论文总字数：70552字

摘 要

英国著名小说家柴纳·米耶维的《帕迪杜街车站》描述了一个不同种族混杂而居，各族文化相互交融的世界。小说采用第一人称和第三人称全知视角相互交织的方法，为我们展现了科学家以萨和他的朋友们携手合作，共同战胜城市的威胁者魔蛾的故事。自发表以来，诸多批评家对小说的体裁归属和其中蕴含的革命思想等角度进行解读。然而，对于小说中的重要主题——杂合性的研究却并不多见。以后殖民理论家霍米·巴巴的杂合性理论为主要依托，本论文对《帕迪杜街车站》中人物、城市叙事和小说体裁这三个方面进行解读。这三个方面较为全面地反映了处在交流与冲突下的文化现状，构建出了霍米·巴巴用以描述文化相互协商渗透的第三空间。

本论文包括三章：第一章关注小说中的三个主要人物：甲虫人林恩，鸟人以萨，以及织蛛。通过对这三个人物杂合性探究，阐释个体身上所具有的杂合性。第二章对小说城市生活叙事的杂合性进行分析，分别从城市的地理空间和文化空间出发，分析整个城市所体现的杂合性。第三章则对小说的体裁进行分析，探究融合了科幻小说和奇幻小说元素的小说本身所具有的杂合性。

关键词：柴纳·米耶维；《帕迪杜街车站》；霍米·巴巴；杂合性

Contents

Acknowledgements i

English Abstract ii

Chinese Abstract iii

Table of Contents iii

Introduction 1

Chapter One Hybridity of the Characters of the Novel 7

1.1 Lin: Hybridity in Physiology 7

1.2 Yagharek: Hyrbridity in Psychology 10

1.3 Weaver: Hybridity in a Symbolic Sense 15

Chapter Two Hybridity of the Narratives of Urban Life 17

2.1 Geographical Urban Space 17

2.2 Cultural Urban Space 19

Chapter Three Hybridity of the Genre of the Novel 23

3.1 Elements of Fantasy Fiction 23

3.2 Influence of Science Fiction 25

3.3 New Weird – A Hybrid Genre 27

Conclusion 29

Works Cited 31

Introduction

1. Background of the Study

Since the publication of Perdido Street Station in 2000, it has been a wonderful stimulus to the ongoing conversation of science fiction. Unlike feudal fantasies in the traditional Tolkien style, this novel has an insistently urban, industrial setting in which the capitalist mode of production, corrupt political institutions, and technology exist in tandem with the exploitation of magic. Perdido Street Station consolidates China Miéville’s reputation as an author of highly imaginative, politically committed, and formally experimental fantasy. The hybrid nature of this novel is also worth noting especially against the background of globalization, which inevitably brings higher mobility to diasporas and ethnic minorities. In the process of migration, cultural shock is unavoidable. The immigrants have to adapt to the new place and the new culture. Meanwhile, the natives are also forced to deal with different cultures brought by outsiders. Besides, with the rapid development of technology, most of us are more easily exposed to the culture of different countries and can seldom maintain cultural purity. “Hybridity is such an evident feature of contemporary globalization.”^[1] Sharing the trait of hybridity, Perdido Street Station may provide us with a unique reference and perspective when we ponder on the present condition of world culture.

1. China Miéville and Perdido Street Station

China Miéville, who was born in 1972, is an English fiction writer and political activist. As a writer, he is original and prolific and has achieved tremendous success, producing numerous works in a short time. Among his works, the most impressive one is the Bas-Lag trilogy, including Perdido Street Station (2000), The Scar (2002), and Iron Council (2004). Miéville’s work is a synthesis of science fiction, magic, fantasy and leftist politics. As Sherryl Vint once commented in Introduction: Special Issue on China Miéville, “if nothing else is clear, it is certain that Miéville is a writer who refuses to stand still and who promises to continue to intermingle different ingredients together. The political and moral themes are combined with adventures and monsters.” ^[2]. China Miéville’s great imagination stems from his personal experience. Growing up in London, he has been influenced by the hybridity of this metropolis unconsciously. At the age of eighteen, he taught English for one year in Egypt, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle East politics. This experience impels him to continue his study in cultural anthropology at Clare College, Cambridge for a bachelor’s degree. In 2001, he gained a doctor’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. Such profound academic ground ensures his successful characterization. What’s more, he is active in left-wing politics in the UK and that’s why his readers can usually see politics in his writing.

