Driving while dreaming: oneiric automobility

This paper responds to the call made by mobilities scholars to deepen attention to imagination and imaginaries by proposing that oneiric experiences – nighttime dreams – be investigated as significant but under-examined artifacts of mobile cultures. Based on a long-term, ethnographically-informed study of the dreams of young adults in the US and grounded in both contemporary dream theory and the automobilities literature, the author argues that dreams of car trouble serve to expose otherwise overlooked and taken-for-granted dimensions of waking-life automobility, automotive consciousness, and lifecourse transitions. Targeting two commonly seen themes within this subgenre of dreams – that of failed brakes and driving from the backseat – the author argues that oneiric automobility draws on conceptual metaphors and waking-life automotive biographies. Such dreams, moreover, draw liberally from and comment on larger and often silenced dimensions of emerging automobility – the patterned processes and performances by which (usually young) adults habituate to their lives as drivers. Attention to the common experience of driving while dreaming, the author argues, enhances efforts to theorize the multiple ontologies of mobile lifeways.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2024.2348657
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/17450101
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Abstract reprinted with permission of Taylor & Francis.
• Authors:
  • Sheriff, Robin E
• Publication Date: 2024-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 905-923
• Serial:
  • Mobilities
  • Volume: 19
  • Issue Number: 5
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISSN: 1745-0101
  • EISSN: 1745-011X
  • Serial URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmob20

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automobile drivers; Automobile driving; Human factors; Mobility; Young adults
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01934833
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 22 2024 5:09PM