Three Ages of the Automobile

The automobile as an object of consumption, carrying meanings and identities, has evolved through three ages during the 20th century, each characterized by a peculiar cultural logic. In the age of class distinction, the car served as a status symbol of the sort theorized by Pierre Bourdieu. It marked out differences between classes, while simultaneously misrecognizing and legitimating their origins. In the age of mass individuality, the car was a reified consumer commodity, as postulated by the theory of the Frankfurt School. It served to obscure qualitative class differences underneath the illusion of mass individuality, in which consumers varied by the quantity of desired automotive traits they could afford. In the age of subcultural difference, the car expressed the different identities of lifestyle groups in a leveled and pluralized consumer culture, as theorized by postmodernism. The extension of the cultural logic of each of these automotive ages ultimately contradicted its configuration, and pushed the car forward to the next age.