Tracing the Politics of Urbanism and Abjection: Space and Identity in Trainspotting

Given the fundamental role cities play in the experience of modernity and postmodernity, this article studies the interaction existing between urban space and the individuals who inhabit it in the context of Irvine Welsh’s novel, Trainspotting. A multidisciplinary approach combining theories on the city and queer theory explores the subject/space dialectics by which each of them intervenes in the construction of the other. The analysis of this process centres around three main issues – urbanism, abjection and movement – and their underlying ideology.