At 09:40 7/05/98 +0100, you wrote:
>Well, well. I never realised what a rich seam of sociological material
>lay underneath the car bonnet (that's hood to Americans).
What? You dont' watch tv? Never hear Woody Guthrie's "Take me a ridn' in the car car" ditty?
But you're onto something. (Though you probably meant North Americans, no?)
^^^^^
>All of these are no doubt very interesting reflections on the state of
>late capitalism, but what do they have to do with cars? All of the car
>critics, it seems to me, are not really talking about cars, but about
>their own feelings towards society.
>
>Charles was right when he allied this question to Marx's theory of
>alienation. He should have added 'commodity fetishism', that state that
>Marx described in which relations between men take the alienated form of
>relations between things. Its not the cars that are the problem, its the
>form of social organisation - but the car is a kind of stand-in.
Right-o: car as stand-in for those things we love to hate; car as the symptom that distracts from disease. But as old Zizi said, "Enjoy Your Symptom!" Mind you, this from a fellow who at age, oh, 12, avidly thumbed Hot Rod magazine at the supermarket, graduting to Car and Driver in later adolescenthood.
But of all the possible sypmtoms, it's the car one of the most powerful and illuminating, at least in the US context, no? Shouldn't we conceed it a relative autonomy as expalatory variable (etc.)? "It" (conception, production, consumption, desire) is site of innovation in production, heroic labor ressitance, symbol of fordism, central to urban and industrial policies, proximate excuse for massive state investment of certain types (while repressing others), and as Yoshie points out quite lucidly, colonizes in some very specific ways our day to day ability to focus -- or NOT -- on certain things.
As such, this isn't just any old symptom.
Tom
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: tkruse at albatros.cnb.net