Urban Structures and Human Psychology: A geocritical study of J.G Ballard’s Highrise and Cocaine Nights

Abstract

In postmodern era, the idea of space, its related concepts and practices such as spatiality, mapping, topography, deterritorialization, and so forth have become a key term for literary and cultural studies. After the end of the Second World War, space began to reassert itself in critical theory which critics have termed as the “spatial turn”. The transformational effects of postmodernism, globalization and other advanced information technologies have helped us to view space from a different angle. Therefore, this dissertation aims to outline a geocentric approach towards the perception of urban space and structures, in addition to exploring the ideas of urban spaces as heterotopic. A geocritical observation of urban spaces has been critically explored through an in-depth analysis of J.G Ballard’s High Rise and Cocaine Nights, where the characters’ view regarding their respective urban spaces as well as structures constantly transformed due to the violence and chaos, they have experienced within the urban structures they resided in. It also changed their psychological state of living in a confined structure. Though critics have read these texts as contrapuntal novels, yet they have not seen it from a geocritical perspective. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to look at these novels from a geocritical viewpoint and present how confined urban structures affect the psychology and moral judgement of modern man.