on a Modern Anxiety,” Miéville also subtly links his work to surrealist art forms. Miéville’s academic work as a Marxist clearly factors into his writing as well; he holds a bachelor’s degree in Social

Anthropology and two graduate degrees in international law. Even more influential are

Miéville’s political and philosophical leanings; throughout his education, he explored both postmodernist and feminist theory and, finding each incomplete, joined a Marxist student organization. He remains dedicated to historical materialism and active in socialist politics in England. The presence of these theoretical paradigms will be discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.

First, although it is often categorized as science fiction, The Scar resists this

genre. Darko Suvin defines science fiction in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979)

a fictional tale determined by the hegemonic literary device of a locus and/or dramatis personae that (1) are radically or at least significantly different from the empirical times, places and characters of “mimetic” or “naturalist” fiction, but (2) are nonetheless – to the extent that SF differs from other “fantastic” genres, that is, ensembles of fictional tales without empirical validation – simultaneously conceived as not impossible within the cognitive (cosmological and anthropological) norms of the author’s epoch. (viii)

The Scar could hardly be considered science fiction in this sense, as the species present in

the novel - cactus people, mosquito women, etc. - are certainly impossible within modern

anthropological norms. Miéville finds that Suvin’s theory of cognitive estrangement

“obscures as much as it explains” (Gordon 366); however, it is a concept Miéville

consciously explores within The Scar. The powers and technologies present in the world

of Bas-Lag, the world of three of Miéville’s novels, defy contemporary realities as well,

even as they echo a different system of science than that recognized by its readers.

China Miéville’s work is also undoubtedly linked to science-fictional cyberpunk.

According to Brian McHale, cyberpunk science fiction relies on “the principles of

incongruous juxtaposition – juxtapositions […] of high technology with the subcultures

of the ‘street’ and the underworld, and so on” (248); this juxtaposition is apparent in

Miéville’s central characters, Bellis Coldwine, an urban intellectual, Uther Doul, a

philosopher/scholar/soldier, and Tanner Sack, a prisoner-cum-working man. McHale

argues that “the ‘convergence’ or ‘cross-fertilization’ between recent science fiction and

‘serious’ or ‘mainstream’ postmodernist fiction […has been corroborated and preempted

by] the youngest generation of science fiction writers, the so-called cyberpunks” (250),

who focus primarily on the relationship between mainstream culture and subcultures.

Miéville’s positioning of Bas-Lag as an early industrial metropolis also links his work to

steampunk, a kind of cyberpunk typically set in the 19th century.

While the distinctive categorizations of contemporary science fiction may not

apply to Emmanuel Appadocca, several aspects of Philip’s novel are science fictional as

well. First, the protagonist significantly differs from characters of “mimetic fiction” in its

time. Emmanuel Appadocca, a young educated Creole, displays characteristics that

present a radical departure from depictions of blacks in literature of the day. Appadocca

is described, as Leah Rosenberg points out, as leading a life of evil and crime, while at

the same time being “a superlative gentleman” (21). He is also “refined and physically

powerful” (21), another contradiction of literary depictions of blacks in Philip’s time.

Appadocca enters the world of science or technological fiction through his uses of

technology. Rosenberg notes that he is “a super modern man whose scientific and

technological inventions anticipate the progress of English science by half a century”

(21). Philip’s positioning of a black man as a superior, sophisticated hero is certainly

speculative in light of the denigration of blacks in literature of his time. This aspect of the

novel is “not impossible within the cognitive […] norms” of Philip’s time (Suvin viii). I

do not fully suggest that Emmanuel Appadocca is a work of science fiction any more than

The Scar; genre categories are challenged by each. This challenge is inherent in any

literature that resists overarching systems of power; it is the challenge of reimagining

social structures.

Chapter 3: The Possibility of Parody in Emmanuel Appadocca

“Scars are not injuries […] A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole” (Miéville 171)

In examining the generic categorization of Emmanuel Appadocca, another

possibility emerges: elements of parody. Philip’s clearest example of parody can be

located in his treatment of Jack Jimmy, the novel’s only major character depicted as

black (i.e. not of mixed race) and a slave. From the beginning of the novel, Philip

emphasizes racial distinctions in depicting the social relations between the characters.

After opening with a sweeping description of the natural beauty of the coast of Trinidad,

the first three characters introduced are identified - first by their labor and next by their

race - before they are named or given any action:

There were three men in the fishing-boat: two who were rowers, and one that was sitting at its stern and apparently the master. He was of mixed blood: of that degree known as that of mulatto, and seemingly of Spanish extraction, but his two men were blacks. (12)

Philip in this way begins his novel with race and labor. His distinction between the

mulatto master and the black slave reveals a great deal about race relations in Trinidad.

Rosenberg argues that Philip’s primary ideological focus within the text is to promote the

aims and rights of Trinidad’s “brown elite” (20): the educated, middle-class mulatto

population that was steadily gaining power in Trinidadian social life. The parallels

between Philip’s professional struggle with racism in colonial Trinidad and the struggle

he lays out for Emmanuel Appadocca are obvious, and a self-interested agenda

promoting social and political power for the “brown elite” is clear within the novel. Yet

Rosenberg’s allegation that “Philip also directed his mastery of European culture to

establishing the inferiority of Trinidad’s black subaltern classes” (24) is problematic

considering Philip’s overall condemnation of slavery within the text.

As Rosenberg points out, Appadocca is also introduced first by appearance, i.e.

“infinitely well formed” (23), and secondarily by race:

His complexion was of a very light olive, [sic] it showed a mixture of blood, and proclaimed that the man was connected with some dark race, and in the infinity of grades in the population of Spanish America, he may have been said to be of that which is commonly designated Quadroon. (23)

Philip annotates this comment to ensure that his audience fully understands Appadocca’s

racial identification. He is “connected with some dark race” but absolutely not identified

as being “of” a dark race. In fact, Philip mentions Appadocca’s refined manner and pale

skin tone several times throughout the text.

In contrast, the novel’s only substantial black character, Jack Jimmy, is described

as a caricature:

He was a little man of about four feet and a half, thickly set, and strong; his face was rounded at the mouth, and his long bony jaws projected to an extraordinary length in front. He seemed to have no brow, [sic] there was no distinction between his face and forehead; his huge large eyes looked like balls inserted into two large holes, bored on an even surface, [sic] while what was intended for a nose, was miserably abbreviated and flat added the culminating point to an ugliness which was almost unique. (30)

Philip’s absolute emphasis on contrasting Jack Jimmy’s appearance with the well-formed

countenance of Appadocca does at first glance lend itself to interpretation as a reflection

of race relations within colonial Trinidad. Rosenberg reads Philip’s characterization of

Jack Jimmy as “reproduc[ing] European stereotypes of Africans as inferiors, unable to

master language or reason” (24).

