Utopian Spaces and Dystopian Subjects in Ray Loriga’s Urban Fiction

Abstract

This article examines the interplay between socio-spatial environments, social control mechanisms and alienated subjectivities in the urban fiction of Spanish author Ray Loriga. It analyses how the search for an urban utopia intertwines in Loriga’s work with an attention to processes of commodification, consumerism and social control. These represented processes are read, in turn, as driving the dystopian production of dehumanized, objectified individual subjects. Focusing principally on the futuristic cities of Loriga’s 1999 novel Tokio ya no nos quiere, the discussion also draws on relevant elements of two subsequent works – El hombre que inventó Manhattan (2004) and Rendición (2017).