Synopses & Reviews
Living Oil is a work of environmental cultural studies that engages with a wide spectrum of cultural forms, from museum exhibits and oil industry tours to poetry, documentary film, fiction, still photography, novels and memoirs. The book's unique focus is the aesthetic, sensory and emotional legacies of petroleum, from its rise to the preeminent modern fossil fuel during World War I through the current era of so-called Tough Oil. LeMenager conceives Tough Oil as a bid for continuity with the charismatic lifestyles of the American twentieth century that carries distinct and extreme external costs. She explores the uncomfortable, mixed feelings produced by oil's omnipresence in cultural artifacts such as books, films, hamburgers, and Aspirin tablets. The book makes a strong argument for the region as a vital intellectual frame for the study of fossil fuels, because at the regional level we can better recognize the material effects of petroleum on the day-to-day lives of humans and other, non-human lives. Varied forms of art, too, localize the material impacts of petro-culture. The fluid mobility of oil carries the book outside the United States, for instance to Alberta and Nigeria, emphasizing how both international and domestic resource regions have been mined to produce the idealized modern cultures of the so-called American Century.
Review
"As this intriguing book makes clear, from Texas to Alberta we're an oil-soaked continent. That oil has gotten into our brains and done much to make us who we are-it's very useful to recognize that, so we can maybe do something about getting beyond it."
--Bill McKibben, author Oil and Honey: The Education of An Unlikely Activist
"An impressively researched, eloquently written critical-historical account of the seductive fascinations and cultural politics of petroculture's stranglehold on bodies, minds, imaginations, and communities during the past century, in North America and throughout the rest of the world. LeMenager's combination of analytical sophistication and narrative flair makes Living Oil a breakthrough accomplishment for the new environmental criticism."
--Lawrence Buell, author of The Future of Environmental Criticism
"Gracefully written, poignant, and fiercely intelligent, Living Oil reveals the centrality of petroculture to American modernity. LeMenager's synthetic brilliance across a wide range of genres and discourses not only demonstrates how profoundly oil has shaped contemporary culture, but offers us the possibility of genuine change. This is an invaluable book."
--Paul Outka, author of Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance
"The first great study of the complex cultural politics of the petroleum era, Stephanie LeMenager's Living Oil hums with critical energy. Moving effortlessly between memoir, literary study, testimony, travel writing, and social and political criticism, Living Oil can confidently take its place amongst the very best work in cultural studies being produced today."
--Imre Szeman, co-author of After Globalization
Review
andldquo;This is a highly significant, original, and engaging book. Schneider-Mayerson provides a sophisticated analysis of the rise of libertarianism in the United States and articulates well how the struggle to form a collective response reflects a decline of trust in social institutions and the rise of individualism. Peak Oil is well-written, compelling, and very timely. It will no doubt be of interest to readers both inside and outside of the academy.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Schneider-Mayersonandrsquo;s inventive and illuminating study of the peak oil movement is just the kind of scholarly intervention we need now to help us grapple fully with the social and political challenges we face. If his exploration of the practices and beliefs of the andlsquo;Peakistsandrsquo; is cause for worry, it isnandrsquo;t because of how they view fossil fuels or its environmental impact. Itandrsquo;s in the largely individual response of peak oil advocates to what is of necessity a collective problem. This mainstreaming of a libertarian ethos in the United States and elsewhereandmdash;on both right and leftandmdash;should ring alarm bells. As much an analysis of contemporary US political culture as it is about the politics of climate change, Peak Oil makes for a stellar addition to debates in which we all have a stake today.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;From Mad Max to Mad Men, this dead-on critique of long held beliefs about masculinity and traditions of American individualism and techno-optimismandmdash;all steadily becoming associated with a andlsquo;shift towards libertarianismandrsquo;andmdash;is by turns entertaining, insightful, and troubling. The book clearly outlines how these traditions and beliefs present daunting challenges to communities interested in organizing and implementing effective and timely responses to accelerating global climate change.andrdquo;
Synopsis
and#147;Porn.and#160; Peak Oil.and#160; Enjoy.and#8221;and#160; This is the title of a YouTube video with over 300,00 views that was made in 2007 for the purpose of explaining a subculture of people who believe an imminent collapse of industrial society is coming our way, the result of oil scarcity and energy depletion.and#160; The video features a sexualized and#147;Cassandra,and#8221; performing a mock-striptease in split screen (on the right, with a sober explanation of peak oil on the left by the same woman, dressed modestly).and#160; The believers are called and#147;peakistsand#8221;:and#160; they wind up changing jobs, buying land, retrofitting their homes, driving less, biking more, stockpiling supplies, and even leaving their partners as a result of their newfound belief system.and#160; Schneider-Mayerson has delivered account of the movement, vividly portrayed through interviews with peakists and a mostly hidden network of virtual communities in blogs, podcasts, fiction, nonfiction books, videos, and disaster movies.and#160; He spells out the political, ecological, cultural, and (to a degree, adumbrated by and#147;apocalypseand#8221;) religious aspects of this movement, addicted as it is to fatalism, abrupt/cataclysmic change, and an odd convergence of right- and left-wing survivalism.and#160; Gender plays a role (and#147;male hysteriaand#8221; is a notable feature), as 90% of the peakists turn out to be white males, tracked here with edgy, compulsive narrative momentum from political defeatism to the libertarian shift within the Left.and#160;and#160;and#160; Probably no recent book focused on social movements will generate as much excitement as this one, even as Schneider-Mayerson shows how a decline in appeal for peakism has followed on our new era of fracking and tar sands. He compares Peakists to Doomers and Preppies in useful ways for cultural and political commentators.and#160; Whether or not the peak of oil production may already have passed us, the fact of chapters of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in 23 countries indicates a powerful global presence, not ready by any means to fade from view.
Synopsis
In recent years, the concept of andldquo;peak oilandrdquo;andmdash;the moment when global oil production peaks and a train of economic, social, and political catastrophes accompany its subsequent declineandmdash;has captured the imagination of a surprisingly large number of Americans, ordinary citizens as well as scholars, and created a quiet, yet intense underground movement.
In Peak Oil, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson takes readers deep inside the world of andldquo;peakists,andrdquo; showing how their hopes and fears about the postcarbon future led them to prepare for the social breakdown they foreseeandmdash;all of which are fervently discussed and debated via websites, online forums, videos, and novels. By exploring the worldview of peakists, and the unexpected way that the fear of peak oil and climate change transformed many members of this left-leaning group into survivalists, Schneider-Mayerson builds a larger analysis of the rise of libertarianism, the role of oil in modern life, the political impact of digital technologies, the racial and gender dynamics of post-apocalyptic fantasies, and the social organization of environmental denial.
About the Author
Stephanie LeMenager is the Barbara and Carlisle Moore Distinguished Professor in English and American Literature at the University of Oregon. She is the author of
Manifest and Other Destinies: Territorial Fictions of the Nineteenth-Century United States.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Introduction - Ultradeep, Petroleum Culture in the American Century
Chapter 1 - Origins, Spills
Chapter 2 - The Aesthetics of Petroleum
Chapter 3 - Petromelancholia
Chapter 4 - The Petroleum Archive
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Index