Yet it is important to recognize that Philip’s depiction of Jack Jimmy is

intentionally ridiculous, “calculated to raise laughter” (30). Rosenberg as well finds him

“absurdly inarticulate” (24, emphasis added). The absurdity of Jack Jimmy’s character

may be key to unraveling Philip’s characterization of blackness. Gesa Mackenthun

allows that Jack Jimmy is “a comic stereotype” (141). The author’s treatment of Jack

Jimmy appears to be an uncomfortable subject for these critics, although the Atlantic

setting, the author’s Preface itself, and the historical events that directly precede the

writing of this novel all point towards Emmanuel Appadocca as a novel about and against

slavery. Why then, would a caricature of blackness be included? One possible

explanation that places this novel squarely on the fringe of yet another generic

classification is that the depiction of Jack Jimmy is parodic. By pushing his description

of Jack Jimmy to extremes and highlighting his lack of language, animalistic appearance,

and abject subservience, Philip ridicules the inanity of such conceptions of blacks by

European and American colonial audiences. Such parody is notable in other abolitionist

fiction of Philip’s time, including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).

Cain argues that “Stowe and her book were powerful presences for any later author who

sought to contribute to the literature of antislavery” (xliii), highlighting the connections

between Stowe’s and Appadocca’s emphases on vengeance as one of the threads that

connects the novels.

Emmanuel Appadocca contains another scene in which representation of

Appadocca himself is so extreme as to warrant further analysis. After escaping from

Charles Hamilton by literally jumping ship, Appadocca recovers from his ordeal in

Venezuela. Determined to navigate unknown country to the sea (and mystically able to

do so because of his profound understanding of nature), Appadocca comes across a pack

of wild animals and kills and eats one who falls off of a precipice to its death. Philip

comments that: “Famine makes the steady violent, and human nature has already a

sufficiently hard duty to contain itself, even when starvation is not present to gall it into

rage” (186). Even without hunger edging him on, it is somehow Appadocca’s nature to

react with viciousness; his animalistic behavior is to be expected. During his attack on

the injured animal, Appadocca is described “wild as the animals themselves, [he] threw

himself upon it and buried his thumb and finger into its neck” (187). In a brutal scene

where Appadocca is likened to “a convulsive man” (187) and “a dying crocodile” (187),

he succeeds “in cutting a large portion of the still quivering flesh, and eat[ing] it” (187).

For an outlaw who offers compensation to the sailors on the ships he captures and

maintains absolute control and discipline over the men he leads, this episode is dissonant.

It may be satiric in nature, describing actions that can only be interpreted as deliberately

exaggerated in order to highlight existing stereotypes. Appadocca’s actions can also be

interpreted as a metaphor for the violence Appadocca is forced into as a result of the

deprivations of colonial society. He is destitute (starving in a sense) before he resorts to

the violent life of piracy, and he certainly considers his violence justified in light of all he

has been denied.

Chapter 4: Attacks on Colonial Power

Colonial power for Philip is linked to slavery. In addition to his exaggerated

depictions of racial stereotypes that function as indirect critiques, Philip uses his novel to

voice a direct commentary on colonial power. Slavery for Appadocca is part and parcel

of the colonial project, and his attack on colonial systems of power is never clearer than

in his defense of piracy to Charles Hamilton, a former classmate who incarcerates him

pending his trial. The contrast between Charles Hamilton’s views on colonial power and

Emmanuel Appadocca’s is striking. While Philip refers to Appadocca and Hamilton as

“friends” (109, 111, 122), and they are by their own consideration peers, they are

distinctly separated by nationality and ideology. In telling his story to Hamilton,

Appadocca describes his disillusionment upon finding that he cannot fulfill his dreams of

an academic career in Europe without the financial support he had been receiving from

his mother before her death. He describes discovering and contacting his father, “a

wealthy planter in Trinidad” (101), in an attempt to secure “restitution […] to obliterate

crime” (101). Appadocca identifies his father’s crimes as taking advantage of his mother

and failing to support his child. Appadocca explains his transformation from student to

pirate as a reaction to the injustice he has experienced because of his race and illegitimate

birth. The most, if not only, passion Appadocca shows is in his analysis of the massive

injustice linked to colonial domination. He describes Europeans as “the barbarous

hordes” (113), who

First consolidated, developed and enriched, after having appropriated, through the medium of commerce, the wealth of its immediate neighbours, [and then] sends forth its numerous and powerful ships to scour the seas, to penetrate new and unknown regions, [sic] where discovering new and rich countries, [sic] they in the name of civilization, first open an intercourse with the peaceful and contented inhabitants, next contrive to provoke a quarrel, which always terminates in a war that leaves them the conquerors and possessors of the land. (113)

Writing from the point of view of a colonized person, as Cudjoe points out, Philip gives a moving and progressive assessment of colonization, which includes both his recognition that the ascendancy of European civilization is a fallacy and his identification of the sea as the route to colonial conquest. He further describes the fate of a colonized people as being “driven after the destruction of their cities, to roam the woods, and to perish and disappear on the advance of their greedy supplanters” (113). He recognizes the colonized people of the Caribbean as “different only in the language with which they vent their thoughts” (113); they are not intellectually, morally or in any other way distinct from their European counterparts, as ethnocentric ideologies of his time often insisted.

Appadocca also directly addresses colonialism’s relationship with religion, one of the

primary Ideological State Apparatuses Althusser identifies as responsible for upholding

hegemonic power. Appadocca points out his reasons for condemning the church:

in the name of that Christ, who came with ‘peace and good will to man,’ evil passions are roused, daggers whetted, and massacres sanctified; while he, who with spectacles on nose, and twang in voice, moves the ready machine, grins in his closet over the glittering gold that his lectures, invectives, panegyrics and homilies, bring in. (115)

While addressing the corruption of the church, Appadocca also makes a clear accusation

that the church itself disseminates colonial ideology, justifying and perpetuating violence

and immoral acts against colonized people.

This condemnation proves a bit heady for the affable Hamilton, who asks

Appadocca to apply his argument. In response, Appadocca offers his clearest explanation

of the relationship between his system of justice and the injustice of slavery, stating:

If I take away from the merchant whose property very likely consists of the accumulation of exorbitant and excessive profits, the sugar which by the vice of mortgages he wrings at a nominal prices from the debt-ridden planter, [sic] who, in his turn robs the unfortunate slave of his labour, I take what is ethically not his property, therefore, I commit no robbery. For, it is clear, he who wrenches away from the hands of another, that which the holder is not entitled to, does no wrong. (115)

Appadocca has succinctly linked his condemnation of colonial economy to the injustices of slavery, pointing out the basis for the alternative system of justice he sees in his piracy.

In many ways, Appadocca’s passion and radicalism link him to Herman

Melville’s Captain Ahab. In Mariners, Renegades & Castaways: The Story of Herman

Mieville and the World We Live In (1953), C.L.R. James, a prominent Marxist Caribbean

theorist, rereads Moby Dick as synthesizing “a world of human personalities, living as the

vast majority of human beings live, not by ideas, but by their emotions, seeking to avoid

pain and misery and struggling for happiness” (3). James reads Ahab as the

quintessential radical, who rejects the expectations of capitalism and “trampled upon

these sacred principles, derided them, and set up instead his own feelings as a human

being” (5). Similarly, Appadocca, caught between a racial identity that disenfranchises

him and a class identity that is indefinite, uses his own desire for revenge to move away

from a socially acceptable (albeit limited) role for a man of his education. James links

Ahab and his crew to

Men who […] are being steadily prepared for desperate action. If now there descends upon them a violent catastrophe that ruins them and convinces them that the life that they have been living is intolerable and the grave doubts that have previously tormented them are justified, then they are going to throw aside all the traditional restraints of civilization. They are going to seek a new theory of society and a program of action,

and on the basis of this theory and this program, they are going to act. This is what happens to Ahab when a whale bites off his leg. (11)

Appadocca goes through his own journey from desperation to action, and as a result of

his desperate rejection of civilization, he finds himself driven by a fixed obsession - yet

his Moby Dick is the fantasy of revenge. James notes that the real theme of Moby Dick is

“totalitarianism, its rise and fall, its power and its weakness” (54). One way to read

Emmanuel Appadocca is to consider that Appadocca’s single-minded desire destroys him

as well; with nothing left to do once his vengeance is delivered, Appadocca must take his

own life in the face of a world without purpose. Appadocca’s vindictive response to his

deprivations as a result of colonial institutions of power cannot itself become a basis for a

productive solution. As Gayatri Spivak notes, “Our work cannot succeed if we always

have a Scapegoat” (309).

