| This thesis explores the notion of fetishism as an appropriate instrument of cultural criticism to investigate the rites and rituals surrounding the automobile. The car is a medium of social communication and a special object of veneration in American, indeed North American, culture. It possesses a sacred or magical power to shape everyday life.;Drawing on 19th century concepts of fetishism in the anthropological literature, the political economy of Marx, and Freudian psychoanalysis, a basic framework is set out in which to examine automobile culture. The study of the car as fetish provokes discussion of three central issues: autonomous technology, the constitution of human parts and machine parts, and the relationship between technology and gender.;The thesis argues that we invest the automobile with power and significance in social and cultural rituals and it appears to take on the character of an independent, autonomous force. A closer examination reveals that human beings are engaged in a struggle to control the more perverse or pathological elements of car culture. |