The story of Perdido Street Station takes place in the city state New Crobuzon. Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is a scientist who searches for a mechanism to help a crippled bird-man Yagharek to fly. His lover, Lin, an artist with human body and the head of a scarab beetle, is in thrall to a monstrous crime lord, Mr. Motley. At the same time, the whole city is under the threat of the hideous slake-moths that suck the sentience of any creatures who have mind. In the process of killing the slake-moths, Isaac and his friends find out that they not only pit themselves against the moths, but also the corrupt and brutal government. Finally, on the roof of the Perdido Street Station, the slake-moths are destroyed.

1. Literature Review on Perdido Street Station

China Miéville has attracted the world’s attention because of his great imagination and his contribution to the birth of the genre “New Weird”. When the famous science fiction writer Tricia Sullivan was asked to make a comment on this book, she said that “China Miéville is a bona-fide wizard, a powerful hybrid strain of magician, scientist and poet… It doesn’t come any better than this.” ^[3]

At present, critics usually focus on three aspects of Perdido Street Station. First, the genre of Peridido Street Station is rendered a great importance. In “Periodizing the Postmodern: China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and the Dynamics of Radical Fantasy” (2009), the author considers Perdido Street Station as a radical fantasy and claims that such genre signals the definitive emergence of a new historical stage of cultural production which he terms as late postmodernism. In “The Labyrinthine City: Bleak house’s influence on Perdido Street Station” (2012), Hadas Elber-Aviram focuses on Charles Dicken’s influence upon contemporary fantasies, and further illustrates his effect on China Miéville’s novel by analyzing the similarities between Bleak House and Perdido Street Station. “The Motley amp;The Motley: Conflicting and Conflicted Models of Generic Hybridity in Bas-Lag” (2010) also puts Perdido Street Station into the category of speculative fiction. The second focus is about the revolutionary ideas embodied in Perdido Street Station, which might be attributed to China Miéville’s political identity. When it comes to this issue, critics always take the Bas-Lag trilogy as the object of research. Sandy Rankin believes that the Bas-Lag world is actually a utopia by analyzing the image of the Weaver in his paper “The Weaver as Immanent Utopian Impulse in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and Iron Council” (2009). Christopher Kendrick discusses the problem of race and class in his “Socialism and Fantasy –China Miéville’s Fables of Race and Class” (2016). Christopher Palmer also explores the exciting dimension of political hope and even salvation in the Bas-Lag world in “Saving the City in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Novels” (2009). Other critics focus on the characters in this novel. In “Urban Retro-Futuristic Masculinities in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station” (2012), the author limits himself to a binocular examination of masculinities by analyzing the image of Isaac and Yagharek. In China, it seems that few scholars have studied this novel. Only Professor Li Xinyun in Shandong University once introduced China Miéville in “English Fantasy Writer-China Miéville and His Literary Creation” (2011).

1. Literature Review on Hybridity

Hybridity is a conception which can be decoded in many aspects. In Latin, the hybrid is the offspring of a female domestic sow and a male wild boar. This indicates that biologically speaking, hybrid refers to the offspring of any two unlike animals or plants. Gradually, the semantic meaning of the word “hybrid” has been borrowed and spread to many other fields by theorists like Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Lain Chambers, and etc. For example, Gilroy finds it helpful in the field of cultural production, where he notes that “the musical components of hip-hop are a hybrid form nurtured by the social relations of South Bronx where Jamaican sound system culture was transplanted during the 1970s”.^[4] Hall, as we will see in more details, suggests that “hybridity is transforming British life”.^[5] Among all the definitions given to hybridity, that proposed by Homi K. Bhabha, one of the most important figures in contemporary post-colonial studies, deserves our attention. Bhabha has developed his concept of hybridity from literary and cultural theory to describe the construction of culture and identity with conditions of colonial antagonism and inequity. “For Bhabha, hybridity is the process by which the colonial governing authority undertakes to translate the identity of the colonized (the Other) within a singular universal framework, but then fails producing something familiar but new”.^[6] In post-colonial discourse, the notion that any culture of identity is pure or essential is disputable. Bhabha contends that the new hybrid identity or subject-position emerges from the interweaving of elements of the colonizers and the colonized, challenging the validity and authenticity of any essentialist cultural identity. Bhabha himself is aware of the dangers of fixity and fetishism of identities, arguing that “all forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity”.^[7] Even the oppressed culture is not mute, but participates in the formation of a new culture which does not purely belong to either the colonizers or the colonized with the site of conflicts turning up as the “third space”. The third space is a space which is built on the basis of hybridity. It’s where the cutting edge of translation and negotiation occurs, where new possibilities are engendered, and where there are hybridities. According to Bhabha, the hybrid third space is an ambivalent site where cultural meaning and representation have no “primordial unity or fixity”.^[8] Many scholars have launched their researches under the influence of Homi Bhabha. Ankie Hoogvelt in his “Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The new Political Economy of Development”, illustrates that “hybridity occupies a central place in the postcolonial discourse. It is celebrated and privileged as a kind of superior cultural intelligence owing to the advantage of in-betweenness, the straddling of two cultures and the consequent ability to negotiate the difference”.^[9] Considering that the world of Bas-Lag is full of different cultures of varying identities, Homi Bhabha’s theory on hybridity can be properly applied to the analysis of the novel.

