ABSTRACT
Much has been made about the place the United Sates holds globally since the turn of the 21st century. Core values of what it means to be American have come under scrutiny, if not in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, then moreso in the following years as the United States came to terms with a range of economic, political, and citizenship crises of varying intensities. In this chapter, I explore disruptions to ontological security both individually and collectively by reading the subjects generated in the four songs released on Bruce Springsteen’s American Beauty (2014) EP. Through a focus on the ontological as an emerging and ongoing process, I offer a feminist materialist framework to read claims about searching, attaining, and holding onto a trusted and ordered life in a world filled with uncertainty. I draw on feminist ideas about masculinized knowledge, Braidotti’s notions of generative ontologies, and Foucault’s ideas about the technologies of the self. I argue that even though the discourses informing both American foreign policy and Springsteen as a songwriter focus on reassurance and safekeeping, subjects emerging out of the lyrics have the potential to detach from the conventional social codes defining American citizenship. Once liberated from the stronghold of ontological security, alternative subjects – nomads – can reconfigure what it means to be American.
