Drivetime: Literary Excursions in Automotive Consciousness - Paperback

by Lynne Pearce (Author)

Engages literary texts in order to theorise the distinctive cognitive and affective experiences of driving

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.

Key Features

• Brings Humanities-based perspectives to bear upon topical debates in automobilities research
• Introduces a new concept for understanding our journeys made my car by focusing on the driver's automotive consciousness rather than utility/function
• Makes use of auto-ethnography to explore and theorise automotive consciousness
• Draws upon a rich archive of literary texts from across the twentieth-century including original research into unknown writers featured in the early twentieth-century texts/motoring periodicals

Back Jacket

*APPROVED* PPC spine 16mm, 274 x 368mm. 'This landmark book traces the emergence of automotive consciousness, combining auto-ethnographic reflection, literary analysis and cultural theory to examine the unfolding of the 'driving-event' in the twentieth century. Drawing upon literary theory, cultural studies, human geography, psychology and sociology, it is an important addition to the inter-disciplinary field of mobility studies.' Peter Merriman, Aberystwyth University What sorts of things do we think about when we're driving - or being driven? 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 this 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. Lynne Pearce is Professor of Literary Theory in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University and Director for the Humanities at the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe).She has published widely in the field of literary and cultural theory and women's writing Cover image: Slow, 1972, Gerd Winner Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-0-7486-9084-8 Barcode

Author Biography

Lynne Pearce is Professor of Literary Theory and Women's Writing at the University of Lancaster. She has published widely in the field of literary and cultural theory, with particular interests in: feminist reader-theory (Woman/Image/Text (1991), Reading Dialogics (1994), Feminism and the Politics of Reading (1997), The Rhetorics of Feminism (1997); romance theory (Romance Writing, 2007); and mobilities research (Devolving Identities (ed.) (2000), Postcolonial Manchester (co-authored: 2013) Drivetime (2016). She is also Director of Humanities at the Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster.