“Dirty Energy” and Ecological Performativity in Contemporary English Poems: Critiquing Petro Culture of the Anthropocene

Abstract

Fossil fuels will always take command of human’s daily life. Despite being “dirty energy”, humans cannot jettison them since they are the mainstay for multipurpose energies. They are more dependable and accessible than renewable energy sources such as hydropower, solar panel, and wind power. Even more so, in this present globalization the increasing scale of consumerism via digital technology and social media consumes the fuels. This petro-overconsumption of the fuels and their derivative products such as plastic certainly has some detrimental impacts: the more emission of carbon dioxide and other toxic particles to the atmosphere. Contemporary English poems are some works that critique the petro-overconsumption. A Canadian poet, Stephen Collis in his poem “Take Oil & Hum”; a Hawaiian poet, Craig Santos Peres in his poem about plastic, “The Age of Plastic”; and two Indonesian poets, AfrizalMalna in “petrol cupboard” and F. Aziz Manna in “Estuary” are the epitome of ecopoems that share this concern. With their performative interiorizing of petro-materiality, their depiction of petro-transcorporeality from one form into another, they articulate the polemics and impacts of non-renewable energy on human and nonhuman creatures as the issue of ecological precarity in the era of anthropocene.