The American Dream, An American Utopia, and Death

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Course Description

“When we awaken into reality after a dream, we usually say to ourselves ‘it was just a dream,’ thereby blinding ourselves to the fact that in our everyday, waking reality we are nothing but a consciousness of this dream” (Žižek). A question to a barista about the organic/non-organic character of tea bags due to a fear of microplastic contamination. A church with solar panels on the roof outlining the shape of a cross that is not an advert for an energy company. A young whitetail buck dead on the side of the road with its head pointing backwards, towards the oncoming highway lane, even as its body is pointing forward, reminding me of Klee’s Angelus Novus as described by Walter Benjamin in the latter’s aphorisms “On the Concept of History.” Coincidentally reading “Elizabeth Taylor” in JG Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition while listening to the Taylor Swift song by that same name: “You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby.” A grocery store trip that begins by parking in the back of the lot to “get some exercise” on the walk to the entrance and the yippy greeting of a cab-confined canine whose size is in direct inverse proportion to general cacophony of its existence. A Chevy dealership with an electronic sign displaying the time, date, and temperature in the quintessentially American Red, White, and Blue.

This is not a course on the much-mourned, -celebrated, -proclaimed so-called “death of the American Dream.” Rather, it is an investigation into the way in which the American Dream, utopia, and death are inextricably linked like a set of Borromean rings. The course is structured around three primary texts: 1) Edward Albee’s play The American Dream; 2) Fredric Jameson’s An American Utopia; and 3) Jean Baudrillard’s America. The first session will present a novel interpretation of Albee’s play in order to interrogate the shifting meaning(s) of the American Dream and learn that it isn’t so dead after all, despite being both born of and haunted by certain kinds of death. Indeed, we will explore the meaning of the idea that the American Dream does not obscure some “truth” of American reality—it is America. In the second session, we’ll start with an Eisenhower-era joke and quickly move into a utopian vision wherein “rational revolutionary calculations necessarily give way to fantasy.” Of importance in the second session is not the ‘un/realism’ of Jameson’s hilariously playful American utopia, but the relation of Jameson’s and others’ American utopic visions to the other themes of the course: The American Dream and Death. In the final session, drawing on the examples laid out in Baudrillard’s aphoristic travel book, America, and informed by Lacanian interpretations of Freud’s death drive concept, we will seek an answer to a question discussed across several of Baudrillard’s essays and interviews: “What are you doing after the orgy?”

While the course is centered around the three previously mentioned texts—Albee, Jameson, Baudrillard—it takes its inspiration from and will involve digressions into multiple texts, aesthetic productions, and cultural artefacts that can be collectively understood as the oeuvre of the American Dream. Some key influences on the course in terms of both the content utilized and the interpretive method employed (beyond those already mentioned) are JG Ballard and Hunter Thompson. While these undeniably ‘dude-bro’ writers can be difficult to stomach at times, their capacities to ingest and then rearticulate the everyday absurdism of late modernity are second to none. Moreover, perhaps the key influence for the course are observations of the sprawling-free-associative character of the American landscape made, in fitting fashion, while in-transit or otherwise on-the-go. A cafe. An interstate. An interstate. A hotel room. A parking lot. An anonymous street corner. Non-places.

Course Schedule & Content

The key and additional ‘texts’ for the course are listed below. Each week will be centered around the associated key text but will involve discussions of the additional texts. Attendees are not expected to engage with all or any of the texts listed for a given week. They are also welcome to bring their own texts into outside discussion. Links have been provided for all materials when possible.

Note: Link additions are in progress (11/19).

  • December 3 – The American Dream
    • Key text:
    • Additional texts:
      • F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (novel)
      • JG Ballard, 1970 Penthouse Interview (interview)
      • Jay-Z and Kanye West, “No Chruch in the Wild” (song)
      • Billy Joel, “Piano Man” (song)
      • Beyoncé, “American Requiem” (song)
      • George Trow, “Within the Context of No-Context” (essay, PDF)
      • Christine Walley, “Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story” (documentary)
  • December 10 – An American Utopia
    • Key text:
      • Fredric Jameson, An American Utopia (book – see lecture, below)
    • Additional texts:
      • Kendall Jenner, “Pepsi Ad” (video)
      • Barack Obama, 2016 State of the Union Address. Selection. (speech)
      • Beff, “Notes on e/acc principles and tenets” (blog post)
      • Carbon Ruins: An Exhibition of the Fossil Era (exhibit)
      • Maurizia Boscagli, “A Literary History of the American Smart Home” (book review)
      • More Jameson on Utopia
        • Fredric Jameson, “Progress versus Utopia: Or, Can We Imagine the Future?” (article)
        • Fredric Jameson, Wal-Mart as Utopia (article)
  • December 17 – Death
    • Key text:
    • Additional texts:
      • JG Ballard, Atrocity Exhibition
      • Taylor Swift, “Elizabeth Taylor” (song)
      • MUNA, “Everything” (song)
      • Richard Misrach, “Playboy #38” (art)
      • Honda, Civic CRX Si Commercial (video ad)
      • Martin Scorsese, “The Wolf of Wall Street” (film – can’t link full film, snippet)
      • Mike Davis, Dead Cities and Other Tales (book; and review by JG Ballard)
      • Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (book – especially Part 2, Ch. 9)

How to Join

This course is available live and recorded to Maurin Academy Patrons at the Worker-Scholar ($10) tier, and recorded to Patrons at the Salt of the Earth ($5) tier.