Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The novels of Tom Robbins all present various forms of a globalized perspective, insisting that all parochial notions of self, other, and systems give way to expansive and integrative merging with comprehensive, if not transcendent, understandings of our places in the world. Robbins suggests three primary arenas within which this globalizing imperative must be enacted, politics, aesthetics, and psychology. Robbins’s works eschew any narrow sense of national boundaries, aesthetic conservatism, and psychological isolation/alienation. Drawing on countercultural political energies, avant-gard creativity, and psychedelic experimentation, Robbins, to draw on the famous lyrics from Sly and the Family Stone, “wants to take us higher.” This talk will analyze such moments from Robbins’s work, while also drawing extensively on the long-standing friendship and many discussions of these issues shared by Robbins and presenter, Russell Reising.