Challenging Urban Realities in Recent London Writing: Iain Sinclair’s Ghost Milk and John Lanchester’s Capital

This article explores the possibilities of contemporary London writing to challenge established spatial orders of the city (and the City) of London. Formally, these range from the realist techniques of the social novel to more experimental forms that use elements of what has been termed ‘psychogeography’ and/or ‘schizocartography’. In a comparative reading, the article examines two examples: John Lanchester’s Capital (2012) and Iain Sinclair’s Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project (2011), paying particular attention to their mix of factual and fictional writing, their modes of urban resistance, and their urban/literary politics. At a time of both global and local crises, the question arises which literary strategies of representation are more promising or effective in capturing and provoking political resistance. Is the conventional semantisation of space in the realist novel more effective than the rambling, subjective semiosis of the psychogeographer, or can we automatically assume that (following a modernist aesthetic) a narrative that challenges the reader’s ordinary habits of perception will also carry greater social or political efficacy? Or is this contrast between realism and experimentalism a distorted view of the actual development of current London writing? Perhaps these texts have more in common than what appears to separate them.