Another scholar who deserves attention is Brian Stross. In “The Hybrid Metaphor, From Biology to Culture” (1999), Brian elucidates the connections between biological hybridity and cultural hybridity. Although many scholars used hybrid in the cultural domain, few of them explored why the biological conception can be applied to the field of culture. As Brian Stross claims, “the difference between the biological hybrid and the cultural hybrid is perhaps not as great as one might first think”,^[10] there exists an analogical relation between the biological hybrid and the cultural hybrid. What’s more, Brian also proposed two new conceptions relating to hybridity. The first one is “hybrid vigor.” Hybrid vigor means the increased vigor or the stronger ability to adapt to the environment. The hybrid vigor in the cultural domain is exposed to more possibilities and betrays more vitality because there is no limit on the number of parents while the biological hybrid can only has two parents. The second one is “cycle of hybridity”: a cycle that goes from “hybrid” form to “pure” form, and then to “hybrid” form once again.^[11] Biological hybrids will finally become the purebred when the number of this hybrid is large enough and the innate homogeneity is sufficient for the creature to be parent of new hybrids. Such process is the cycle of hybrid production.

Currently, the semantic meaning of hybrid is widened. “Hybridity has come to mean all sorts of things to do with mixing and combination in the moment of cultural exchange”.^[12] Whether of psychological meaning or of cultural meaning, hybridity can both be clearly identified in Perdido Street Station.

1. Thesis Structure

This thesis will be divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, the Khepri Lin’s hybridity in physiology, the garuda Yagharek’s hybridity in psychology, and the Weaver’s hybridity in the symbolic realm will be analyzed. Chapter Two will focus on the hybridity of the narratives of the city state from the perspective of geography and culture. The geographical hybridity catalyzes the cultural hybridity. The third chapter will discuss the hybridity of the novel’s genre. Absorbing elements of science fiction and fantasy fiction and adding China Miéville’s own thoughts, a new genre called New Weird is generated.

Chapter One Hybridity of the Characters of the Novel

Characterization is the soul of the novel. Three characters in Perdido Street Station caught readers’ attention for their palpable hybrid peculiarity. They are Lin, Yagharek and the Weaver. Lin, though a Khepri, has lived in New Crobuzon since her childhood. Yagharek is a new immigrant to New Crobuzon due to the crime he committed in his hometown Cymek. The Weaver has a godlike image. He lives in more than one dimension and the world is the production of his worldweave. Strictly speaking, the Weaver is beyond this world. These characters will show us how disparate individuals experience the transition and embrace hybridity in this novel.

• 1. Lin: Hybridity in Physiology

Lin is the heroine in Perdido Street Station, the lover of the scientist Isaac. As the second important character in this novel, her image is vivid and well-rounded. The hybridity of her chiefly rests with her physiological feature, including the body structure, ways of expression, and sexual behavior. Besides, the phenomenon of hybrid cycle is also obvious in the character of Lin.

Lin’s Body Structure

As the heroine in this novel, Lin, to our surprise, is a scarab-woman instead of a human being. From the definition of “scarab-woman,” it’s not incomprehensible at all that Lin is not a “pure” creature: part of her body is human’s and part of her body shows the trait of insects. Her head is still a beetle’s one, on which we can see a pair of compound eyes, headlegs, outward jaw, inner mouthparts and other organs which belong to the khepri. The insectile underbelly replaces the neck, connecting Lin’s human body and beetle head. Strictly speaking, Lin’s body is not precisely the same as that of humans, although she also cooks with hands and walks on her legs. Lin is hairless. Under her red skin, each tight muscle can be seen distinctly. Besides, the parasite called refflick that Lin carries can be found only among khepris. Obviously, Lin is the hybrid of insects and human from the viewpoint of biology.

