Post-Leftism: Contesting Neoliberal Consensus in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting

Representations of marginalisation in contemporary fiction often attend to issues of class as one factor in a complex interplay of disenfranchisement underwritten by the powerful forces of race and gender. A renewed focus on current literature as strong refraction of economic concerns harks back to a long tradition of British working-class writing. Re-reading Irvine Welsh's post-Thatcherite novel Trainspotting in the wake of the global financial crisis and the resurgence of anti-capitalist protest, it becomes possible to map a shift in how the former working class articulate a new sense of their economic and political position, one that renounces the outdated tenets of twentieth-century socialism in favour of attempts to exploit neoliberalism itself. This post-leftist position may draw a new starting line for a politics and discourse of poverty in our globalised condition.