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Bumper Stickers, Driver-Cars and the Spaces of Social Encounter on Contemporary American Superhighways

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Bumper Stickers, Driver-Cars and the Spaces of Social Encounter on Contemporary American Superhighways Interstate Interstitials: Bumper Stickers, Driver-Cars and the Spaces of Social Encounter on Contemporary American Superhighways Walter Goettlich A Thesis in The Department of Sociology and Anthropology Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Sociology) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 2015 © Walter Goettlich, 2015 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Walter Goettlich Entitled: Interstate Interstitials: Bumper Stickers, Driver-Cars and the Spaces of Social Encounter on Contemporary American Superhighways and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: Meir Amor, PhD Chair Katja Neves, PhD Examiner Daniel Dagenais, PhD Examiner Bart Simon, PhD Supervisor Approved by: Greg Nielsen, PhD Chair of Department André Roy, PhD Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences Date: April 15, 2015 Abstract Since the turn of the 21st century, it has been the established aim of mobilities scholars to investigate the ways in which contemporary life is conditioned and carried out through the movements of people, things and ideas. Despite concerns over global climate change on the one hand, and the heyday of peak-oil receding quickly into the rear view mirror on the other, the primary vehicle of mobility in the United States remains the personal automobile. Contemporary American notions of self and identity are frequently interpreted through the individual’s relationship(s) to cars and driving, and while cars themselves are mass-manufactured items, they afford a number of many non-technical practices of customization as modes of individuation. Perhaps most commonplace of these practices is the use of bumper stickers. This thesis is a critical examination of the type of everyday cultural construction and social encounter that may emerge from reading bumper stickers in motion. Such a practice is informed by both the structural and systemic conditions of American superhighway automobility, as well as by the phenomenological effects of isolation and speed on the road these conditions produce. An embodied subject, emerges through participation in the regime of automobility, but the body I have in mind is not, strictly speaking, the unitary, human body. It is, rather, a performed, materially-heterogeneous assemblage: a reader-car, through which unexpected—often asymmetrical and asynchronous, but nonetheless social— spaces of interaction coalesce and extend. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the faculty and staff in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology with whom I’ve had the opportunity, pleasure and good fortune to learn and work beside these last few years. I would specifically like to thank the members of my examining committee, Drs. Katja Neves and Daniel Dagenais for their critical attention to this project. Above all, I owe something significant to my supervisor, Dr. Bart Simon, whose particular style of chilled-out rigorousness (accessible brilliance? wry support?) would defy any attempt to fit it on a bumper sticker. And, of course, to Maya, Henry and Esther: I ♥ You. iv Table of Contents Table of Figures .......................................................................................................................... viii Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 A Roadmap ................................................................................................................................... 4 Main Arguments ....................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter List .............................................................................................................................. 5 1. (Auto-)Mobilities ........................................................................................................................ 8 The Mobilities Turn ..................................................................................................................... 9 Mobilities Literature ............................................................................................................... 10 The Politics of a Global/izing World: Movement, Motility, Mobility ................................... 13 Mobility Potentials ............................................................................................................. 13 Automobilities ............................................................................................................................ 14 Automobile Subjectivities ...................................................................................................... 16 The System of Automobility .............................................................................................. 16 Regimes of Automobility ................................................................................................... 18 Automobility as Governmentality ...................................................................................... 20 The Driver Car ....................................................................................................................... 21 2. The Superhighway Driver-Car: Inhabiting American Interstate Automobility ................ 26 Driving as Method ...................................................................................................................... 28 The Interstate Highway System ................................................................................................. 30 Space & Place ......................................................................................................................... 31 Movement-Space ................................................................................................................ 31 The IHS as Empirical Non-Place? ..................................................................................... 32 The Design & Material Conditions of the IHS .................................................................. 35 The Phenomenology of the Superhighway Driver-Car .............................................................. 40 Inhabitation ............................................................................................................................. 41 Encapsulation ..................................................................................................................... 42 Monotony ............................................................................................................................... 44 Speed & Dromoscopic Visuality ............................................................................................ 46 v 3. Cars & Identity ......................................................................................................................... 51 Stock Cars: Makes & Models ..................................................................................................... 51 Hot-rods, Low Rides & Import Mods ........................................................................................ 55 Superficial Customization .......................................................................................................... 58 Custom Art ............................................................................................................................. 60 Mass Produced / Commodity Inscriptions ............................................................................. 64 Mass-Manufactured Inscription as Marker of Individual / Group Identity ........................ 65 Communicative & Semiotic Dimensions of Prefab Inscriptions ....................................... 70 4. Bumper Stickers (1): A Material-Cultural History .............................................................. 75 The Evolution of Car Inscription in America ............................................................................. 75 Bumper Stickers in the News ..................................................................................................... 81 Bumper Stickers in the Age of Mass Individuality .................................................................... 89 5. Bumper Stickers (2): Classic & Contemporary .................................................................... 92 Classic/Mass-Manufactured Bumper Stickers ........................................................................... 93 Contemporary / Mass-Customized Bumper Stickers ............................................................... 101 Baudrillard & Jameson: A Postmodern Parable of Fishes ................................................... 104 NeMo Stickers & Symbolic (Global) Brand Consumption ................................................. 110 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 117 6. Interstate Interstitials: Writer- / Reader-Car Encounters ................................................. 119 The Superhighway Encounter as Space of Social Possibility .................................................. 121 The Writer-Car ....................................................................................................................
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