| dc.description.abstract | The intent of this master’s thesis is to explore the validity of the assertion that the novel The City & The City by China Miéville contains covert forms of brainwashing, which is also known as stealthy brainwashing. With the presupposition that comparing the depiction of brainwashing tactics in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to brainwashing tactics in The City & The City, this thesis aims to explore whether there is qualitative difference between the brainwashing techniques in the novels. The three societies in the novels will be analyzed using psychological insights from Robert Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China (1961) and Kathleen Taylor’s elaboration on Lifton’s theories and inclusion of social psychology and neuroscientific theories explored in Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control (2017). The method consists of an analysis of the
societies in the novels with respect to Lifton’s eight psychological themes, which are characteristic of thought reform and totalitarian ideologies, referred to as Lifton’s “eight totalist themes” (Taylor 22-23). Additionally, the thesis employs a broad view of Taylor’s “ICURE-techniques”, an acronym for the
process of brainwashing consisting of forced isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition, and evocation of emotions to determine if the societies can be said to be brainwashed (Taylor xiii). The brainwashing tactics found in the analysis are then discussed in terms of stealth versus force and the likelihood that the
tactics might be perceived as a threat to personal freedom as theorized by Taylor (Taylor 462). The thesis concludes that The City & The City contains covert forms of brainwashing. | |