Re-vision of London in Iain Sinclair’s White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore how Iain Sinclair’s White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) re-maps London as a literary and textual space, in which the boundaries between the past and the present, history and fiction, are removed to reveal the city’s esoteric essence and allow the writer to create his own subversive mythology of contemporary urban experience. Sinclair’s ideas can be considered close to Walter Benjamin’s notion of “alternative historiography”, proclaiming greater attention to ‘other’, subjective histories. The writer argues that these histories pervade the topography of the city as well as its literature and can be revealed through a technique parallel to André Breton’s surrealist automatism. A writer of London, both inspired by the city and making it the ultimate subject matter of his work, Sinclair develops a concept of “geology of time”, depicting contemporary London as a spiritual site out of time. The city functions as a textual structure, a palimpsest, which proves simultaneously a fluid organic entity, affecting its inhabitants. This notion can be linked with the concept of psychogeography, preoccupied with the effects of the geographical environment on the emotions of individuals, and developed by Guy Debord. Ultimately, I will argue that Sinclair’s novel creates a holistic vision of an urban space which, following the cubist tradition, aims to show London simultaneously from a multitude of viewpoints. The city’s topography juxtaposes and unifies the past, the present, history and fiction in a subversive and multilayered narrative—a perfect example of Bakhtinian carnivalesque.