‘Some magic is normality’: Fantastical Cosmopolitanism in David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks

Kristian Shaw

doi:10.16995/c21.52

Abstract

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (2014) seemingly echoes the historical struggles of Cloud Atlas (2004) in pitting active ethical agency against cannibalistic rapaciousness. And yet, the trans-universal war between a band of peaceful ‘Horologists’ and predatory ‘soul-decanters’ demonstrates how fantasy fiction offers alternative perspectives not only for socio-cultural models of diversity and difference, but for cosmopolitical power struggles being played out at supranational levels.The Bone Clocks opens up subversive spaces through which to think about threats facing the twenty-first century, from migration and xenophobic nationalism to ecological degradation and planetary destruction. By imagining progressive interrelationships between human and supernatural entities, the novel gestures towards fantasy literature’s unique capacity to extend future discussions of cosmopolitanism in new and innovative directions. While the presence of cosmopolitan theory has received much critical attention in Mitchell’s earlier fiction, this article will suggest that the speculative nature of The Bone Clocks is important in demonstrating the concept’s continuing capacity to serve as a fantastical form of imaginative cultural protestation and social polemic.

Highlights

Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service
The Bone Clocks opens up subversive spaces through which to think about threats facing the twenty-first century, from migration and xenophobic nationalism to ecological degradation and planetary destruction
In a personal conversation with David Mitchell in August 2017, he suggested that the fantastical cosmopolitanism inherent in The Bone Clocks had its roots in his time spent teaching English in Japan

Summary

Kristian Shaw

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (2014) seemingly echoes the historical struggles of Cloud Atlas (2004) in pitting active ethical agency against cannibalistic rapaciousness. While the presence of cosmopolitan theory has received much critical attention in Mitchell’s earlier fiction, this article will suggest that the speculative nature of The Bone Clocks is important in demonstrating the concept’s continuing capacity to serve as a fantastical form of imaginative cultural protestation and social polemic. David Mitchell’s 2014 novel, The Bone Clocks, bridges this divide by charting a cosmic war over the fate of humanity between two groups of atemporal beings– the. Through an examination of atemporal beings and transmigratory processes, the novel suggests how fantasy fiction possesses the unique capacity to imagine new ways of co-existing with radical forms of cultural otherness. This article will engage with the critical reception of Mitchell’s foray into fantasy fiction, before demonstrating how the novel’s cosmopolitan strategies of atemporal collaboration respond directly to the socio-political and environmental concerns of an increasingly volatile globalized environment

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Global Endarkenment