In contrast, The Scar does not make a clear accusation of culpability for any of the

social ills of its world, yet its parallels to Moby Dick are clear in theme and plot. The

Lovers, the most powerful leaders in Armada, lead their “crew” (as it were) along an

arduous and dangerous journey. At first, their apparent goal is to capture an avanc, a

leviathan-like creature comparable to Moby Dick. Like Moby Dick, the creature is

massive and elusive; yet Armada’s avanc is a senseless creature (at least within the

limited ability of the Armadans to decipher its senses), blindly chasing the rockmilk

power the Armadans use to lure it. As James says of Melville’s Pequod, Miéville’s

Armada, a floating pirate city of linked ships, is a microcosm for the world of Bas-Lag,

which arguably could be considered a speculative representation of contemporary

society. The “world of a ship” is propelled forward in the pursuit first of the avanc and

then of a more risky obsession, a Scar in the world that fractures reality. Ultimately the

Lovers present a danger to Armada because, as James argues with regard to Ahab, the

Lovers’ “purpose may be mad but the weapons that [they are] using to achieve this

purpose are the most advanced achievements of the civilized world, and this purpose

gives [their] already high intelligence a command […] and a power [they] had never had

before” (15). The Lovers’ madness is clear in the power they draw from their sexuality,

and in their willingness to put Armada at risk for their own ambitions.

Allusions to the threat of colonial expansion are clear throughout the plot and

characters of The Scar. The most obviously colonized group, which will undoubtedly

meet with a great deal of discussion in future scholarship on this novel, is the Anophelii,

a mosquito-like race held on their island under a strictly enforced quarantine. The

captain in charge of the island is referred to as "an official Dreer Samher pirate" (303),

creating a distinction between the sanctioned piracy that supports colonial power in Bas-

Lag and the Armadans, unsanctioned pirates who raid this system. The Anophelii are physically restricted from leaving their island; any contact with them is "a breach of

security, risking a new [...] Malarial age" (327). The system of quarantine enforced on

the Anophelii is "absolute” (327) because of their earlier depredations of human

societies. The subalternity of the Anophelii is absolute, and is enforced to prevent

recurrence of a dimly recollected historical atrocity known as the Malarial Queendom.

When the Armadans break the quarantine to bring out the Anophelii scholar Krüach

Aum, whose scientific knowledge they need to capture the avanc, the captain guarding

the island is told "You came to forbid it [the Anophelius leaving] because you felt your

authority leaching from you" (330). The Armadans’ military leader, Uther Doul, is

successful in overpowering the quarantine only because of his use of a magical artifact, a

sword that taps into the power of possibility.

Miéville depicts the relationship between colonial power and gender through his

description of the Anophelli, whose gender-specific characteristics are linked to their

freedom and their language. The she-Anophelii are described as "like a woman bent

double and then bent again against the grain of her bones, crooked and knotted into a

stance subtly wrong" (294). Physically described as "ungainly and predatory" yet

"unmistakably and unsettlingly sexual" (194), they are reduced to being labeled, avoided,

ignored and sometimes killed because on encountering human flesh, they kill, driven by

hunger for the blood of their prey. After their first encounter with the she-Anophelii, which leaves the Armadans "traumatized by the[ir] starving ferocity," Bellis recognizes that the she-Anophelii are intellectually equal to herself and her companions:"when they're full - really sated - there's a day or two, maybe a week, when the hunger abates.

And that's when they try to talk [...but...] they could never learn language [...] they were always too hungry" (313). The very bodies of the Anophelii women prevent them from having a literal and figurative voice with which to resist the colonial system of power to which they are subject.

The she-Anophelii struggle to imitate the sounds of the Armadan language, but the male Anophelii experience language differently. The males' written language is not related to the one they speak, a disconnect that is at first baffling to Bellis and the other

Armadans. Additionally, although the Armadans are themselves made up of several species and races (including the vampiric Abdead), some of whom share a common language and some of whom, like the Khepri, do not, Bellis' impression of the Anophelii

is of "an alien psychology" (302). The Anophelii thus are thus starkly cast as other

through both language and social reality. Control of the Anophelii is fiercely guarded

through political hegemony that focuses on language:

Kohnid was playing a game, keeping the brilliant anophelii as pet thinkers; giving them nothing that might make them powerful, or let them escape – Kohnid would not risk unleashing the she-anophelii on the world again – but just enough to think with. The Kettai would not allow anophelii access to any information outside of its control: the centuries-long maintenance of High Kettai as the island’s written language ensured that. And that way, anophelii science and philosophy were in the hands of the Kohnid elite, who were almost alone in being able to read it. (301)

Through the Anophelii, Miéville comments on colonial power as exerted through

language, and the relationship between knowledge and capitalism upon which much

contemporary political power rests. It is also interesting to note that the power Armada

stands to gain through harnessing the avanc depends on giving voice and relative freedom

to a member of the thoroughly disenfranchised Anophelii.

Another facet of The Scar that can be read as a commentary of sorts on colonial

expansion is the role that Armada’s vampire leader plays in the power struggle that

ultimately challenges the Lovers’ rule. The Brucolac, one of the few Armadans that

came to live there by choice, is a political leader in Armada overtly and subtly connected

to many of The Scar’s plot twists. In “Globalisation, Empire, and the Vampire” (2007),

Mario Vrbancic argues that the vampire can be seen as "a monumental paternal figure of

the vampire (nation), who gathers all these anxieties of decay and collapse, and yet

projects the possibilities of new imperial expansions" (4). This projection of decline and

rebirth has clear implications with regard to the vampiric Brucolac. Miéville describes

the homeland of the Brucolac as having a system of class stratification that reaches its

apex in defining class by status as living, dead (vampires), or Abdead (mummies). The

Brucolac has come to Armada to escape this stringent system of class. He describes his

homeland as a faraway place (so far it seems that other characters doubt its existence)

with such a rigid social order that he wishes never to see it again. The very existence of

such a place that "cares not at all about New Crobuzon" (64) becomes an affront to the

colonial power that New Crobuzon represents. Ironically, the powers of the Brucolac

also pose a serious threat to Armada’s piratical leadership.

