Lynne Pearce
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748690848
- eISBN:
- 9781474426817
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690848.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
What sorts of things do we think about when we’re driving – or being driven – in a car? Drivetime seeks to answer this question by drawing upon a rich archive of British and American texts from ‘the ...
More
What sorts of things do we think about when we’re driving – or being driven – in a car? Drivetime seeks to answer this question by drawing upon a rich archive of British and American texts from ‘the motoring century’ (1900-2000), paying particular attention to the way in which the practice of driving shapes and structures our thinking. While recent sociological and psychological research has helped explain how drivers are able to think about ‘other things’ while performing such a complex task, little attention has, as yet, been paid to the form these cognitive and affective journeys take. Pearce uses her close readings of literary texts – ranging from early twentieth-century motoring periodicals, Modernist and inter-war fiction, American ‘road-trip’ classics, and autobiography – in order to model different types of ‘driving-event’ and, by extension, the car’s use as a means of phenomenological encounter, escape from memory, meditation, problem-solving and daydreaming. The textual case-studies include: H.V. Morton and Edwin Muir; Jack Kerouac and Patricia Highsmith; Neil Young and Joan Didion; Elizabeth Bowen and Rosamund Lehmann.Less
What sorts of things do we think about when we’re driving – or being driven – in a car? Drivetime seeks to answer this question by drawing upon a rich archive of British and American texts from ‘the motoring century’ (1900-2000), paying particular attention to the way in which the practice of driving shapes and structures our thinking. While recent sociological and psychological research has helped explain how drivers are able to think about ‘other things’ while performing such a complex task, little attention has, as yet, been paid to the form these cognitive and affective journeys take. Pearce uses her close readings of literary texts – ranging from early twentieth-century motoring periodicals, Modernist and inter-war fiction, American ‘road-trip’ classics, and autobiography – in order to model different types of ‘driving-event’ and, by extension, the car’s use as a means of phenomenological encounter, escape from memory, meditation, problem-solving and daydreaming. The textual case-studies include: H.V. Morton and Edwin Muir; Jack Kerouac and Patricia Highsmith; Neil Young and Joan Didion; Elizabeth Bowen and Rosamund Lehmann.
Lynne Pearce
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748690848
- eISBN:
- 9781474426817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690848.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter sets out the ways in which driving may be seen as paradigmatic, as well as formative, of human thought by comparing the way in which the mind travels through time and space on its ...
More
This chapter sets out the ways in which driving may be seen as paradigmatic, as well as formative, of human thought by comparing the way in which the mind travels through time and space on its everyday cognitive journeys with the way in which drivers engage with the spatial and temporal landscapes through which they pass. To this end, it considers the association between driving and phenomenology – how driving can facilitate and promote phenomenological thought – along with other psychological and philosophical models (most notably W.H. Gombrich theory of ‘schema and correction’ and Henri Bergson on ‘déjà vu’) which allow for a rather more complex exchange of perception and memory in the driver’s consciousness. The chapter also outlines the author’s conceptualisation of individual car journeys as specific and non-reproducible events (i.e. the ‘driving-event’) and provides an overview of the recent work in the field of auto/mobilities scholarship to which the project speaks. In addition, the chapter addresses the book’s methodological standpoint and, in particular, what literary and other texts can contribute to auto/mobilities research that is not available by other means.Less
This chapter sets out the ways in which driving may be seen as paradigmatic, as well as formative, of human thought by comparing the way in which the mind travels through time and space on its everyday cognitive journeys with the way in which drivers engage with the spatial and temporal landscapes through which they pass. To this end, it considers the association between driving and phenomenology – how driving can facilitate and promote phenomenological thought – along with other psychological and philosophical models (most notably W.H. Gombrich theory of ‘schema and correction’ and Henri Bergson on ‘déjà vu’) which allow for a rather more complex exchange of perception and memory in the driver’s consciousness. The chapter also outlines the author’s conceptualisation of individual car journeys as specific and non-reproducible events (i.e. the ‘driving-event’) and provides an overview of the recent work in the field of auto/mobilities scholarship to which the project speaks. In addition, the chapter addresses the book’s methodological standpoint and, in particular, what literary and other texts can contribute to auto/mobilities research that is not available by other means.
