Literature
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times Mitt Romney argues that the only way for the U.S. automotive industry to succeed is to ?let Detroit go Bankrupt.? At one point, Romney quips, ?I love cars, American cars.? This facile claim strikes me as both sympathetically banal as well as a blunt expression of exactly what Karl Marx would have described as the ?fetishism? of commodities: as if cars have their own social life, as if cars care whether or not Mitt Romney ?loves? them. It is noteworthy that Romney does not say that he loves the people who design or build cars; he loves the cars themselves. (This is mindful of John McCain?s remark in the final Presidential debate to the effect of ?Americans are the best workers in the world!? The people known as ?Americans? are, in this schema, recognizable by their labor before their humanity or other characteristics?work takes on a special quality, somehow constitutive in its own right.)
Romney?s declaration of auto-mobile-love also completely ignores a much more critical reality: cars are simply not a sustainable means (neither sociologically nor ecologically) for humans to transport themselves around this planet. Certainly, I understand that humans are very attached to cars in current practices of everyday life?and I also accept that many people do have the capacity to love the cars in which they spend countless hours commuting, running errands, or joy riding. However, we have to become aware of the reality that ?automobility??a term that means both self-directed mobility as well as dependence on external technologies for motion?is a phenomenon that is dated, and likely nearing its end. Cars cut up the world in ways that delimit perspective and cultivate solipsism, even while they seem to promise precisely the opposite. (Nabokov captures this brilliantly in his masterpiece Lolita.) Automobility, or ?the entire gamut of practices that foster car culture,? relies on a host of twentieth-century conditions that are now exhausted and outdated. We need to get over the fetishism of cars and work to rigorously imagine new possibilities for how humans might inhabit and move around the planet. I am not sure what these new possibilities for mobility might be?indeed, they reside in the Derridean realm of a ?future-to-come.? Yet this need not be a utopia; it might simply be a more consciously?and conscientiously?integrated network of transportation routes and rituals. The opening to this future exists. But humans have to be open to this possible future. Loving cars is not an open sentiment, as much as it may be deployed as such.
- College, It's A Mess
I've got a new essay up at 3:AM Magazine, called "Total Satisfaction: The New Irony of Customer Service." The piece came out of the classes I am teaching right now, and a sour experience with AT&T customer service helped focus my angle. It's...
- Nothing Beside Remains
I presented a version of the following essay at the American Comparative Literature Association conference on April 3 2010, on a panel called "Cosmopolitan SciFi: Reevaluating the Urban through Technology & Culture." * * * In Cormac McCarthy?s post-apocalyptic...
- On Myths Of The English Degree & Myths In General
Recently I was asked to give a talk to English majors at Loyola about what they can "do" with an English degree. The poster for the event suggested that I would help to "debunk" English degree myths. I used this as a jumping off point for my talk, which...
- Nature And Artifice
?The machine which at first blush seems a means of isolating man from the great problems of nature, actually plunges him more deeply into them.? ?Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes Last week I saw two films at the Traverse City Film Festival:...
- Technologies R Us
The USA Today reports on The Dumbest Generation and presents a sort of counterargument. The basic concern is whether social networking sites like Facebook are making Generation Y students 'dumb', or whether such practices are simply (and complexly)...
Literature
Mitt Romney and Automobility
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times Mitt Romney argues that the only way for the U.S. automotive industry to succeed is to ?let Detroit go Bankrupt.? At one point, Romney quips, ?I love cars, American cars.? This facile claim strikes me as both sympathetically banal as well as a blunt expression of exactly what Karl Marx would have described as the ?fetishism? of commodities: as if cars have their own social life, as if cars care whether or not Mitt Romney ?loves? them. It is noteworthy that Romney does not say that he loves the people who design or build cars; he loves the cars themselves. (This is mindful of John McCain?s remark in the final Presidential debate to the effect of ?Americans are the best workers in the world!? The people known as ?Americans? are, in this schema, recognizable by their labor before their humanity or other characteristics?work takes on a special quality, somehow constitutive in its own right.)
Romney?s declaration of auto-mobile-love also completely ignores a much more critical reality: cars are simply not a sustainable means (neither sociologically nor ecologically) for humans to transport themselves around this planet. Certainly, I understand that humans are very attached to cars in current practices of everyday life?and I also accept that many people do have the capacity to love the cars in which they spend countless hours commuting, running errands, or joy riding. However, we have to become aware of the reality that ?automobility??a term that means both self-directed mobility as well as dependence on external technologies for motion?is a phenomenon that is dated, and likely nearing its end. Cars cut up the world in ways that delimit perspective and cultivate solipsism, even while they seem to promise precisely the opposite. (Nabokov captures this brilliantly in his masterpiece Lolita.) Automobility, or ?the entire gamut of practices that foster car culture,? relies on a host of twentieth-century conditions that are now exhausted and outdated. We need to get over the fetishism of cars and work to rigorously imagine new possibilities for how humans might inhabit and move around the planet. I am not sure what these new possibilities for mobility might be?indeed, they reside in the Derridean realm of a ?future-to-come.? Yet this need not be a utopia; it might simply be a more consciously?and conscientiously?integrated network of transportation routes and rituals. The opening to this future exists. But humans have to be open to this possible future. Loving cars is not an open sentiment, as much as it may be deployed as such.
- College, It's A Mess
I've got a new essay up at 3:AM Magazine, called "Total Satisfaction: The New Irony of Customer Service." The piece came out of the classes I am teaching right now, and a sour experience with AT&T customer service helped focus my angle. It's...
- Nothing Beside Remains
I presented a version of the following essay at the American Comparative Literature Association conference on April 3 2010, on a panel called "Cosmopolitan SciFi: Reevaluating the Urban through Technology & Culture." * * * In Cormac McCarthy?s post-apocalyptic...
- On Myths Of The English Degree & Myths In General
Recently I was asked to give a talk to English majors at Loyola about what they can "do" with an English degree. The poster for the event suggested that I would help to "debunk" English degree myths. I used this as a jumping off point for my talk, which...
- Nature And Artifice
?The machine which at first blush seems a means of isolating man from the great problems of nature, actually plunges him more deeply into them.? ?Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes Last week I saw two films at the Traverse City Film Festival:...
- Technologies R Us
The USA Today reports on The Dumbest Generation and presents a sort of counterargument. The basic concern is whether social networking sites like Facebook are making Generation Y students 'dumb', or whether such practices are simply (and complexly)...