Part of the Brucolac’s assault on power involves his use of the alternative power

present in the possibility of reshaping life through vampirism and creating life after death

through the Abdead. When the Brucolac leads a mutiny against the Lovers, he echoes the

threat of difference. The power struggle in Armada is staged in some sense as a struggle

between magical, powerful Uther Doul and the vampiric Brucolac, each of whom yields

power (through Doul’s Possible Sword and the Brucolac’s vampirism) that is

unsurpassed in Armada and New Crobuzon. The Brucolac is also, as Vrbancic notes of

Dracula, "a coloniser of territories, bodies, thoughts, knowledges" (4). His power to

colonize the very bodies of his subjects comes directly from his vampirism. Having fled

his native land “To that place where he was free - forced to be free - of all pretense, all

illusion” (Miéville 251), the Brucolac extends this power to a small but effective force of

vampire lieutenants who rule absolutely, and whose power comes directly from the

taxable blood of those they rule. He is both literally and physically a colonizer, and is

for some time crucified by the leadership he tries to overthrow. He is later released once

he is rendered powerless by prolonged exposure to the sun, a grotesque method of torture

for a vampire. The Brucolac’s role remains ambiguous.

The Scar’s rejection of colonial power is considerably more complex than

Emmanuel Appadocca’s. Miéville’s depiction of the Anophelii is complicated because

the quarantine of the Anophelii women seems justifiable considering the danger they

pose to others. As the Armadans point out, however, the inclusion of the Anophelii men

in this quarantine is not justifiable in the same way, and they are subjected to this

imprisonment because their captors profit from their intellectual production. The

hegemonic power that exploits the male Anophelii is absolutely condemned within the

text. Similarly, although the Brucolac’s struggle for power (and the expansion of that

power through a vampirism that echoes colonial domination) does present one possible

critique of colonial power. In fact, the very notion of Armadans as resisting political

power in Bas-Lag becomes complicated when Armada gains the possibility of acquiring

its own ability to conquer.

Chapter 5: Spatial Speculation as a Site of Resistance

“I shall lead the men who have followed me so bravely, and who have served me so faithfully, to some remote spot on the fertile and vast continent that lies on our right, and build them a city in which they may live happily, quietly and far removed from the world, whose sympathy they cannot hope, and care not, to possess” (Philip 236)

In “Between Piracy and Justice: Liminality in Maxwell Philip’s Emmanuel

Appadocca,” Gregory Wilson applies Victor Turner's definition of liminality to this

novel, arguing that the pirate ship is "located in the margin between parts of land and

politically and philosophically between places where laws of semantic, not natural origins

apply" (1). Wilson argues that the liminal space offered by the sea is a setting through

which Philip can explore alternative systems of justice and the possibility of resisting

both slavery and colonial power. Through a close examination of the settings for the

action of the novel, Wilson finds that violence (at least against other people) is only

inflicted aboard Appadocca’s ship, and that Philip uses the ship as a space in which

Appadocca may subvert justice and break social norms in a way that would be

unacceptable to his readers if depicted on land. Appadocca also makes a clear distinction between “the laws of land” (65, emphasis added) and “mine and great Nature’s [law]”

(65), which rule on his ship. The sea is the barrier that enforces the totality of his law and it is impassable to his father.

In addition to highlighting separate systems of justice at work on land and at sea,

Appadocca’s visits to the land to obtain what he desires are problematic. As a pirate he takes from the land through the sale of his goods and the final kidnapping of his father,

yet Appadocca sees his ship (and by extension the sea) as a means to seek revenge and

freedom, without envisioning these goals as ending at sea. In a brief letter to Charles

Hamilton that is in effect his suicide note, Appadocca reveals his hope of bringing his men back to land once his oath of vengeance is fulfilled. Appadocca specifically refers to the “vast continent that lies on our right” (236), South America, as a free space for his men to live beyond the constraints and ideologies of his time. Although Philip prefaces the novel with a vision of Trinidad, which “play[s] eternally on his willing memory” (6), he does not envision Appadocca’s journeys ending at home. Philip knows that the

Caribbean islands were not and could not be the site of the kind of freedom that

Appadocca seeks. As the autonomous ship is the only place Appadocca can live by natural law, it is fitting that both his own life and his father’s end with the sinking of his ship in the sea.

The opposition of the justice served on land and on sea is clear in both

Emmanuel Appadocca and The Scar. One of the possibilities this liminal space of “The

Black Schooner” (Appadocca’s ship) allows is that “the ship is the crewmen’s country,

and its mobility ensures that they are not so much nomads or displaced wanderers as

representatives of their own ‘national’ identity” (Wilson 3). Philip’s use of the ship as a

liminal space can be linked to his liminality as a descendant of both slaves and

slaveholders, a native of Trinidad who has aligned himself intellectually with Europe and

yet a man whose education and intellect have not been able to bring him fully out of the

margins of Caribbean society.

The use of ships and the sea as liminal spaces is also prominent in The Scar. One

of the key elements that sets The Scar apart from other pirate fiction is its setting, an

armada of linked ships. While the seas of Bas-Lag are in part the setting of the novel,

and certainly have agency in portions of the plot, the idea of a moving city

simultaneously evokes both sea and land. Armada, a city of ships, is a permanent fixture

(in that Armadans identify themselves in a nationalistic way with the city itself) yet contains elements of instability and movement that at times propel the plot. The first

description Miéville gives of Armada is as “A flotilla of dwellings. A city built on old

boat bones” (79), evoking haunting and rebirth. Miéville goes on to describe Bellis

Coldwine’s first gaze at the city: “Across many hundreds of ships lashed together, spread

over almost a square mile of sea, [was] the city built on them” (79). She observes in

great detail the variety and sheer eccentricity of a city that “shifted on water” (80).

In “Conspiracy of Architecture,” an article Miéville published in Historical

Materialism in 1998, Miéville explores the “animate, alien building” (1), specifically

arguing that “buildings are projected as active and even conscious agents, able to

intervene in the world. They are seen as alien in that their agendas, their motivations, are

utterly non-human” (1). He identifies this as an anxiety surrounding architecture that is

related to Marxist notions of the fetishization of commodities. He further links this

phenomenon with surrealist art (2). We can see the action (and motion) of the

“buildings” of Armada as a source of power within The Scar, and may extend his critique of the fetishization of architecture into a reading of the architectural structure of Armada.

The agency of Armada is conveyed by its flagships, which are distinctively associated with the ridings (boroughs or sections of the city), that are also symbols of political and social power. The Sorghum, a rig stolen from New Crobuzon to create the power source to lure and spur the avanc, is described as “a massive concrete body on legs like four

splintering pillars emerging from the dirtied sea. Dark cranes moving without visible

purpose. It was a monstrous thing, awe-inspiring and ugly and foreboding” (88). The

Sorghum is a literal and figurative source of power, and yet that power is identified as

purposeless and frightening at the same time that it lends Armada power through greater

mobility.

The architecture of Dry Fall riding, another section of Armada, also takes an active role in subplots of The Scar. The haunted quarter, which is part of Dry Fall, is described as the source of strange noises that are believed to be “the product of wind and

the bizarre architecture of the ancient ships” (210). The setting of Dry Fall is linked to

fear of the Brucolac, Dry Fall’s vampire leader, and yet also provides a free space in

which the Brucolac and Uther Doul can talk “with no bodyguards, no yeomanry or

bystanders to see [their] interaction, [in which] the glowering tension that characterized

the two men’s public confrontations was absent” (212). This setting is integral to the subtle shifts of power that ultimately decide the fate of Armada. While the Brucolac’s open attempt at mutiny fails - he does not wish to encounter the Scar - he is responsible for influencing Uther Doul, who plays a pivotal role in the journey to the Scar and provides the means through which the journey is ended. Finally, it is through architecture that another prominent section of Armada, Garwater, ultimately falls; through his knowledge of the very structure of its flagship, Doul gives Bellis Coldwine the means through which the people of Garwater depose their leaders, the Lovers.

