Iain Sinclair's textual Obscenery

Abstract

This consideration of Iain Sinclair’s work begins at the summit of Beckton Alp, a pile of waste in London’s east which has been reconstituted as recreational space. The Alp is a topographical curiosity, and its unconventional history has prompted serial visits in Sinclair’s fiction and non-fiction. Importantly, it also functions for Sinclair as a totem signifying the pervasive regulatory influence of Panopticism in contemporary urban culture