Good Life Automobility: Cultural/Rhetorical Resistance and Persistence of US Car Hegemony

Authors

• Trinity O. Thompson, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

First Advisor

Kate Siegfried

Committee Members

Kristen Hoerl, Casey R. Kelly

Date of this Version

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Citation

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Major: Communication Studies

Under the supervision of Professor Kate Siegfried

Lincoln, Nebraska, May 2026

Comments

Copyright 2026, Trinity O. Thompson. Used by permission

Abstract

This project takes the car as a historical signifier of a rhetorical racialization process that enables a hypermobile white, masculine, neoliberal identity that pervades conceptions of mobility in the West. I locate these overlapping social formations under a cultural logic of good life automobility (GLA) that positions cars, a quintessential form of private property, as a motivator for a contemporary “good life” citizenship identity that cultivates neoliberal subjectivities of free movement and market consumption in contempt of socialized and racialized public transit futures. The introduction chapter elaborates on the boundaries of GLA while also contextualizing the two analysis chapters through a brief history of race and automobiles and an overview of rhetorical studies approaches through space and mobilities. I then offer grounded examples of GLA through rhetorical analyses of two texts that engage with cars as material texts that shape perceptions of built environments. In chapter one, I specifically examine how owners of the Tesla Cybertruck construct a form of GLA through the physical Cybertruck and online Cybertruck forum discussions. The chapter finds that the Cybertruck engages in cyberpunk materialization, a process that makes real both aesthetic and sociocultural elements from cyberpunk narratives to accelerate white masculine fantasies of apocalypse in urban environments. In the second chapter, I demonstrate how unintentional implementation of alternative transportation modes continues to reinforce car dominance by materially and sensorily conditioning the non-carred subject to be a car itself. Here, I focus on an infamous bicycle lane in Lincoln, Nebraska that lies wedged between two lanes of car traffic. Through a spatial rhetorical analysis of the bike lane mixed with a discursive rhetorical analysis of the City of Lincoln’s bike infrastructure documents, chapter two finds that through the absent or minimal physical, textual, and visual barriers between the 14^th Street Bike Lane and the car traffic lanes, the bike lane elicits perceptions of cyclist vulnerability through its body that is ultimately incommensurate to a motorist body. The project concludes by situating its contributions alongside other rhetorical studies work on the materiality of space and urban significations.

Advisor: Kate Siegfried