Jack Kerouac and the American Spectacle

This book explores the search for authenticity in the work of Jack Kerouac in the context of postwar American capitalism and the rise of the spectacle as a dominant mode of social mediation. It examines how Kerouac’s experimental prose, spiritual inquiry, and relational aesthetics function as strategies of resistance to cultural homogenization, existential alienation, and hyper-individualism. Drawing from philosophy, anthropology, media theory, cognitive and evolutionary science, and narratology, the study traces how Kerouac reimagines American identity through encounters with the Other, esoteric forms of knowledge, and intersubjective experience. Combining close textual analysis with a broad interdisciplinary lens, it considers how Kerouac’s liminal position—as both insider and outsider—enables a unique literary response to the anxieties of his time. By placing Kerouac in dialogue with thinkers such as Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and C. G. Jung, this book sheds new light on the aesthetic, philosophical, and political dimensions of his work.