PhD

PhD dissertation available here.

Abstract

This is an investigation of the enthusiasm, scenes and cultural industry of contemporary modified-car culture in Australia, based on fieldwork research with an online-based car club — where I participated as an enthusiast — and archival research of 30 years of enthusiast magazines and other texts. I develop a post-Kantian event-based conception of enthusiasm by drawing on the previous scholarship on modified-car culture read through post-structuralist theories of the ‘event’ and ‘affect’. The oeuvre of Gilles Deleuze is a key theoretical influence on this work, which also draws on the historical method and philosophy of Michel Foucault, the practical social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and develops Theodor Adorno’s work on the cultural industry by examining its biopolitical dimension.

Enthusiasm is often thought of as a charismatic relation between the enthusiast subject and the enthusiast object modified cars. But here, enthusiasm is understood as the event of a multiplicity of affects that exists on transversal scales from the personal to the scene and beyond. I argue that the charismatic relation of enthusiasm is a reduction that enables the enthusiasm of a given scene to become a resource for cultural industries servicing that scene.

The event of enthusiasm is defined by the affects that circulate across bodies and which are actualised in the capacities of enthusiasts, the objects engaged with, and practices performed. The scene is defined by the character of the cultural events which populate it and the enthusiasts who participate in the events. The cultural events include cruising, working on cars, racing, showing, and consuming or participating in the enthusiast media. I draw on my fieldwork to examine the affective composition of some of these events. Transformations to the cultural identity of scenes and enthusiasms correlate with broader social changes exemplified by the processes of globalisation. The event of enthusiasm is repeated in different ways that make connections between the scales of the subjectively experienced affects of cultural events to the global-level transformations of the automotive industry and scene.

The cultural industries and social institutions enable the enthusiasm by investing in the infrastructure of the scene and facilitating the existence of cultural events through sponsorship or practical support. Archival research on enthusiast magazines allows me to map the transformations to the composition of power relations (dispositif) between the state (governmental regulatory bodies), social institutions (online and offline car clubs, and federations), enthusiast cultural industries (magazines, event promoters, and later importers) and different populations of enthusiasts (from interested public to highly skilled and devoted enthusiasts). The periods roughly delineated include the militancy of street rodding era (the 1970s), the spectacle of street machining era (1980s through to the present), and the immanent online-sociality of the import era (mid-1990s through to the present). The power relations of the three eras of contemporary modified-car culture in Australia are contrasted and I argue that the current dominant set of relations involve spectacular cultural events.

In the context of 1980s street machining, I examine the way ‘elite’ level vehicles built by highly skilled enthusiasts following spectacular ‘head turning’ styles of modification are used by event promoters and magazines to collectively individuate a population of the interested public. The ‘head turner’ is a singularity that organises the social spaces of the street and car shows and the discursive space of magazines. I argue that the emergent synergistic relation between magazines and event promoters is organised around the capacity of ‘head turners’ to mediate relations between different populations of enthusiasts so that enthusiasm is reduced to a charismatic relation and cultural events become spectacular.

Contents

Introduction

Defects

 

Structure of the Dissertation

Chapter 1 Events of Enthusiasm

Bathurst Cruise

 

Kant’s Enthusiasm

 

Stupid Shit

 

Affect versus Drive(r)s

 

Hot Lap

 

The Event of Enthusiasm

Chapter 2 ‘Know How’

The Belt Part 1

 

The Belt Part 2

 

The Belt Part 3

 

The Serial Problematic Contiguity of Enthusiasm

 

‘Know How’ of the Scene

Chapter 3 The Scene and Dispositif of Street Rodding

Street Rods

 

Modified Vehicle

 

Classic Customs (or Street Machines?)

 

From Statements to Power Relations

 

Black Banning and the Sanctioned Event

Chapter 4 Street Machining: the ASMF and Summernats

The Australian Street Machine Federation

 

Forgotten Histories

 

Chic Henry: Traitor or Entrepreneur?

Chapter 5 Street Machining Magazines and Technology

Supercar Scare

 

Early Articulations of the Street Machine

 

The Problematic of Performance in Early Street Machine Magazine

 

V8’s ’till ’98

 

Pro-Street

 

Head Turners

Chapter 6 Enthusiasm as a Resource

The Tension between Active and Passive Enthusiasm

 

Biopolitics of Charisma

 

From Cultural Commodities to Cultural Events

 

Architecture of the Spectacle

Chapter 7 ‘Fast Fours’ and the Emergence of New Enthusiasms

Street Machining Discourse and Fast Fours

 

Rotaries

 

Hi Tech Fast Fours

 

The Rise of the Imports

 

Post-V8 Street Machining and the Year of the Pump

Chapter 8 Politics of Valorisation and Online Sociality

The Last Ride: Muscle Cars and Rice Burners

 

Complexities of the Politics of Valorisation

 

Autosalon and the Spectacle of Import Culture

 

Fordmods: Cultural Events and Online Sociality

Conclusion: Many Enthusiasms