Durham E-Theses Constructions of Identity and Otherness in Jack Kerouac's Prose MIKELLI, EFTYCHIA How to cite: MIKELLI, EFTYCHIA (2009) Constructions of Identity and Otherness in Jack Kerouac's Prose, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/29/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk CONSTRUCTIONS OF IDENTITY AND OTHERNESS IN JACK KEROUAC’S PROSE BY EFTYCHIA MIKELLI DURHAM UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH STUDIES PhD THESIS MAY 2009 CONSTRUCTIONS OF IDENTITY AND OTHERNESS IN JACK KEROUAC’S PROSE Mikelli, E. PhD Thesis, Durham University, 2009. This thesis is inspired by the abiding academic and public interest in Kerouac’s work and aims to advance new readings of Kerouac’s prose in a contemporary literary and cultural context. It is particularly concerned with a deconstructive reading of Kerouac’s prose and engages with his negotiations of race, gender, spirituality and origins within the framework of post-war America’s accelerated culture. Kerouac’s indebtedness to modernist techniques notwithstanding, this thesis argues that in its historical and thematic preoccupations Kerouac’s prose is vividly conversant with postmodern strategies. Without losing perspective of the late forties and fifties background from which Kerouac’s works emerged, the thesis explores the ways in which his thematic, linguistic and structural concerns interact with contemporary theory. Tracing the Kerouacian narrator’s problematization of the search for meaning in an accelerating culture, it examines his prose in a post-war context of uncertainty and ambiguity. In active dialogue with his contemporary America, Kerouac addresses and often challenges the dominant cultural practices of his time. Foregrounding the conflicts of his era, he anticipates subsequent social developments and philosophical debates, gesturing towards and at times capturing a postmodern sensibility. The four chapters of the thesis analyse Kerouac’s approach to the concept of simulation, his position towards Western representations of Eastern spirituality, his negotiation of the image of the exotic other and his narrative constructions of ethnicity and identity. Using the work of theorists such as Baudrillard, Virilio and Derrida, and also drawing on postcolonial studies, I demonstrate how Kerouac produces a highly performative prose in his projections of identity and heterogeneity. It is this ability to converse with literary and cultural developments up to the present day that best illuminates the contemporary appeal of Kerouac’s deconstructive approach to the notions of identity and otherness and most vividly illustrates the continuing vitality of Kerouac’s writing. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to Dr. Joseph Chrysochoos and the late Prof. Costas Evangelides for offering valuable help and advice at the very early stages of this project. I am also grateful to the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) for its financial support through the stages of my research. I would also like to thank the Department of English Studies at Durham University for all their assistance. Finally, special thanks are owed to several good friends and last but by no means least to my parents for their continuing support and encouragement throughout the composition of this study. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TOWARDS A POSTMODERN AESTHETIC 1 CHAPTER I SIMULATION AND SPEED: ON THE ROAD 13 CHAPTER II EXPLORATIONS OF SPIRITUALITY: THE DHARMA BUMS 114 CHAPTER III PROJECTIONS OF RACE AND GENDER: THE SUBTERRANEANS 152 CHAPTER IV ETHNICITY, IDENTITY AND PERFORMANCE: SATORI IN PARIS 232 CONCLUSION KEROUAC AT THE WAKE OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 266 WORKS CITED 269 1 INTRODUCTION TOWARDS A POSTMODERN AESTHETIC This thesis is inspired by the abiding academic and public interest in Kerouac’s work, and aims to advance new readings of Kerouac’s prose in a contemporary literary and cultural context. Kerouac-related events have proliferated in recent years, attesting to the numerous ways in which his work is still relevant today. A landmark in Kerouac scholarship has been the Viking-Penguin edition of the 1951 manuscript of the Original Scroll on which On the Road was written. The release of the new edition in 2007 was scheduled to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in the United States. The Scroll itself has been on display at various venues throughout America and has recently been exhibited in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham in the UK. The anniversary was also marked by two academic