Lin’s Way of Expression

As a hybrid, the way that Lin expresses herself is also a mixed one. First, some expressive patterns of the khepri are reserved. “The Spittle-store owner knew her, and they politely, perfunctorily, brushed antennae” (Miéville 26). When Lin comes to buy colorful berries, she uses the antennae to exchange greetings. “Lin spoke, clicking and waving her headlegs, secreting tiny mists of scent… She included a spray of admiration for the high quality of the storekeeper’s goods.” This description shows features of some khepri’s actions. Waving the headlegs means they are involved in the communication, which is similar to human’s opening their mouths. Scent they secrete helps them differentiate things—Lin communicates her desire for carletberries and cyanberries by secreting different scents. Spraying chemical substances is a way to show their attitude—here Lin expresses her compliment and different chemicals that represent different feelings. “She shakes with frustration, rocks her head, releases a cloud of spray that Isaac says are khepri tears” (Miéville 828). Though indirectly, this depiction reveals that the spray is khepri’s tear and it’s how the khepri behaves when he or she is in great sorrow. Lin is born as a khepri and it’s her instinct to use khepri’s organs to communicate. However, Lin isn’t limited to this way of communication. Being dissatisfied with the reality, Lin teaches herself a second way of communication—signing. After Lin realizes that the Kinlen is more dishonest than Creekside and she decides to turn her back on Kinken as she did to Insect Aspect, she teaches herself signing and leaves. In this period, a new expressive mode appears. Learning signing, she can communicate with other races such as humans more easily. Isaac, who is her partner, also communicates with her through signing. “It was a relief to be able to speak without writing every word: Derkhan read signing well” (Miéville 95). This internal feeling of Lin reveals two points: for one thing, it obviously indicates the importance of signing and the convenience brought by it; for another, writing is another way of expression for Lin, which can be also seen when Lin writes to the petty dealer to buy the food. Part of her expression is the heritage of being a khepri and part of her communication methods is the prerequisite to become a human.

Lin’s Sexual Behavior

Lin’s behavioral pattern can also reveal her characteristic of being a hybrid, especially her sexual behavior. When she is in Creekside, under the control of her mother, she only experiences headsex. Her mother asserts that it’s the female khepris’ responsibility to allow mindless male scarabs, who look like the females’ head bodies, to crawl and mount on their heads. Growing up in such environment, Lin never thinks about how her human body can be involved in sex, and she considers conversation between lovers wasteful, pointless, and meaningless because there is no exquisite exchange of emotion equivalent to that of human beings among khepris. However, with the help of one of her friends, Lin is introduced to pleasure sex. The friend tells her how to delight in the sensuous body below her neck, in other words, how to enjoy the sex as a human being. Although going through much inner struggle – “to engage in activities with no purpose at all except to revel in their sheer physicality had first nauseated, then terrified, and finally liberated her” (Miéville 262), Lin eventually accept this sexual mode. After meeting Isaac, Lin also tries to learn to enjoy the aura of shyness of young human lovers and she rather likes it. Naturally, the sexual event between Isaac and Lin happens, in which Lin enjoys both as a beetle and a human being.

The two halves of her headshell quivered slightly, held as wide as they would go. From beneath their shade she spread her beautiful, useless little beetle wings. She pulled his hand towards them gently, invited him to stroke the fragile things, totally vulnerable, an expression if trust and love unparalleled for the khepri. (Miéville 17)

She asks Isaac to touch her little beetle wings, which shows her trust and love. Lin’s beetle head and human body, eventually participate in the sexual behavior together, making the sexual behavior a hybrid one.

