Fossil modernity: The materiality of acceleration, slow violence, and ecological futures

Abstract

This article seeks to materialize social theories of modern temporalities. It proposes a tempo-material analysis of carbon resources like coal, oil, and gas to illuminate how fossil materialities both underpin and undermine modern temporalities and introduce the notion of fossil modernity to evoke an understanding of the modern composed of multiple conflicting modes of material temporality. Fossil resources (fossil fuels and petrochemical substances) drive the pace and progressive perspective of modernity. The residuals of these resources (CO2, plastic waste, and petrochemical toxins) confront societies with long-lasting ecological damage. Fossil fuels helped to produce the expectation of growth and endless possibility. Fossil residuals create a horizon of ecological liabilities in which past options have become future obligations. This renders the pretences of “modernization” understood as a process of constant renewal and innovation problematic. The article argues that modern societies cannot simply overcome their material–temporal predicaments through “decarbonization” because even after a shift to solar power, organic agriculture, and sustainable plastics, the fossil past will continue to influence, inform, and incite social operations. The article thus shows how different responses to the problems of fossil modernity need to go back to and emerge from the material residues of the past: this goes for bio-capitalist projects seeking to “recycle” the entropic temporality of fossil residuals as well as for environmental justice movements that decipher these residuals as indexes of social asymmetries and call for socio-ecological “redistribution.”

Elements of power: Material-political entanglements in Australia's fossil fuel hegemony

“…The longer that the use of fossil fuels continues, the more entrenched their effects become in the world ecology, in a process of ‘inscriptive energetics’ (Otjen and Otjen, 2019) or ‘inhuman becoming’ (Yusoff, 2013). Burning coal, for example, links the present moment with the deep past, when the plants that became fossilised in the form of coal first grew (Folkers, 2021). Energy, from the bio-energy of animals or human populations to the energy generated through burning fossil fuels or harnessing the motion of wind or water, has been central to the operation of political power and territorial conquest (Bridge et al, 2018; Cederlöf, 2021; Rickards and Oppermann, 2018).…”

Antroposeeni, kapitaloseeni, fossiilikapitalismi

“…Tuotanto kyetään täydellisesti siirtämään abstraktiin aikaan vain fossiilienergian avulla (Altvater 2007b, 41;Folkers 2021;ks. myös Altvater 1989).…”

Low-carbon cows: From microbial metabolism to the symbiotic planet

“…Curiously, DSM stands for Dutch State Mines and was founded in 1902 as a government-run coal mining company that until recently very much embodied the values and business models of ‘fossil modernity’ ( Folkers, 2021 ). During the 20th century, DSM turned into a large chemical company specializing in chemical fertilizers and petro-chemicals like plastic ( Van Rooij, 2007 ).…”