From Object-Oriented Ontology to a Weird Democracy of Genres: An Analysis of China Miéville’s Style

This paper aims to bridge the gap between the philosophy of Speculative Realism (SR) and speculative fiction with the help of the oeuvre of China Miéville, a contemporary British fantasy and science fiction author. In view of that, the theoretical emphasis of this article is placed on Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as the most significant subset of SR. Accordingly, on the ideas of thinkers like Graham Harman and Levi Bryant is elaborated in order to provide an analysis of Miéville’s style as well as the inclination of his works towards critical thinking. In this regard, Miéville’s tendency for writing cross-generic novels with hybrid creatures, his association with the New Weird movement, his stress on uncanny urban settings etc. are related to OOO and SR. Moreover, it is given details on the ways by which the author juxtaposes the modernist epistemological with the postmodernist ontological without falling into the trap of the epistemic and hegemonic fallacies.

Keywords:

China Miéville , Speculative Realism (SR) , Object-Oriented Ontology(OOO) , Weird Realism , The New Weird , Flat Ontology .