Hybrid Cycle

The hybrid cycle, which is proposed by Brian Stross, can also been seen in the character of Lin. Being a member of the khepri, Lin is a creature with a beetle’s head and human’s body. This is a hybrid form in common people’s eyes. However, as time goes by, in New Crobuzon, the number of the khepri is so large that they are no longer considered as a hybrid creature. Instead, they are considered as a pure creature by the civilians of New Crobuzon. When Lin is together with Isaac, their cross-species love reminds people of Lin’s original hybrid identity. Lin is not a pure human and her love with Isaac often becomes the topic on the table. Here, Lin turns out to be a hybrid again. Such different attitudes of the civilians actually form a hybrid cycle. Besides, in Isaac’s eyes, Lin always experiences the hybrid cycle. Lin is transformed by Isaac’s loving perception into someone not only grotesque, but also beautiful. Isaac finds her difference from him both repellent and attractive: “As he watched her, Isaac felt the familiar trill of emotion: disgust immediately stamped out, pride at the stamping out, guilty desire” (Miéville 13). The reader undergoes a similar range of emotions in the description Miéville offers. Firstly, Lin’s strangeness as a new thing is emphasized: “Her headlegs quivered. She picked up half a tomato and gripped it in her mandibles. She lowered her hands while her inner mouthparts picked at the food her outer jaw held steady” (10). Lin has her meal in khepri’s way, making Isaac feel disgust. Then, Miéville describes the naming of the hybrid: “Isaac was watched the hug iridescent scarab that was his lover’s head devour her breakfast” (10). Isaac confirms that Lin is his lover and pride stamps out. Finally, Isaac shows his acceptance by express his desire: “He traced the branching veins in her gently vibrating wings with his fingers, watched the light that passed through them refract into mother-of-pearl shadows” (14). In Isaac’s “trill of emotion” and in the readers’ parallel experience, we see an echo of the first two stages of hybridity cycle, from hybridity to “purity”. In each meeting of the lovers, in each scene as the reader calls up the image of a woman’s body surmounted by the head of a giant beetle, including all the little legs and mandibles, the cycle begins again.

1.2 Yagharek: Hybridity in Psychology

Yagharak is a bird man. He was deprived of his wings as a punishment for stealing others’ right of choice. He came to New Crobuzon and found Isaac, hoping that Isaac would help him return to sky again. As a garuda from a faraway and mysterious city—Cymek, Yagharek experiences a series of changes psychologically, which pertinently explains how Homi Bhabha defines the hybridity when the colonizer and the colonized meet with each other. To Yagharek, New Crobuzon is a new place and he himself is like a migrant. In this new place, Yagharek finds a balance point between himself and human beings in respect of his inner world and external assimilation into this society.

Yagharek’s Identity

In terms of Yagharek’s identity, he is at first a pure garuda but finally part of him is branded with humanness. How he accepts his human part can be reflected by his changing attitude to wings, which are the symbol of his identity. Being maimed and stripped of his wings, he comes to Isaac for help. He wants Isaac to let him regain the ability to fly because flying is what makes him garuda. This is how he looks like when he first appears before Isaac:

Strapped across his back was an intricate frame and wooden struts and leather straps that bobbed idiotically behind him as he turned. Two great carved planks sprouted from a kind of leather jerkin below his shoulders, jutting way above his head, where they hinged and dangled down to his knees. They mimicked wingbones. (Miéville 58)

Yagharek makes himself a pair of counterfeit wings. They are just a trick and a prop over which Yagharek’s incongruous cloak drapes, to make others believe that he has wings. When Yagharek has to show Isaac his disguised wings, shame and defiance appear on his face. He cannot accept the fact that he loses his wings and refuses to face the reality. At that point, Yagharek feels humiliated because he is not a pure “garuda” any more.

Then, “his feet were wrapped in rags and his head was hidden in a hood. He had discarded he wooden wings. He was not disguised as whole, but as a human…”(Miéville 452). Here, the word “whole” means garuda. Apart from this camouflage, he later pretends to be an old man to beg for food from a butcher. After all, it is much easier to hide as a human than as a wounded garuda. This conduct of camouflage can be considered as mimicry – a situation where a group of organisms, the mimics, have evolved to share commonly-perceived characteristics with another group, the models, revealing that Yaharek is experiencing a turning point internally – disguising as a human being is no more an unacceptable thing. He has made a compromise to his inner world, although maybe he is not aware of it. “Yagharek had adapted to his body without the weight of wings. His hollow bones and tight muscles moved efficiently” (Miéville 521). Until then, Yagharek becomes accustomed to his body without wings and begins to appreciate his human-like body –he can move efficiently without the weight of his wings. The acceptance is obvious when Isaac and his partners are on their way to the Glasshouse to kill the slake-moths. They have to put out a flame and Yagherak helps to smother the flame by his cloak, which is a protective umbrella for his wound and for his dignity as a garuda: “his beaked and feathered head uncovered, the enormous emptiness behind his back shriekingly visible, his scars and stubs covered with a thin shirt” (Miéville 658).

