The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism by Ulrich Brand & Markus Wissen

Author:Ulrich Brand & Markus Wissen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso

THE AUTOMOBILE SUBJECTIVITY

Automobility and the types of subjects shaped by class and gender relations are tightly woven together. Many things speak to the fact that automobility produces certain kinds of subjectivity – and vice versa. 16 The subjectivities are not fixed. They change with the varying socio-spatial manifestations of the structures that shape society.

The SUV driver could be understood as the automotive subjectivity of neoliberal capitalism. The polarization between security and insecurity, as well as between superiority and subalternity – a contrast heightened by driving SUVs on streets – corresponds to a growing social polarization, as well as to the neoliberal diffusion of market-and competition-based mechanisms in all social sectors. Furthermore, instead of simply corresponding, the car and the subjectivity of its driver embody each other: thanks to its material qualities, the SUV intensifies the very social relations, shaped by competition and recklessness, of which it is a product. It does so by producing the corresponding form of subjectivity.

Jan Stremmel, writing for the Süddeutsche Zeitung , demonstrated this in an impressive self-experiment undertaken with an SUV. He described its results as follows:

After two days, the car has won. I’m racing down the A9, in the left-hand lane, when a silver station wagon moves into my lane ahead of me. At this point, I haven’t looked in my rear-view mirror for quite a long time. One doesn’t have to worry about too many surprises from behind while driving at 225 km per hour. But moving into the fast lane ahead of me at 150 km per hour? I grunt, although I never grunt. I flash my headlights, although I never flash my headlights. I am a reckless prick. The car has won. 17

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