This presentation will begin by sketching out the development of the energy humanities as a field over the past ten or so years to examine how a materialist critique of energy taking place within various humanities-related disciplines has enabled fossil fuels to attain a crucial visibility as objects of analysis and critique. I will then take up the notion of literature’s “energy unconscious”—a term based on Fredric Jameson’s notion of the “political unconscious” proposed by Patricia Yaeger and others in 2011 to account for literature’s relationship with energy. Based on this idea (yet departing from it), I will discuss the ways that fossil fuel becomes an ”ordinary” aspect of contemporary social reproduction and propose the concept of a “fossil fuel ordinary” to account for our lived, ambient relationship with normalized and often unremarked fossil fuel consumption. Finally, I will discuss literature’s bearing on this “fossil fuel ordinary.”
Note that this meeting will take place in a different building than usual: Please check the campus Mazemap for the location of the SV-HUM building! The meeting will be followed by drinks in the Teorifagbygget pub or other suitable location!
Relevant readings
Huber, Matthew T. "Introduction: Oil, Life, Politics." In Huber, Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital. U of Minnesota P, 2013.
Shannon et al., “Editor’s Column: Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power, and Other Energy Sources.” PMLA 126. 2 (2011): 305-26.
Szeman, Imre. "Conjectures on World Energy Literature: Or, what is Petroculture?" Journal of Postcolonial Writing 53 (2017): 277-88.