This is the first time he shows his wound before so many people, and it’s also the first time that Yagharek face the fact that he is not a pure garuda on the square. Finally, at the end of the novel, he fully accepts his human part by changing his appearance.

I have torn the misleading quills from my skin and made it smooth, and below that avian affection, I am the same as my citizen fellows… I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man. (Miéville 867)

Not pursuing the reconstruction of his wings any more and plucking out all the feathers from his skin, Yagharek gives up being a pure garuda and eventually accepts his human part.

It’s also worth mentioning that although part of Yagharek is marked with humanness, the garuda’s identity is still indelible to him. The strongest evidence is how he introduces himself: “I am Too Too Abstract Yagharek Not To Be Respected” (Miéville 60). In garuda’s world, they use concrete and abstract, respect and disrespect to classify themselves. Every time Yagharek introduces himself, he will add the modifier “too too abstract” and that’s how he will always be. That’s his identity as a garuda and he never forgets it. Besides, his persistence in the definition of his crime also shows his garuda part. “Rape” is what Isaac uses to define Yagharek’s crime, based on human culture, but in Yagharek’s eyes, “This language cannot express my crime… In my tongue, they said, they were right… I was guilty of choice-left… choice-left in the second degree… with utter disrespect” (Miéville 62). He never employs the word “rape” and this is also a manifestation of his insistence on his garuda identity. All in all, Yagharek finally lives in New Crobuzon as a hybrid of garuda and human in identity.

Yagharek’s Sociality

Apart from his self-cognition, hybridity also appears in the aspect of sociality. Yagharek is a foreigner to the people living in New Crobuzon, including Isaac. What he wants is only the possibility to fly again. Objectively, he has nothing to do with the crisis caused by slake-moths in New Crobuzon. However, during the battle against the slake-moths, he experiences an alteration of his attitude towards his relationship with others. “I have sat with the wind at my side and seen cruel things, wicked things” (Miéville 73). This is how Yagharek feels when he first comes to New Crobuzon. He knows no one in this city and the only company that he admits is the wind. Things are cruel in this city, but he doesn’t want to get involved in them. He is an indifferent onlooker. After meeting Isaac, his connection with New Crobuzon is reinforced. However, he still tries to avoid the contact with this society as much as possible. He does not take Isaac’s kindly advice when Isaac asks him to stay in the ware-house. He would not even accept food. Things change for the first time when their mutual enemy appears. Yagharek begins to rethink whether he should continue his rejection:

The splendid isolation I have sought has crumbled. I need Gremnebulin, Gremnebulin needs his friend, his friends needs succor from us all. It is simple mathematics to cancel common terms and discover that I need succor, too. I must offer it to others, to save myself. (Miéville 373)

What finally confirms his decision to help Isaac is the occurrence of the Weaver. As Brian Stross introduces, “the extension from Biological to the cultural of the notion of hybrid appears to be both useful and justified with respect to having upper and lower boundaries.”^[13] Yagharek has changed his attitude because they are not beyond the boundary – the Weaver is the tie between them. The Weaver exists in the legend both of Cymek and New Crobuzon, and thus plays as medium between these two different cultures. In Cymek, people call it furiach-yajh-hett: the dancing mad god. Yagharek is saved by the Weaver with Isaac and his friends when they are about to arrested by the soldiers. “The dancing mad gathered us to it – we renegades, we criminals. We refugees… The dancing mad god collect us all like errant worshipers, chiding us for going astray” (Miéville 487). The words “errant” and ”going astray” chosen by Yagharek reveals that he realizes the way he used to adopt is wrong to some degree. Being taken away by the Weaver makes him believe that he should stand on Isaac’s side. The Weaver, in fact, is a spiritual leader who encourages Yagharek to reconsider his relationship with others. Therefore, after the Weaver leaves them in the sewer, Yagharek leaves together with Lemuel to see if they can find some companions. That astonishes Isaac for this action implies that Yagharek is in. After Yagharek takes a firm stance, he offers his help more actively. He looks into the environment of the glassroom; he saves Lin’s life from the mouth of the slake-moth; he helps Isaac to race against time at the critical moment when the soldiers attack them. Yagharek is now a member of them, fighting against the vicious power shoulder to shoulder with Isaac. That’s a critical change in his sociality: he learns cooperation and reaps friendship from human society.

