Transnational Muscle Cars

Written over the last ten years in a quartet of cities: Calgary, Toronto, New York and Vienna, Transnational Muscle Cars is the second book in Jeff Derksen's trilogy addressing place, culture and capital. Whereas the first book in this trilogy, Dwell, tried to work out a poetics of place still tied to questions of national culture, Transnational Muscle Cars rescales these questions. Moving from the national to the global-urban, it draws on a wide-range of cultural references, from Keanu Reeves to the Russian Constructivists, from the Gap to inflatable architecture. While the politics of poetic form is still a key aspect of Derksen' s work, geography has overtaken language as its central focus. What are the politics of this new cultural landscape? And how do you drive across it? And why does this new imperialism behave so much like a classic muscle car--all brawn and horsepower, but will little braking power and an inablity to negotiate curves?Derksen, Jeff is the author of 'Transnational Muscle Cars', published 2003 under ISBN 9780889224735 and ISBN 0889224730.