From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 20:37:00 -0500


Glen,

Just for the record, I don't think my position is the same as Steve's
here.

What I meant in the quote you referenced below was intended to be a kind
of playful reference both to 'Crash' and Godard (Band of
Outsiders/Weekend).  

I may have been teasing. I wasn't trying to put you down.  

The car isn't just a utilitarian object. It never has been. It never
will be. 

It is an sublime object of beauty and a romantic image of escape in both
cinematic and literary terms, a kind of art deco on wheels - on the road
with Jack, with Thelma and Louise following the lost highways of David
Lynch (even if these are sometimes traveled on a tractor lawn mower.) 

I had a chance to go to Graceland this spring, the home of Elvis Presley
and his pink Cadillac. One of the things I liked best was the car
museum. They had a video on permanent loop that created a montage of his
car chase-crash-sex scenes taken from the King's movies and it was very
impressive - a kind of hyped-up visual homage to sex and cars and rock
and roll. 

'What kind of car would Jesus drive?' also became a very big question in
the American media just before the Iraqi invasion. 

One can always argue that this eroticisation of the automobile is merely
a ideological social construct.  And one would probably be wrong. The
car also seems to symbolize a concrete desire that cannot be satisfied.
That is why there is always something kind of lonely about those open
roads.

The other day I was driving across town, listening to Tom Waits on my CD
player, when I saw a sign for Memphis. I had a very strong urge to take
the turn and continue driving into the vast American night. This
implicit nomadism, for me, is a very strong part of the American dream.
There is a feeling here that if things get too bad, you can just get in
your car and go. In America, rewriting modernity sometimes means turning
on the ignition and traveling home down a road you've never been before
with the top down and the wind blowing and the stars above. The car is a
floating signifier of redemption at the crossroads on the freeway. A
moveable beast. 

Obviously, the politics of all of this isn't that simple. Questions of
distributive justice, the ecology of oil and land use, the problem that
more and more all the roads of America look the same - one ubiquitous
strip mall that never seems to end, and the presence of SUVs which seem
to be merely the outward sign of an inner fat American arrogance. 

Nonetheless Glen, I don't want to put you down for your scholarship or
your wheels.  And I've always personally found something problematic
with Illich's equation.  Hell, even when I'm on my bike I sometimes want
to go faster, faster, pussycat, bang, bang.

Eric

PS - I have little illusions about the internet. This is a virtual
drive-in where I rant sometimes after traveling up and down the strip. I
have no illusions that it really makes a difference. 

Also, I traded in my Tercel this summer. I now own a shiny red Mazda
Protégé 5 and really love to drive it.  I'd recommend it to any
long-suffering and lonely Marxist out there looking for a good set of
wheels. 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of Glen
Fuller
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 7:37 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Sleeping in history.

Steve/Eric/All

> For example Glen Fuller once mentioned that he was working on 'fast 
> cars' in his dissertation - now these machines are plainly unethical 
and 
> should be constrained and prevented from being constructed - does 
this 
> mean that his work is unethical - perhaps and probably yes.

Steve Devos is working from an always-already differentiated social 
space and the meanings he attaches to differences and distinctions (and 
assumptions) will always-already have an ideological component - does 
this mean the understanding he draws from these differences and the 
fidelity of his 'truth' is already-always predicated on this 
(ideological) difference - perhaps and probably yes.

My research deals with modified-car culture. One of the most 
interesting things I have found so far is that the lower-middle 
class/upper-working class male 'youth' I have so far dealt with, find 
it _necessary_ to own a modified car. Just a handful of the questions I 
have been asking myself about why there is this 'necessity':
Is it a question of mobility (social and physical)? Is it a question of 
the fragmented, sub-urban, automobilised space that these kids grew up 
in? Is it a question of some sort of gang-like collective identity with 
other enthusiasts? Is it to generate a marker of difference 
(continually reinforced by police and other authorities)? Is it related 
to a shift from these cars being built as the products of immense 
production-labour (1950-1990) to products of immense consumption-labour 
(1990-present)? 

I have copped a lot of shit from all sides so far into my work. From my 
hoons who think that I am a lackey from the policing authorities sent 
to gather information to help police them (probably half true), from 
people who can not see how such research can be of any benefit to 
society (and, therefore, they exclude car enthusiasts, people affected 
by their chicanery, and the multi-billion dollar industry servicing 
this enthusiasm from the ideal-I(-us) of 'society'), and now it has 
been suggested it is unethical... great. Yes, we shouldnt do any 
research into activities or cultural forms that are unethical, as that 
would be unethical. 

Andre Gorz wrote an excellent chapter in his 1980 book Ecology as 
Politics (Black Rose Books) about the "Ideology of the Automobile" 
where he likened it to a luxury akin to a sea-side villa, and not 
everyone can have sea-side villas because it would take up too much 
beach-line, so not everyone should have cars blah blah... his argument 
was extend and fleshed out in the book by Freund and Martin 
(1993) The Ecology of the Automobile (Black Rose Books), why dont 
you read those two Steve, if you havent already, as I am sure you will 
find it ethical. Actually, why not continue the same sort of 
conversations that have been going on for over 100 years, because they 
have _obviously_ helped. So we have:

> You would think a sane world would allow for some experimentation -
> neo-luddite communities here, hippy communities of hedonistic poverty
> there, cybernetic potlatch gift economies, arcologies, new babylons,
> even Ballard-like crystal dystopias where bands of outsiders like Glen
> could crash and burn to their heart's content.

And give the tired old Marxists a space where they could lament about 
to insanity of the world around them so they think they are affecting 
things without really doing anything, oh hang on, that has already 
happened... it is called the internet.

Glen.

-- 
PhD Candidate, Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney