(S)cars: Exploring America's Automotive Self

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.11708

Keywords:

America, Europe, cars, projections, idealization, ethics, American cultural history, trauma

Abstract

The article opens with an autoethnographic account of its author's encounter with the American sense of space in the context of the clash of his own and American cultural norms related to car ownership and car use. The initial anecdotes, in which the negative experiences of the authors lack of knowledge of the essentials of the car culture in the US prove to be instrumental in the process of learning and adaptation, lead to a more profound, historiosophic reflection upon the cars as vehicles of ethics across American cultural history. 

Author Biography

Paweł Jędrzejko, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland

Pawel Jedrzejko, D.Litt, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of American Literature
Institute of Literary Studies
Faculty of Humanities
University of Silesia in Katowice
ul. Gen. Stefana Grota-Roweckiego 5
41-205 Sosnowiec
Poland

References

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. Scribner, 2010.

Hilarious funny parking signs, https://www.google.com/search?q=hilarious+funny+parking+signs&tbm=isch&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU24Xt49v0AhWDBncKHfKtDbcQrNwCKAB6BQgBELYB&biw=1903&bih=880#imgrc=835hE83pZzk5vM, accessed 08.11.2021.

Jędrzejko, Paweł. “Zagubione pokolenia: Auschwitz, Guernica i wyczerpany język. Wokół powieści Słońce też wschodzi Ernesta Hemingwaya,” in: Ernest Hemingway. Edited by Ewa Barbara Łuczak. Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 2017, pp. 57–73.

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Published

2021-12-19

How to Cite

Jędrzejko, P. (2021). (S)cars: Exploring America’s Automotive Self. Review of International American Studies, 14(2), 5–13. https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.11708