conferences. The 2007 Kerouac Conference held by the University of Massachusetts Lowell had On the Road as its main focus, and in 2008 another conference was organized by the University of Birmingham to commemorate the fifty years since the novel’s publication in the UK. The British Arts Council sponsored the London International Poetry and Song Festival (LIPS II) in 2007 as another celebration of Kerouac’s On the Road and the Beats, and in 2008 the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center held a Beat exhibition which included a Beat film series. Robert Holton argues that “On the Road now appears more regularly than ever on bookstore shelves and university English course reading lists. Websites devoted to Kerouac and the Beats continue to appear, expressing interests ranging from those of devoted fans to those of sophisticated critics” (Introduction 5). Moreover, there has been a proliferation of articles and book-length studies on Kerouac over the years. The Kerouacian appeal is also vividly 2 manifest in music. McNally asserts that “On the Road decisively influenced two of the demigods of rock. David Bowie got his copy at age twelve, and was never the same again. Janis Joplin found hers in Texas and left for the West Coast, there to become queen of rock and roll” (315-6). Kerouac’s impact on the music industry is further documented in Dave Moore’s impressive list of recordings which relate to Kerouac and Cassady, featuring artists from Bob Dylan and Tom Waits to Van Morrison and 10,000 Maniacs. Moreover, the direct influence of Kerouac’s work upon subsequent literary production is clearly indicated by the publication of two works entitled Visions of Kerouac, 1 the former a play by Martin Duberman in 1977 and the latter a novel by Ken McGoogan in 2007.2 Moreover, Maggie’s Riff, a one-act play based on passages from Maggie Cassidy was staged by Jon Lipsky in Lowell in 1994. In the UK Richard Deakin’s play, Jack and Neal Angels Still Falling: the Story of Kerouac & Cassady, was published in 1997, and Kerouac’s recently published play, The Beat Generation, was staged in Germany in 2007. The above testify to Jack Kerouac’s ongoing appeal both in the United States and in Europe, and indicate the extent to which Kerouac continues to be influential both on a literary and a cultural level.3 Kerouac’s current allure bears witness to his work’s ability to engage in dialogue with contemporary contexts. This thesis looks at Kerouac’s work from contemporary theoretical standpoints, aiming to advance fresh insights into aspects of Kerouac’s prose that have not so far been sufficiently considered. Developments in cultural studies and literary theory over the past fifty years have provided new tools with which to approach Kerouac’s writing. Moving away from autobiographical approaches, which had, for a certain time, been dominant in 1 This should not be confused with a biography bearing the same title which was written by Charles Jarvis. 2 This is a reworking of the novel published originally in 1993. McGoogan published another Kerouac- related book by the name of Kerouac’s Ghost in 1996. 3 The Beat appeal reaches as far as China, as the “Beat Meets East” conference in Chengdu in 2004 attests. 3 Kerouac criticism, this thesis focuses on the fictional qualities of Kerouac’s prose.4 My argument advances a deconstructive reading of Kerouac’s texts, undertaking a close examination of his negotiation of race, gender, spirituality and the question of origins in the framework of the accelerated culture of post-war America. Kerouac writes at a transitional point, as American culture is struggling to come to terms with the changes precipitated by “the technological revolution, the recognition of the baby boom, the extraordinary surge of black culture, a climate of improvisation in art and mores” (Lhamon xxxvii). Kerouac’s prose negotiates such processes in innovative ways that anticipate and often herald discourses that would be more fully shaped in later decades. In its historical and thematic preoccupations Kerouac’s prose reflects a considerable overlap between modernist and postmodernist approaches. Kerouac’s indebtedness to modernist techniques notwithstanding, this thesis argues that his prose is vividly conversant with many of the features Hassan identifies as constituents of postmodern discourse, such as “Performance, Deconstruction, Dispersal, Surface, Idiolect, Desire, Difference-Différance/Trace, Irony, Indeterminacy” (6). Through an exploration of Kerouac’s negotiation of such concepts I aim to shed new light on aspects of his prose that have thus far been neglected.