Automobility in Manchester Fiction

Abstract

This article contributes to recent debates concerning automobility and ‘mobile, embodied practices’ (Cresswell & Merriman, 2011 Cresswell, T. and Merriman, P., eds. 2011. Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects, Farnham: Ashgate. [Google Scholar]) by considering how various ‘driving events’ entail modes of perception that are of interest from an ontological perspective; that is, how drivers and passengers see the world through the windows of a moving car and how the driving ‘sensorium’ (Gilroy, 2001 Gilroy, P. 2001. “Driving while black”. In Car Cultures, Edited by: Miller, D. 81–104. Oxford: Berg. [Google Scholar]; Sheller, 2004 Sheller, M. 2004. Automotive emotions: Feeling the car. Theory, Culture & Society, 21(4–5): 221–242. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) may be associated with emotional states (such as ‘escape’, ‘frustration’, ‘nostalgia’) that arguably characterize the everyday life of late modernity. In addition, the discussion speculates on what this altered perception means for how we see and conceptualize the contemporary urban landscape, concurring with Doel (1996 Doel, M. 1996. A hundred thousand lines of flight: A machinic introduction to the nomad thought and scrumpled geography of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14(4): 421–439. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that such space has effectively become a ‘scrumpled geography’ that can no longer be accounted for in traditional cartographical terms. These reflections are explored through close readings of a selection of literary texts (principally, crime fiction novels) emanating from Greater Manchester (England) and thus the article also contributes to recent work (both cultural and sociological) on the re-imagining of this particular urban landscape in recent times (Haslam, 2000 Haslam, D. 2000. Manchester, England: The Story of a Pop Cult City, London: Fourth Estate. [Google Scholar]; Pearce et al., forthcoming Pearce, L., Crawshaw, R. and Fowler, C. forthcoming. Postcolonial Manchester: Writing, Migration, Place, Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar]).

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