In "Islomania? Insularity? The Myth of the Island in British Science Fiction,"

Paul Kincaid points out "two basic contrasting responses to the island in British science fiction. Islomania: the island as a dream state, the object of desire, the ideal; [and]

insularity: the island as prison or fortress that holds us apart from the rest of the world"

(463). The Scar brings both themes together in its vision of the Anophelii island, a prison

(like the Nova Esperium colony) and also of Armada, which functions as a utopian and

dystopian island. Armada is a haven for many of its citizens, who like the Remade

prisoners, (humans who have been physically altered as punishment for a range of

crimes) have been rescued from slavery. In comparing the floating city of Armada to the

earthbound city of New Crobuzon, Miéville's narrator points out at least one utopian

element: the alleviation of the abject poverty present in New Crobuzon. Armada is

compared with New Crobuzon, a city Miéville recognizes as “clearly analogous to a

chaos-fucked Victorian London” (Gordon 362):

Armada was not like New Crobuzon. Here there was not a whole alternative economy of rubbish and squalor and survival: the basements of empty buildings did not harbor a mass of beggars and homeless [....] Poverty here was less likely to kill. Fights were more likely to be fueled by booze than desperation [...] There were no vagrant’s huddles in angles of architecture. (262-263)

Miéville, an ardent socialist, presents in Armada a "bureaucratic rule" (82) that despite its

harsh means of discipline and reliance on trade and capital, has succeeded in alleviating

poverty and its related social concerns.

Kincaid offers an analysis of Robinson Crusoe that parallels some aspects of

Armada as an insular "island" of British fiction: "Like all good prison narratives […] the

story turns inward by forcing Crusoe to depend upon his own resources" (464). Bellis

Coldwine is similarly isolated, left to come up with Armadan resources to escape her prison. The resources she can access to accomplish her goal of escaping Armada vary over a wide range of power systems that stem from the use of alternative knowledges, including Silas Fennec’s use of puissance and her own ability to manipulate others.

Kincaid also points out the relationship between prison and utopia in highlighting the

relationship between Defoe's island and Thomas More's in Utopia: "Where More had laid

down that the island was the theater in which to witness an experiment in the perfection of society, Defoe laid down that an island was the theatre in which to witness an experiment in the perfection of man" (467). Bellis Coldwine's views in the novel of

Armada as a place where "might makes right" (82) and as "a prison" (83) substantiate

Kincaid's claims that the fictional island can function as both an object of desire and a

fortress apart. In The Scar, Miéville uses Armada as a theater that illustrates the

imperfections of several social systems, and uses it also to highlight the “human” flaws in

his protagonists.

For Kincaid, another possibility for the island in British literature is as an

evolutionary setting in which experiments are contained, "sealed off from the world as a

way of avoiding contamination in either direction" (467). This is clearly the case of the

Anophelius Island, on which the knowledge Armada seeks can be found. It is also the

case for Armada, a setting that enables its inhabitants to evolve intellectually so that they

are able to imagine the possibility of alternative realities such as those represented by the

Scar itself, a rift in reality. From the reader's first introduction to Armada, it is clear that this mobile city provides a space where cultural hybridity is a way of life and where the limits of conventional assumptions can be questioned. In Kincaid’s reading, "the island

[is detached] from our reality, so the most extraordinary events can be played out there

without impinging on the familiar reality around us, while at the same time remaining

sufficiently part of the world that the relevance of the warning is not going to be lost" (6).

We can see just such a thematic detachment from reality within the surreal descriptions of

Miéville’s Armada and the Anophelius Island, as well as in Philip’s Emmanuel

Appadocca and its protagonist’s vision of a new nation created in South America.

Chapter 6: The Boundaries of Knowledge in The Scar

The Scar falls outside the realm of traditional science fiction because it does not

emphasize technologies that are easily recognized as such. A great deal of Miéville’s

world-building depends on alternative systems of order, ranging from sciences that are linked to mythology and history, including thaumaturgy and metallurgy, to technologies that have no parallel in human science or are tangible only as special powers or abilities.

Among these are Miéville’s ideas of chirosurgery, puissance, and access to other dimensions. These are all integral to the plot of The Scar, and neither the physical nor social journey of Armada could take place without them. Chirosurgery, for example, is the technology of “remaking” people into new shapes; it is used in New Crobuzon as punishment and in Armada as an enhancement. Chirosurgery is crucial to the plot in enabling the character Tanner Sack, a remade amphibian, to pass communication to New

Crobuzon authorities. Puissance is a vaguely explicated force involving interaction with

an otherworldly presence in order to access powers of that other world - especially the

ability to move through physical space along nonstandard dimensional lines. This power,

which the spy Silas Fennec accesses in order to gain unobserved access to Armada,

allows him to collect information. In a sense the entire journey of Armada is linked to

the technology of accessing dimensions made possible through such artifacts, as will be

discussed below.

In The Postmodern Fantastic in British Fiction (2004), Martin Horstkotte argues

that the fantastic other falls outside Kathryn Hume's definition: "the everyday world at

the outset of the narrative with which the reader tends to identify and which has been

termed 'consensus reality'" (49). For Horstkotte, the opposition of self and other is

necessary in the fantastic; in Miéville’s complex social groupings, the basis of

“consensus reality” is difficult to pinpoint, for the varying bases of technology and the

presence of other dimensions, magic and sciences in The Scar make it impossible for its

readers to interpret the novel realistically. There are several examples of technologies and

knowledge that are species or culture-specific, such as the puissance of the gengris, the

Brucolac’s moonship (a structure of unknown material that relies on unrevealed sources

of power), and the zombification of High Cromlech. From the outset of The Scar, the

linguist Bellis Coldwine, although notably “unlikeable” (Gordon 371), is the character

with whom the reader can most readily identify. Yet as she “discovers” the multiplicity

of knowledges in Armada, her preconceived notions prove useless. She struggles with

determining reality, yet determining factors of social reality are not clearly articulated or

understood by her. This text blurs the line between the real and the mythic.

Horstkotte argues that “most manifestations of the fantastic other are depicted as

having an origin that is situated outside the world of self in some way” (50). Miéville’s

characters present varying degrees of otherness that shift throughout the text. For

example, the Armadans, who easily accept the presence of vampires in their city, find the

Anophelii incomprehensible. Once they begin to understand the Anophelii (even to a

degree the voracious Anophelii women), the Armadans seek the avanc, which comes

from a place “so deep that Bas-Lag’s dimension could not possibly contain the water’s

gravity and density, and reality was unstable” (400). Once that unstable dimension is

breached, the pirates of Armada still search for an “other” place outside of the realm of

their reality, the still more mysterious rift known as the Scar. The continual movement towards difference and the fascination with what is outside lived experience blur the

distinction between self and other that is so pervasive in fantastic literature. Miéville’s

deliberate repositioning of the fantastic “other” challenges his reader to move away from

this dichotomy, allowing his work to highlight more innovative concerns.

