The motorcycle as identity construct and performance affect: Three real-life examples for whom transport alone was not enough

Abstract

At a time when the future of the internal combustion engine-powered motorcycle, if not the industry as a whole, seems clouded, it may be appropriate to reflect on the importance of the two-wheeled vehicle as a cultural artefact – that is, its importance in the creation of an identity and a self-image for its owner and rider. This article examines this subject through the examples of three figures for whom the motorcycle was crucial in the construction of their identity and the fame they achieved, in real life and in literary representation – the poet Thom Gunn, the psychologist Oliver Sacks, and the war hero T. E. Lawrence. For all three the motorcycle was a preferred mode of transport. But it was more than that. It was a marker of the identity they chose to create for themselves, something – as each said – that an automobile could never be.