Cultures of Energy and the End of Fossil Fuels

Catalog description

“The fundamental attribute of modern society is simply this,” writes Vaclav Smil. “Ours is a high energy civilization based largely on the combustion of fossil fuels.” How, this course asks, can we adequately recognize the utter pervasiveness of fossil fuels in contemporary human life? Through what chemical capacities does energy create and influence the vast cultural potential for being human today? This interdisciplinary humanities and social science course will capture the significance of energy in planetary social life and thought. Specifically, we explore materialist theories of capitalism in light of current debates over planetary climate change. How does the science of radical planetary change open up new questions regarding such issues as masculinity, colonialism, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade? If slavery was an energetic system, to what extent does the end of slavery compare to the end of fossil fuels? How have theories of the human become a central feature in the organization of planetary social life? What ethics - in the Kantian sense of practical reason, that is, the capacity to know and act in uncertain and dangerous conditions - can inform our collective planetary ecology? This course investigates the centrality of energy in society and culture in settings such as the Niger Delta, Oaxaca, Venezuela, Southeast Asia, indigenous North America, and Abu Dhabi. Reading works by Timothy Mitchell, Nigel Clark, Joanna Zylinska, Etienne Balibar and Ken Saro-Wiwa among others, we develop a rich approach to the question, how can we imagine being human in the absence of energy intensive culture?