Another challenge to the knowable that Miéville poses lies in his use of

technology. One interpretation of Miéville’s technology can be found within Caribbean

theory. In “The Trinidad Renaissance: Building a Nation, Building a Self,” Patricia

Saunders defines the use of obeah (Central African religious practices prevalent in the

Caribbean and founded in West Africa, which bear some semblance to the Haitian

Vodou) as “an alternative system of order within existing sociohistorical institutions at

work” (32), an idea that is as useful in examining Miéville’s inclusion of necromancy,

puissance, and thaumaturgy as it is in interpreting Trinidadian yard fiction. Obeah’s

presence also serves to provide an alternative system of order within Emmanuel

Appadocca. Feliciana, a woman who falls in love with Appadocca in Venezuela, uses an

unmentioned “number of opportunities” (200) to find him. Along her journey, Feliciana

is described as “some blessed spirit that is permitted to walk the earth” (199). She seeks

advice about her journey from Mother Celeste, a black woman who “appear[s] to be one

from whom life had long departed” (221) and is referred to as “a sorceress” (222).

Feliciana uses information from Mother Celeste to find Appadocca. During Feliciana’s

journey, Appadocca appears in his father’s house and is referred to as an “accursed,

damned spirit” (207), linking his ability to elicit fear to otherworldly power. The uses of

magic and unexplained phenomena are also accepted (if not entirely understood) systems

within both texts, and the contemporary reader, to whom such technologies are unknown, is presented with an alternative system to the technological progress often celebrated in

speculative fiction.

In examining literary uses of alter/native knowledge as a means of social power,

Saunders points out that “The juxtaposition between ‘higher sciences,’ or obeah, and the possibility for invoking violations of social laws and institutions […] suggests that there is a code of ethics that can easily be overturned by ‘outside forces’” (33). For Miéville, the use of alternative sciences and knowledges is intimately connected to social change in

Armada. The very journey to the Scar, a place that epitomizes alternative knowledge through access to other realities, is in itself a catalyst for the breakdown of the loose social order of Armada. In addition, alternative knowledges play a pivotal role in

disrupting Armada’s social order, as described at the beginning of this chapter. Although

in many ways the technologies that persist in The Scar are fantastic in the sense that they

do not correlate with the reader’s understanding of technology, they also radically

redefine the limits of the knowable, disrupting the assumptions upon which social order is

maintained.

Aside from its fantastic technologies, The Scar contains a thematic rejection of

the knowable in its depiction of Armada’s pursuit of alien technologies. These

knowledges and possibilities date back to what Miéville calls the Ghosthead Empire, an

ancient alien race that once exerted substantial power. For most of Armada’s population,

the Ghosthead is a distant and frightening history about which little is known. Uther

Doul, the Lovers’ guard, is Armada’s resident expert on Ghosthead history. In relating

what is known about them to Bellis, he refers to the Ghosthead in the singular: “The

Ghosthead came here…” (385) and in the plural: “they passed the rock globes” (385),

signaling a strangeness that is difficult to pinpoint but undeniably outside the experience

of the other characters in Armada. The Ghosthead’s arrival in the world of Bas-Lag is

described from their point of view by Uther Doul, who says that they found in Bas-Lag

“a land so mild it must have seemed like balm: an endless, gentle midmorning. And its

rules were not theirs. Its nature was debatable” (385). The world of Bas-Lag is apparently unable to sustain such rupture, and Bellis makes vague reference to the history of the Ghosthead, saying “yet it was we who put paid to the Ghosthead. Through the

Contumacy, and then the Sloughing Off. Weak as we are” (386). Despite arduous preparations for the journey to the Scar, a remainder of Ghosthead technology, the power it represents remains a source of fear and mystery. When at last they near the Scar, the

Armadans turn away, unable to reconcile multiple possible realities. Miéville does not end his discussion of the Ghosthead rift with the anticlimactic ending of The Scar, but goes on to explore the same phenomenon in the most recent of the Bas-Lag novels, Iron

Council (2004).

Chapter 7: The Struggle Between Marxism and the Multiplicity in The Scar

"A rhizome or multiplicity never allows itself to be overcoded, never has available a supplementary dimension over and above its number of lines." (Deleuze and Guattari 9)

In Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science

Fictions, Fredric Jameson points out that Suvin’s principle of cognitive estrangement as

the ground for science fiction “posits one specific subset of [science fiction] specifically

devoted to the imagination of alternative social and economic forms” (xiv). Several

alternative social forms may be seen in examining the systems of government within

Miéville’s Armada; part of the struggle of The Scar is that none of the alternatives it

presents are utopian. Armada, although an alternative vision of social and political life, is

rife with political unrest and social injustice. As Jameson points out, The Scar can be read as a text that “deploy[s] overtly Utopian themes [...and yet] betray[s] the workings of the Utopian impulse” (xiv). This is the crux of Miéville’s complex vision: while

Armada does offer some utopian escapes from current political and social dilemmas

(poverty, homelessness, unequal distribution of wealth), it also depicts brutal political and social realities.

Just as Miéville resists utopian impulses, he resists the trope of heroism.

Modeled after Cervantes’ Knight of the Doleful Countenance (Gordon 369), Uther Doul wields a great deal of power in Armada and is the character the reader can most readily identify as heroic. Doul’s power is linked to sources outside the knowable reality of other

Armadans. He is not only from a place of alternative powers, but is also a scholar of the

ancient Ghosthead Empire. Yet Doul also conforms to Vrbancic’s definition of an anti-

hero:

A typical type of hero who will serve as an allegory for new identifications that are soon to spread over the entire globe. The ideal subject of global capital would be a solitary, lonely individual, moving from one identity to another according to the virtual rhythm of capital. (2)

Antiheroes shift as conditions require, and Doul’s identity is similarly fluid. Although he

fights on behalf of the Lovers, he also betrays their secrets to Bellis Coldwine. Bellis

finds herself wondering, after the Lovers’ fall from power, whether Doul’s revelations to

her were made with the intent of eventually removing them from power. Doul’s role in

Armada is ambiguous, as he is simultaneously at the center of the Lover’s plans and key

to destroying them. While he acts as the military power behind the leaders, it becomes

clear that his own agenda is private.

It would be difficult to place The Scar into a theoretical or philosophical

framework without further examining the political framework of Miéville’s imagined

world. Among the different political systems he explores is New Crobuzon, a military

state headed by a mayor designated through a corrupt system of semi-democracy.

Despite Bellis Coldwine’s nostalgia for New Crobuzon, she acknowledges several

disturbing social and political realities within that city-state. The remade there suffer

endless punishment for their crimes. Bellis Coldwine herself, innocent of any known

crime in New Crobuzon, has fled to a colony because of her personal association with a

scientist sought by the government. Sister Meriope, Bellis’ cabin-mate in the opening

chapter, is a nun fleeing from disgrace. Many of Bellis Coldwine’s original traveling

companions seek refuge from or are condemned to punishment by New Crobuzon’s

militaristic power.

