Conjectures on world energy literature: Or, what is petroculture?

Abstract

How might one begin to use energy as a critical component of cultural and literary analysis, especially within world-literary studies? Does making a link between a specific energy system and a previously defined literary period, movement or form open up a new way of analysing corresponding literary texts? This article argues that one of the most important reasons for reading energy into literature and, indeed, into the world-literary system is that it can provide us with critical and political resources we might otherwise lack. While we can imagine the modern period as an era shaped in relation to fossil fuels, the outcome of this periodization is different than we might think. Besides offering insights into the shape taken by literary form, what such a periodization also allows us to grapple with are the deep and complex ways in which energy has shaped the capacities, beliefs and practices of capitalist modernity.

Keywords:

• Energy humanities
• environmental studies
• Abdelrahman Munif
• oil
• periodization
• petrocultures
• postcolonialism
• world literature

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Jeff Diamanti and Jordan Kinder for their comments on this article. Thanks, too, for the excellent feedback from the editors of this special issue, which helped wrangle a long essay into something much more direct and readable.