Making Fun: The Collapse of American Empire and its Golden Boy

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

The mere idea of the American empire collapsing is akin to a young adult dystopian novel, never mind those of us who have the dishonor of experiencing American empire as it was meant to function simultaneous to the consequences of its steady failure. What’s more, our access to the visual representation of this disintegration is available to the global population in real time. The response to the (usually) hidden internal workings of the nation state is a scathing disruption to the empire’s mythology, and it is hopeful. It has unmasked the horrors of the actions of billion dollar corporations and otherwise “popular” figures of the American zeitgeist, like ultra capitalist Elon Musk, who have had aspirational appeal to many. In the case of Musk, his almost fantastical persona has revealed itself to be a façade as he has revealed himself to be a sycophant with sinister ulterior motives.
We aim to engage with the critical and satirical work of Gigacities Collective; a collective that recognizes Elon Musk as a global ghoul and tackles the lore of the “Elonian Hype Machine” directly to have a productive conversation that grapples with the malignant and corrosive implications of Musk’s global businesses. By making clear that the satirical nature of their work is absurd, it is a commentary on the absurdity of Musk himself. The round table seeks to situate the Collective’s work within Tesla, SpaceX, X/Twitter, and the American government to dissect and address the real threat Musk poses to transnational and local communities. With the aforementioned in mind, we aim to utilize the infamous words by Stokely Carmichael from Excerpts from Black Power Speech from 1966 where he questions the integrity of the Civil Rights bill and—rightfully—calls out the incapability of white Americans accountability for the failures of their so called democracy. This invocation of Carmichael allows us to center and highlight how white supremacy allows for people like Musk buy their way into politics.
It is evident that multibillionaires supersede democracy, which suggests that perhaps American empire has never really fulfilled its false self-idolization as a beacon of a democratic society. Although seemingly pessimistic, the objective of this conversation is to walk away with a greater understanding that the real threat is not one another—it is the American empire and those, like Musk, who prepare it for global expansionism. To be clear, we understand the seriousness of the situation and want to examine how we can find this moment hopeful to move forward in times of uncertainty.
This roundtable offers an opportunity to discuss the discomfort brought on by the aforementioned downfall and an opportunity to make fun in moments of despair. More importantly, this is a call to preserve the intellectual work that we do, to find new voices like AI-saturated academic satire, and that we—collectively—must understand the collapse of the empire as an opportunity to actualize the other and better worlds we often dream of together.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Panelists

• Amanda Lee Tovar, University of Texas At Austin

• Florian Grundmueller, University of Goettingen, Germany

Comment

• Colleen Small, The University of Texas at Austin

Biographical Information

Amanda Tovar:

Amanda Tovar (they/them) is a Rio Grande Valley native—born and raised. They received their BA and MA from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Mexican American Studies with an emphasis in philosophy, history, and English. They are currently PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin in American Studies. Their academic research primarily focuses on the intersection of sexual violence and colonialism in the Rio Grande Valley, feminist epistemologies, and chisme as a lifeline. Further, Amanda’s dissertation work takes a closer look at the ongoing practice of colonialization in South Texas via agriculture, SpaceX, the violent enforcement of borders, and the assimilation into the nation state. And finally, for fun, Amanda religiously engages in American popular culture and consumes science fiction—mostly monsters. They then dissect the creation of monstrosity and directly relay it to capitalism. Outside of academia they are a co-founder of escuelín, a multimedia platform dedicated to cultivating space for disrupting "traditional" forms of education and emphasizing the knowledge all communities already possess.

Florian Grundmueller:

Florian Grundmueller is a cultural anthropologist based in Berlin and PhD candidate at the University of Goettingen, Germany. He studied Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Contemporary History, and Media Studies in Vienna, Austria, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and Austin, USA. His research projects focus on Mail Art as a social movement in the 1970s and 1980s entangled in state surveillance and repression, the proliferation of right-winged extremism in Germany in the wake of the political turmoil in 1989/90, as well as technocratic excesses of hype around Elon Musk as a pop-cultural figure. His multimodal field work is accompanied by explorations in ethnographic filmmaking and exhibition curation. He is the co-director of "Imprinted" and directed and authored several ethnographic short films and theater productions. Along his academic career, Florian curated historical ethnographic exhibitions, such as "Es gibt keinen Grund zu feiern" (*There is no reason to celebrate*, exhibition accompanying the 650 year celebration of the University of Vienna), "Grenzgewalt" (*Border Violence*, exhibition on neo-Nazis violence in Germany), and "Postcarding Cultures". Since 2021, Florian is a founding member of the Gigacities Collective.

Colleen Small:

Colleen Small (she/her) is a second-year PhD student from Portland, Oregon, and is into mushrooms and American Studies—the mushroom’s way of being in conversation with an interdisciplinary field, and different narrations of mushrooms and psychedelics in the US. Some of her recent work draws from mycology, ecology, science and technology, security studies, and animality studies. She loves projects that blur the boundaries between academic and artistic work.