In “To the Perdido Street Station: The Representation of Revolution in China

Miéville’s Iron Council,” Carl Freedman argues that depicting socialist revolution, which

“despite interesting (and sometimes) terrifying attempts, […] has not yet been

consummated on our planet” (236), is perhaps “the main project for which New

Crobuzon exist[s] in the first place” (236). Although Freedman bases this argument on

readings of King Rat (1998), Perdido Street Station and The Iron Council (Miéville’s first, second and fourth novels, respectively), allusions to Marxist ideology are likewise frequent in The Scar. Tanner is a remade prisoner from New Crobuzon who voluntarily undergoes further remaking in Armada to become wholly amphibian. As a trusted

engineer, he is at the center of the major movements of the novel: the trip to the

Anophelius island, the delivery of Silas Fennec's letters to the Dreer Samher (effectively

betraying Armada), the making of the avanc's harness, and the challenges of Hedrigall,

the first Armadan to reach the Scar. Through the remade Tanner Sack we also see the

stirrings of class consciousness in his pivotal role of instigating rebellion against

Armada’s leadership, a role deeply rooted in his proletariat identity. Miéville reveals

very little about how he convinces Armadans to join him, except that

Tanner Sack was known. He was the one who had fought a bonefish to save a dying man. He had Remade himself into a kind of manfish, the better for life in Armada. He had lost his boy. Tanner was known, and he was respected. You listened to Tanner, and you believed him. Bellis could tell no one anything. Her mouth was hard and cold as a stone. (611)

Tanner’s political power comes from his relationships with other workers, his service to

Armada through his work, and his willingness to sacrifice both his body and his “boy” (a

cabin boy he has essentially adopted) for the good of Armada. Bellis, a linguist, is not

trusted in the same way. Her class identification is different from Tanner’s - she is

neither loyal to Armada nor part of the working class that see themselves as the city’s backbone.

Tanner Sack’s role in serving as Miéville’s representative of the working class

becomes complicated by the fact that he is remade. For the remade, their very bodies

carry the onus of their punishment, and the New Crobuzon government apparently

expends a great deal of effort and creativity on this punishment. They are hybrids and

even cyborgs, according to Donna Haraway’s definition in "A Manifesto for Cyborgs":

"a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as

well as a creature of fiction" (Leitch 2269). Miéville's remade reflect social realities, and many are hybrids of organism and machine. They are also people of fiction and integral to the central struggle of The Scar, suggesting the possibility of life outside of social norms. The remade are outcasts in New Crobuzon, and although their legal and social status outside New Crobuzon's empire is not revealed in the text, they are visibly marked and othered. At the outset of the novel, they are prisoners sentenced to hard labor in the colony of Nova Esperium, which Bellis notes is a life sentence, since travel in this world is so difficult and slow. Their status complicates the role of the pirates of Armada, for while these pirates capture and detain free New Crobuzoners (who will never be allowed to leave Armada), they free the remade from social stigma and literal punishment in bringing them to Armada. Haraway's cyborgs present a myth that "is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of political work" (2274). Such a myth is fulfilled by Miéville's remade, especially Tanner Sack.

Haraway argues that "gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement

forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism" (2275). Tanner Sack is assuredly identified through patriarchal, colonial and capitalist social realities, as are many of Armada's

citizens. Almost all the press-ganged Armadans find new identity through the city itself,

and each, from the remade prisoners to the powerful figures of the Lovers, Uther Doul, and the Brucolac, escape prior oppressions by becoming pirates. Unlike Haraway's cyborgs, the remade of Armada are not completely without a myth of origin, but all have escaped that origin to open up new identities. Miéville resists the dichotomies that

Haraway identifies as common in Western philosophy "between mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, public and private, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized” (Leitch 2284). As cyborgs, the remade present "a kind of disassembled and reassembled post-modern collective and personal self" (Leitch 2284) that functions, as do cyborgs, to bring several ideological concerns about technology and power to light.

Finally, The Scar’s political implications can be analyzed through examining

Armada’s systems of government: several ridings are governed by different leaders and laws. Each is represented on the Curhouse Council, although it is clear that several members of the council practice political behavior that does not reflect representational leadership. Garwater, the most powerful and wealthy riding, is ruled by the Lovers, a couple who use their power for their own ends. Thee and Thine riding is the most mercantile in Armada and is ruled by a monarch who “sold his vote [on the Council] unashamedly, knowing that [the Lovers] could outpay any other riding” (359). Thee and

Thine hosts glad[iator] circuses reminiscent of ancient Rome; it is described with rancor

as “the most ill-kempt of Armada’s ridings” (442). Miéville links the conditions of the

riding with its purely capitalist leanings, stating that “in a place where everything was for

sale, certain goods - such as the right to maintain the architecture and the streets - were

not so attractive” (443). This critique of underdeveloped public services is linked to

political corruption and the commercial exploitation of violence. The only other riding

whose leadership is discussed is Dry Fall, the riding led by the vampire Brucolac, who

ensures public services while removing the blood of his constituents as a form of

taxation.

Conclusion: The Redefinition of Radicalism in Pirate Fiction

Emmanuel Appadocca and The Scar are models of literary radicalism, some

aspects of which are common to both texts, and some of which are disparate. For M.

Maxwell Philip, radicalism is apparent in his reimagination of justice outside and in

opposition to colonial power, in his reexamination of racial stereotypes, and in his

challenge to colonial power in the Caribbean. Philip also makes sophisticated and

radical linkages between colonialism, racism and natural law. His work does indeed

respond to the “known history of the boucaneers” in a number of ways that can be

revealed through tracing the historical context of piracy in the Caribbean. It is no

coincidence that he uses piracy as a means through which several types of freedom can

be found, and his use of piracy lends itself to a complex and self-conscious speculation

on alternative systems of power. As an adventure story, his work may bear some literary

similarities to other romantic fiction, but it is also the literary predecessor of progressive

and radical movements against slavery and colonialism and towards Caribbean

nationalism.

Miéville’s The Scar explores the boundaries of genre, culture and knowledge

through a radical reimagining of reality. Miéville’s novel engages in a complex and

subversive system of world-building that is removed yet related to his readers’ socio-

historical context. He presents in Armada a space of hybridity, the full extent of which is

unclear to the reader and the inhabitants of the fictional world. Because his world, with

its cultures and its knowledges, cannot be fully known, the reader is left unable to settle

on a single interpretation of the text. In many ways, this resistance to interpretation is a

radical literary act. Miéville’s rejection of fixed systems of order signals a larger project

of resistance for Miéville challenges us to imagine a world in which boundaries of

culture, knowledge and power do not exist. While Miéville states that he does not find

postmodern theory useful in examining his texts (Gordon 364), his work and Philip’s can

be linked to the qualities of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s rhizome: "principles of

connection and heterogeneity [...that...] ceaselessly establish connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles" (7), a multiplicity which has "neither subject nor object" (8). My

analyses of each novel make no claim to essential analysis of either text, instead tracing

the branches that interconnect within and between these novels. Like the journey of

Emmanuel Appadocca, The Scar’s journey has no overriding message, and depicts no

final victory or defeat. Yet we can trace through each radical roots that are only made

possible through the authors’ speculative approaches to genre, political power and sites of

resistance.

