Abstract
This article discusses some of Irvine Welsh’s novels considering the period of transition from industrial to post-industrial society. We focus on the effects of this shift on fictional characters who originate from the working classes in Edinburgh, as represented in Welsh’s Glue (2001) and the Trainspotting Novels. As such works cover the period from the early 1970’s to the late 2010’s, Welsh evidences the move from the traditional working-class ethos, typified by Union solidarity, to the neoliberal culture of entrepreneurship and its related negative aspects. We propose to discuss how Welsh depicts neoliberal practices either rendering workers redundant for the new circumstances or creating new ways to exploit labour.
Highlights
This article discusses the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society as represented by Irvine Welsh in six of his novels, Glue (2001), Trainspotting (1993), Porno (2002), Skagboys (2012), The Blade Artist (2016) and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018)
As the novelist himself has said in different interviews, his works deal with the notion of transition, mainly effected by neoliberal policies and the advent of globalisation as well as their consequential transformation of industry in the West
Welsh does not romanticise the working class, but shows it in its stark and gritty reality (Morace Welsh’s Trainspotting 2001, 26). His oeuvre is concerned with the transition from an industrialised to a post-industrial Scotland, where there are fewer and fewer opportunities for those of humble origin to ascend or even to earn a decent living
Summary
This article discusses the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society as represented by Irvine Welsh in six of his novels, Glue (2001), Trainspotting (1993), Porno (2002), Skagboys (2012), The Blade Artist (2016) and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018). As the universe of the Trainspotting saga and Glue overlap, some main characters of an axis appear in the other as minor ones We consider it relevant to read and discuss such works comparatively, as we believe they present different aspects of the same phenomenon, i.e. the period of transition the working classes have been going through from the last decades of the 20th Century. We offer a very brief presentation of the author and his fictional works, mainly focusing on the corpus selected for this article. Following, we approach such corpus, so we can discuss the points risen in this introduction.
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