Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)

May 15, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Myka Tucker-Abramson, an Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of Warwick, dives into her book on the road novel, questioning its typical portrayal as a nostalgic genre. She explores how the road novel challenges notions of U.S. hegemony, connecting it to global contexts from Eastern Europe to Palestine. Tucker-Abramson also critiques car culture's implications on colonialism and capitalism, revealing the genre's dual nature of both critiquing and reinforcing socio-political issues.

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INSIGHT

Road Novel as Imperialist Genre

The road novel is an imperialist genre linked to U.S. hegemony, not just a national American genre.
It reflects American ideas to map capitalist modernization while masking its violent processes.

INSIGHT

Emergence and Spread of Road Novel

The road novel emerged post-1945 due to postwar capitalist growth, car culture, and Cold War narratives.
Its spread depends on U.S. influence and the perceived accessibility of capitalist development.

INSIGHT

Limits of Revolutionary Road Novels

Revolutionary road novels push the genre's limits but struggle to fully escape individualism and capitalist expansion.
The car and automobility symbolize racialized, colonial systems that hinder collective liberation narratives.

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Cartographies of Empire

The Road Novel and American Hegemony

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Myka Tucker-Abramson's 'Cartographies of Empire' offers a comprehensive analysis of the road novel genre, challenging conventional notions of its focus on American experiences. The book examines over 140 road novels from various countries, revealing the genre's connection to US hegemony's global trajectory. Tucker-Abramson uses materialist theories of genre and world-ecology to explore how the road novel both exposes and obscures the realities of capitalist modernization. The analysis shifts focus from the car and individual narratives to the broader geopolitical context and the impact on those left behind. The book ultimately remaps the road novel, highlighting its capacity for both revealing and concealing harsh truths.

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The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic youth and American past that never existed. Yet, new road novels appear every year, tackling unexpected questions and spanning new geographies, from Mexico, Brazil, Bulgaria, Palestine, Ukraine, and former-Yugoslavia. Why did the road novel emerge and why does it persist? What does it do and why has it traveled so widely?

In Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony (Stanford University Press, 2025) Dr. Myka Tucker-Abramson draws from an archive of more than 140 global road novels from over twenty countries, challenging dominant conceptions of the road novel as primarily concerned with American experiences and subjectivities. Grounding her analysis in materialist theories of genre, world-ecology and commodity frontier frameworks, and post-45 American literary studies, Dr. Tucker-Abramson persuasively argues that the road novel is a genre specific to, coterminous with, and revealing of US hegemony's global trajectory. Shifting our focus from Americanness to the fraught geopolitics of US Empire, from the car to the built environment through which it moves, and from passengers to those left behind, Dr. Tucker-Abramson remaps the road novel, elucidating the genre's unique ability both to reveal the violent and vertiginous processes of capitalist modernization and to obfuscate these harsh truths through seductive narratives of individual success and failure.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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