Appendix I: The Plot of Emmanuel Appadocca

Michel Maxwell Philip’s Emmanuel Appadocca or Blighted Life: A Tale of the Boucaneers (1854) is the story of a young educated Trinidadian mulatto who seeks revenge on his father, a white planter who has failed to provide him with financial support. The plot of the novel allows Philip to voice his views on justice, natural law, slavery, and colonial society. The novel opens with Appadocca’s seizure of a ship in the straits between Trinidad and Venezuela, capturing Appadocca’s father, James

Willmington. Appadocca stages a brief trial, finds his father guilty, and abandons him to death on the high seas. He is rescued, however, and Appadocca is arrested when he goes to port. Held aboard a British ship by the father of Charles Hamilton, a young officer he befriended during his academic studies in Paris, Appadocca recounts portions of his personal history. He reveals that while studying in Paris, he learned of his mother’s death and the identity of his father. He describes his requests for assistance from his father and the poverty that consumed him upon his father’s failure to respond. Appadocca tells

Hamilton that he recognized his own desire for vengeance upon his father after meeting a destitute woman and her child in the streets. After leaving Europe, he meets a group of

“exiles existing in a state of cynical philosophy, in the midst of the virgin forests that covered the island [of Jamaica]” (110). Although his description of the existence of these men, who “lived in rude huts […]which they called boucans” (110) is fairly grim,

Appadocca implies that he would have settled there had he not made a vow to seek vengeance on his father. Appadocca continues his travels, meets other exiled former

students, and persuades them to procure a vessel, which they later use to hunt and capture

James Willmington.

Appadocca’s description of his own background, especially his defense of

piracy, is key to examining Philip’s analyses of natural law, justice, slavery, and

colonialism. After a failed attempt by his crew to rescue Appadocca from Hamilton’s

custody, Appadocca escapes from Hamilton’s ship and washes up on the shores of

Venezuela. Feliciana, a ranchero’s daughter, nurses him back to health. Upon

recovering, Appadocca refuses Feliciana’s love and leaves the ranch to journey back to

the ocean. He swims out toward a vessel at sea and requests passage back to Port of

Spain. The vessel is intercepted by Appadocca’s crew, who have been interrogating a

midshipman from Hamilton’s ship, captured during attempts to rescue Appadocca.

Assuming that Appadocca is dead, James Willmington returns to his

plantation, only to be visited by Appadocca, whom he at first believes is a ghost. The

pirates capture James Willmington, raid the house, and subdue the remaining members of

the household. Appadocca duels with the younger James Willmington (his half-brother)

“to satisfy justice” (213) and reveals to him the source of his desire for vengeance. After

disarming the younger Willmington, Appadocca’s crew take the elder James Willmington

back to the ship and Appadocca goes to his mother’s grave. There he encounters

Feliciana, who has tracked him with the help of a sorceress. She begs him to renounce his

oath of vengeance, but Appadocca refuses, returning to his ship. Having stowed his

father in a torture chamber on his ship, he releases the midshipman from custody and

requests that he deliver a letter to Charles Hamilton. In his letter, Appadocca absolves

his crew of having had any part in his escape, communicates his intention to take his

crew to Venezuela to found a community, and warns Hamilton of an approaching

hurricane. Appadocca’s ship is destroyed by the hurricane and with it his father is killed.

His mission fulfilled (albeit by nature and not his own doing), Appadocca commits

suicide by jumping overboard into the raging ocean.

Appendix II: The Plot of The Scar

Bas-Lag is the setting of three of China Miéville's novels - Perdido Street

Station (2001), The Scar (2002) and Iron Council (2004). It is a world marked by

multiple species, technologies, religions, political systems, and realities. The Scar’s plot is not without several thematic twists and bends. The novel begins with an italicized section, written in the voice of an unnamed narrator who describes a literal undercurrent

of the novel: the sea and its creatures. This narrator presents the sea as a separate world,

alien to the novel’s characters, yet also marked as a place of difference because many of

the creatures of the sea hail from realities about which the rest of the novel’s characters

are for the most part ignorant. The characters perceive their journey as pushing the limits

of the reality and although they speculate on the origins of the creatures they hunt and

that hunt them, they are aware that these creatures do not share their physical, psychological and philosophical concerns.

The Scar’s first chapter begins with a description of the outskirts of New

Crobuzon, a major port city in Bas-Lag that is “insatiable” (7) in its consumption. At the

novel’s outset, the character Bellis Coldwine, whose point of view dictates much of the

novel, uses her skills as a linguist to secure passage to Nova Esperium to escape the

totalitarian government of New Crobuzon. Her ship, the Terpsichoria, primarily

transports “remade” prisoners, cybernetically and biologically reengineered convicts who have been sentenced to hard labor in Nova Esperium. The ship veers from its route to investigate reports of a missing rig, and the ship’s captain attempts to negotiate with the

cray, an underwater people from whom New Crobuzon leases the rights to drill the ocean

floor. Bellis acts as the translator for this exchange, which ends with the commandeering

of her ship by an apparent agent of the New Crobuzon government. The ship is then captured by pirates from Armada, a city of ships that moves throughout the sea.

It is later revealed to Bellis that both her ship and the stolen rig have been

captured as part of the Armadan leaders’ complex scheme to capture an avanc, a creature

from another dimension, large enough to tow Armada, giving it greater mobility (and

greater power) than it has ever had. The passengers and prisoners of the Terpsichoria are

press-ganged into Armada. Bellis’ linguistic skill becomes essential to the capture of the

avanc because she alone can interpret for the pirates the Anophelii (mosquito-people) text

they need to translate in order to develop the technology to lure the avanc. The Armadan

pirates travel to the Anophelii Island to gather information. Bellis goes ashore as part of

the landing party, and while there is able to send a message from Silas Fennec, an undiscovered New Crobuzon agent, back to New Crobuzon. The message from Fennec

is delivered by Tanner Sack, a remade prisoner press-ganged into service to Armada.

The landing party succeeds in bringing the Krüach Aum, the mosquito-like Anophelius

scientist, back to Armada. The team assembled is able to raise and harness the avanc,

and because the Garwater riding (a borough of Armada) controls the stolen rig that

“feeds” the avanc, it becomes the most powerful in Armada. It soon becomes clear that the Lovers, Garwater’s leaders, have other goals in mind beyond Armada’s newfound mobility.

As the Lovers’ agenda is revealed, Armada enters a period of civil unrest. It is attacked by the New Crobuzoner navy as a result of the message Bellis has helped to

smuggle. Although Armada is able to repel the attack, the population of the pirate city

begins to question their leaders and goals. Harnessed to the avanc, the city moves into

new oceans towards “the Scar,” a rift in the world that leaks possibilities. As the Lovers’

intention to take the city to the Scar becomes clear, several pirates leave Armada,

unwilling to be literally and figuratively dragged along according to the Lovers’ whims.

Bellis, Tanner Sack and Silas Fennec are discovered as co-conspirators in New

Crobuzon’s attack on Armada; Bellis and Tanner are flogged and Silas Fennec, the New

Crobuzon agent, is imprisoned. Fennec is eventually taken by the grindylow, an

underwater (and perhaps multidimensional) species, because he has stolen from them and

mapped their secrets. The grindylow have bizarre technologies and their motivations are

unclear. Fennec’s capture by the grindylow coincides with a failed mutiny led by the

Brucolac, a vampire who leads one of Armada’s ridings. During the journey to the Scar,

the Armadans encounters Hedrigall, a former confidante of the Garwater leaders who had

previously left Armada in protest of the leaders’ plans. Hedrigall tells the Armadans that

he has seen them all die in the possibilities that leak from the Scar, the Lovers attempt to

silence him. Tanner Sack, aided by Bellis - who has been given information by the

Lovers’ guard, Uther Doul, a scholar of the history and technology surrounding the Scar -

demands to hear Hedrigall’s story, and as a result the Lovers cede their power. The

journey to the Scar is ended, and Bellis Coldwine is sent home to New Crobuzon.

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