In the process of adapting to New Crobuzon, garuda’s behavioral style can still be found in his actions. Ceymek is a society where individualism is highly appreciated and such ideology exerts an imperceptible influence on Yagharek. He rarely confides his thoughts to others and even Isaac can’t figure out his ideas. Every character’s mood fluctuations can be found through their conversation with others except Yagharek. The readers can only pry into Yagharek’s thoughts from his monologue. In Isaac eyes, “the crippled garuda was so quiet, so passive” (Miéville 562) and in Dekhan’s eyes, “he’s such a…an empty presence most of the time…most of the time he’s a man-shaped absence” (Miéville 599). Although knowing Yagharek is on their side, they don’t understand him. Even at the end of the novel, Yagharek still haven’t told Isaac why he is punished. What’s more, Yagharek seldom tells others his whereabouts, which might be a production of garudas’ tradition of migration. When Isaac asks him for address, he answers that “I will come to you” (Miéville 62). Keeping moving is an important part of his life.

Yagharek realizes that he is undergoing some alterations, “I am changing. There is something within me which was not there before, or perhaps it is that something has gone… I am changing, and I do not know what I will be” (Miéville 613). As for his sociality, he has already turned into a hybrid, being a garuda while learning the rules from human society.

1.3 The Weaver: Hybridity in a Symbolic Sense

The theory Hybridity takes roots in Derrida’s deconstructionism and Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Lacan believes that the shape of oneself relies on the existence of the “other,” further challenging the opinion that the power is totally grasped in the hands of the colonizer. Derrida’s deconstructionism stresses that the word’s meaning is flexible and cannot be fixed. Besides, the identity won’t be completely fixed. Based on these theories, Bhabha reckons that it’s possible for the colonized to rewrite and hybridize the colonizer’s culture, which indicates the subversion of the colonial. The Weaver, in Perdido Street Station, also bears the trait of flexibility, deconstruction and subversion. As to the origin of the Weaver, no one have a definitive answer. According to the Evolutionist Kapnellior, “the Weavers were a species of conventional spider that had been subjected by some Torquic or thaumaturgic fluke – thirty, forty thousand years ago” (Miéville 406). From Isaac’s explanation, we know that the Torque is a rogue power; Torque is not about physics. It’s not about anything – it’s an entirely pathological force and we don’t know where it comes from, why it appears, and where it goes. Born in the mysterious Torque, the Weaver’s identity is hard to define. Besides, the Weaver is not limited to the space: “It bulked suddenly where had been nothing. It stepped out from behind some fold in space” (Miéville 401). This is how the Weaver shows up. Instead of being trapped in a certain space, he can always step from one space to another. All this contributes to the Weaver’s flexibility. The trait of deconstruction is mainly reflected in his way of speaking. The Weaver’s words are incomprehensible: “… FLESHSCAPE INTO THE FOLDING TINTO THE FLESHSCAPE TO SPEAK A GREETING IN THIS THE SCISSORED REALM I WILL RECEIVE AND BE RECEIVED” (Miéville 401). This is the way the Weaver speaks, chaotic. The Weaver is utterly alien. Speaking to him is like speaking to the sleeping or the mad, and the conversation between it and others is difficult and exhausting. Deconstructivism attempts to move away the rules, trying to reverse the order of the words and reconstruct the relationship between different vocabularies, resulting in a new meaning. The Weaver’s disordered language precisely matches what deconstructionism stresses. Subversion is the most important characteristic of the Weaver. Almost everyone is under the government’s surveillance because the militia’s hub, which is a symbol of the government, being built tall to take a panorama of this city and to reinforce the government’s network of informers and plain-clothed officers, making New Crobuzon a panopticon. However, to the government, the Weaver’s trace is unpredictable. The only way the government can find him is to offer the scissors, which in the Weaver’s eyes can help improve the worldweave. He lives in his own world and does things as he likes. He is out of the panopticon of New Crobuzon. What’s more, the Weaver has no sue for economic compromise, bribes or financial deals. In fact, the Weaver represents a world without economic injustice, a world in which individual and collective cognition and emotion no longer divide from one another, a world in which individuals flourish because everyone flourishes. The ideology that the Weaver represents is antagonistic to that of the government, which endows the Weaver with a symbolic sense of subversion. Being undefined, flexible, deconstructive, and subversive, the Weaver becomes a symbol of hybridity.

Chapter Two Hybridity of the Narratives of Urban Life

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