Auto-Specularity: Driving through the American Night

Isenstadt, Sandy

doi:10.1353/mod.2011.0023

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…As with discussions of landscape, accounts of mobile experience generally consider journeys that take place in daylight (though see Isenstadt, 2011;McQuire, 2008). Yet passage through varieties of electrically illuminated, dark and shadowy spaces conditions offer very different sensations.…”

Section: The Dark Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Cycling through Dark Space: Apprehending Landscape Otherwise

Cook

Edensor

2014

Mobilities

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Section: The Dark Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Cycling through Dark Space: Apprehending Landscape Otherwise

Cook

Edensor

2014

Mobilities

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“…32 In darkness, he contends, we become attuned to the landscape through other senses, and the body 'relaxes, opens, breathes, extends its attention outward into the world the way a plant feels its way into the soil with roots or into the air with leaves'. 33 Moreover, diverse modes of moving -running, 34 cycling, 35 driving 36 and train-travelling 37 -offer distinctive sensory engagements with dark landscape, reconfiguring visual apprehension and foregrounding tactility, smell and sound.…”

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Introduction to geographies of darkness

Edensor

2015

cultural geographies

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Light pervades space and when it does not, darkness emerges and is usually vanquished with electric illumination. The perception of light and gloom is an existential dimension of experiencing space and time. Although rhythms of light and dark play out differently according to geography, all sighted people perceive, sense, act and construe meanings of space, place and landscape according to diverse, changing qualities of luminosity and murkiness. Despite this shared, all-pervasive aspect of human experience, geographical investigation of daylight, darkness and illumination is meagre indeed. This dearth is startling when we consider how sunlight and shadow condition the appearance of landscape, the cultural values and meanings attributed to the luminous and shadowy qualities of place and the alignment of diverse spatial practices with nightfall and dawn, for instance. It is as if place, space and landscape are by default, conceived as being washed in a neutral daylight, rather than being dynamically conditioned by vital light and dark.This Special Issue focuses specifically on darkness, on how particular practices, cultural values and conceptions circulate around gloom, and have been continuously articulated and contested over time. The articles here explore different dark spaces and endeavour to address John Jakle's complaint that 'landscape has been conceptualised primarily in terms of daytime use'. 1 They also elucidate how in contemporary times, darkness is being revalued in multiple ways.These reappraisals are especially pertinent because darkness has been progressively banished through what Koslofsky 2 calls 'nocturnalisation', the expansion of social and economic activity into the night and the subsequent spread of illumination, a process persistently informed by religious and modernist discourses and lasting fears about darkness. This 'colonization' 3 proceeds as nightclubs extend opening hours, entertainment districts expand, all-night retail outlets multiply and urban districts service the needs of shift workers.Because we are habituated to ubiquitous illumination, it is difficult to imagine the pervasive darkness that formerly saturated most space after nightfall and the very real perils, discomforts and inconveniences that suffused everyday life. As Roger Ekirch 4 details, numerous hazards proliferated after nightfall in medieval towns, with rubbish, ditches, excrement laden streets and overhanging

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‘Driving-as-Event’: re-thinking the car journey

Pearce

2017

Mobilities

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This article explores the possibility of 'measuring' the individual car journey in terms of the quality of the cognitive distance travelled by the car's occupants. Literary texts constitute an invaluable resource in this regard since their focus on the interiority of the driving experience is of great help in the theorisation of what I refer to here as 'automotive consciousness.' In the discussion that follows, I propose that each and every car journey may be thought of as a unique and non-reproducible event in the lives of the drivers and passengers concerned on account of the variable psychological and situational factors involved.

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Auto-Specularity: Driving through the American Night

Cited by 3 publications

References 12 publications

Cycling through Dark Space: Apprehending Landscape Otherwise

Cycling through Dark Space: Apprehending Landscape Otherwise

Introduction to geographies of darkness

‘Driving-as-Event’: re-thinking the car journey

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