Periodizing the Postmodern: China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and the Dynamics of Radical Fantasy

Radical Fantasy in its content depicts subaltern constituencies organizing on the basis of class (rather than what Ernst Laclau and Chantal Mouffe term subject positions) in their militant struggle to overcome epistemological barriers and achieve social change. In its form, Radical Fantasy offers innovative strategies for representing the ever-changing capitalist totality and the emerging presence of posthuman identity. I clarify these elements by theorizing a continuum of historical developments in fantasy over the past century or so, before discussing in detail what is in Radical Fantasy. My argument is premised on the necessity of a historical-materialist methodology in recognizing and interpreting developments in all fantasy: Radical Fantasy signals the definitive emergence of a new historical phase of cultural production which I term late postmodernism.