Overview

This book explores the search for authenticity in the work of Jack Kerouac in the context of postwar American capitalism and the rise of the spectacle as a dominant mode of social mediation. It examines how Kerouac’s experimental prose, spiritual inquiry, and relational aesthetics function as strategies of resistance to cultural homogenization, existential alienation, and hyper-individualism. Drawing from philosophy, anthropology, media theory, cognitive and evolutionary science, and narratology, the study traces how Kerouac reimagines American identity through encounters with the Other, esoteric forms of knowledge, and intersubjective experience. Combining close textual analysis with a broad interdisciplinary lens, it considers how Kerouac’s liminal position—as both insider and outsider—enables a unique literary response to the anxieties of his time. By placing Kerouac in dialogue with thinkers such as Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and C. G. Jung, this book sheds new light on the aesthetic, philosophical, and political dimensions of his work.

Full Product Details

Author:   Astrid Böger ,  Talal Hochard
Publisher:   Peter Lang AG
Imprint:   Peter Lang AG
Edition:   New edition
Volume:   19
Weight:   0.516kg
ISBN:  

9783631934142

ISBN 10:   3631934149
Pages:   346
Publication Date:   06 February 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

CONTENTS - LIST OF FIGURES - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS - LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -NOTES FOR THE READER – INTRODUCTION - Chapter One. The Road to Authenticity: Kerouac, Liminality, and the Spectacle of Postwar America - Between Dharma and Debord: The Limits of Rebellion - Neither Here nor There: Liminal Identity and the Beats’ Search for Meaning - Kerouac and the Implosion of the Beats – Conclusion - PART I. KEROUAC AND THE MAKING OF POSTWAR SELFHOOD - Chapter Two. Synthetic Worlds, Ancestral Minds: Hyper-Stimulation and Alienation in Kerouac - Out of Sync: Alienation and the Mismatch Hypothesis - Homo Magis Realis and the Rise of Networked Creatures - Misfired Alarms: Artificial Hazards in Big Sur - Conclusion - Chapter Three. Kerouac and the Other: Race, Mysticism, and the Crisis of White Identity - Cultural Appropriation or Mystical Idealization? Kerouac’s Portrayals of Mexicans and African Americans - Kerouac’s Anarcho-Primitivism: The Politics of the Other - Narrating the Sacred: Mediation and the Making of the Other in Tristessa – Conclusion - Chapter Four. The New Americanness: Scripts, Selves, and the Beat Ethos - ""The Vanishing American Hobo"" and the Spectacle of Deterrence - Other Ways of Being: Kerouac’s Resistance to Ready-Made Lives - Out of Step with Ourselves: Evolutionary Breakdown in the Spectacle - Inventing the Beatnik: Alternative Identities in ""New York Scenes"" - Conclusion - PART II. IN THE SHADOW OF THE REAL: TRANSCENDENCE AND ITS DISCONTENTS - Chapter Five. Fragments of the Real: The Body, the Vision, and the Vanishing God - Sacred Flesh, Profane Soul: The Feminine and the Logic of Dichotomy - Fractures in the Fabric of Reality - The Weight of Nothingness: Nihilism, Guilt, and the Void Within – Conclusion - Chapter Six. Toward the Real: Transcendence, Timelessness, and the Void - On Authenticity and the Weight of Freedom - On Timelessness: Death, Being, and the Cosmic Real – Conclusion - Chapter Seven. Between Mysticism and Madness: Language, Gnosis, and the Limits of Knowing - On Mystical Knowing: Intuition, Gnosis, and the Limits of Reason - The Messenger’s Dilemma: Transmitting the Ineffable - Words from the Edge of the Real – Conclusion - PART III. THE INTERSUBJECTIVE REAL - Chapter Eight. The Self in Dialogue: Narratives of Intimacy and Interpretive Desire - Kerouac and the Relational Ground of the Self - Kerouac’s Poetics of Male Intimacy: The Aesthetics and Limits of Brotherhood - The Confessional Mode: Race, Desire, and Distributed Perception - Unclear Signals, Unreadable Minds: Interpreting Intention in the Legend – Conclusion - Chapter Nine. Forms of Presence: Improvisation, Empathy, and Orality in the Legend - Improvisation and the Real - Second Chances for Empathy: Sketching the Missed Encounter - Orality and the Real – Conclusion - Final Reflections: Kerouac, the Spectacle, and the Real - Bibliography

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Author Information

Talal Hochard is Assistant Professor of American literature at the University of Réunion Island. He holds a joint PhD in U.S. literature from the University of Lorraine and Masaryk University. His research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century U.S. literature and forms of literary and media resistance within the culture industry.

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