Bob Dylan in China, America in Bob Dylan: Visions of Social Beatitude and Critique

This essay focuses on US/China interactions, uncanny temporalities, and Pacific Rim discrepancies resonating through popular culture and belief systems as embodied in Bob Dylan’s conversion-drenched poetics (aligned to social beatitude) and protest politics (aligned to critique and allegory). Building out from the “Dylan controversy” of spring 2011, the analysis probes Dylan’s post-Beat poetic tactics from works like “All along the Watchtower” and “Chimes of Freedom” to socialist-Judeo-Christian works of blasted prophecy from Modern Times and Tempest. “Bob Dylan in China, America in Bob Dylan” opens into transnational dynamics, transcultural wariness, and post-Jeremaic aims of American cultural poetics and politics in contexts of globalization and Asia-Pacific differences.