Editor's Column: Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power, and Other Energy Sources

Abstract

Power! Incredible, barbaric power! A blast, a siren of light within him, rending, quaking, fusing his brain and blood to a fountain of flame, vast rockets in a searing spray! Power! (419)

Migrating Literacies: Redefining Knowledge Mobility for the Digital Age

“…50 The Editor's Colum in PMLA (2011) suggests a remobilization that turns away from dividing literary works "into hundred-year intervals…or categories," in favour of asking "what happens if we sort texts according to the energy sources that made them possible?" 51 Patricia Yaeger charts "some coordinates for an energy-driven literary theory", 52 suggesting that "thinking about literature through the lens of energy, especially the fuel basis of economies, means getting serious about modes of production as a force field for culture". 53 Such an approach, she argues, could change "reading methodologies," compelling attention to a text's "energy unconscious" along the lines of Fredric Jameson's theorization of the "political unconscious" 54 and enabling contemplations of literature in relation to scale and trade.…”

“…51 Patricia Yaeger charts "some coordinates for an energy-driven literary theory", 52 suggesting that "thinking about literature through the lens of energy, especially the fuel basis of economies, means getting serious about modes of production as a force field for culture". 53 Such an approach, she argues, could change "reading methodologies," compelling attention to a text's "energy unconscious" along the lines of Fredric Jameson's theorization of the "political unconscious" 54 and enabling contemplations of literature in relation to scale and trade. 55 Imre Szeman, in responding to Yeager's Editor's Column, restates the Forum's theme as reframing literature away from "movements (e.g., modernism), nations (British modernism), or centuries" toward placing it "in relation to dominant forms of energy".…”

“…53 Such an approach, she argues, could change "reading methodologies," compelling attention to a text's "energy unconscious" along the lines of Fredric Jameson's theorization of the "political unconscious" 54 and enabling contemplations of literature in relation to scale and trade. 55 Imre Szeman, in responding to Yeager's Editor's Column, restates the Forum's theme as reframing literature away from "movements (e.g., modernism), nations (British modernism), or centuries" toward placing it "in relation to dominant forms of energy". 56 To this extent, this special issue merely continues the contemporary fascination with mobility by taking it one step further.…”

The poetics of extractivism and the politics of visibility

“…17 Yaeger's compelling proposal of an 'energy unconscious', based on Fredric Jameson's notion of the 'political unconscious', demands that we attend to 'the repressed, the non-dit, and to the text as a tissue of contradictions' that encodes its own relationship with the fuel source(s) that shaped the political economy of the period in which it was produced. 18 Shifting the burden of identifying such internal forces to the reader, Jennifer Wenzel has proposed a methodology that consists in identifying protocols of reading and modes of inquiry that can perceive the pressure that energy exerts on culture, even and especially when energy is not-said: invisible, erased, elided, so "slippery" [ … ] and ubiquitous as to elude representation and critical attention. 19 As energy becomes a crucial addition to categories of materialist analysis, 20 one of the crucial tasks of criticism thus becomes that of overcoming this critical blindspot by rendering visible the methods and materialities of extractivism as forces that exercise a shaping effect on literary form.…”

Stories of Energy: Narrative in the Energy Humanities

“…), but through the dominant energy source (Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power etc.). The collection included essays on the literature of each of those energy sources 31. While it is important to remember that these are not simple, linear transitions, consideration of energy literatures reminds us of the repeated changes between energy sources.…”