Mining voids: Extraction and emotion at the Australian coal frontier

Abstract

Wollar is a small village located in the Mid-Western Region in New South Wales, Australia. Geographically removed, climatically different and culturally distinct from the Arctic, it might seem as a distant case for the exploration of Arctic Uchranotopias and resource extraction; the topic of this Special Issue. Yet, the affective and temporal dimensions of mining are not necessarily restricted to distinct regions, and there are theoretical opportunities for cooperative analysis across diverse regions. By bringing forward this case study, I aim to illustrate how the concepts of mining emotions and Uchranotopia have applicability beyond the polar region and how a broader theory of mining emotions may be advanced. Through the notion of “mining voids,” I investigate how discourses of extraction as prosperity clash with lived experiences at the coal face. Mining voids—both present and future—have become markers for physical and social landscapes and, as a metaphor, it embeds the contradiction between utopian narratives of a coal-sponsored future and dystopian imaginings at the coal face. Through analysis of the discourses of mining voids and how, as the voids materialise, emotions are mined, I will tie this case study to the debate of Arctic resource extraction and community making, affect and temporality.

Emotional subjectivities and the trajectory of a Peruvian mining conflict

“…The deep emotional connections that people feel to places that are sources of cultural identity lead to profound disruptions to well-being when access to such places is lost via dispossession (Dallman, et al, 2013; Zenko & Menga, 2019). Askland's work on how emotional attachments lead to distinct ‘future imaginings’ presents ‘how mining has dug not only dirt and minerals out of place’ but also has ‘left a void – physical, social and temporal – where affective imaginings of future place are colonised by a rationalist mining discourse’ (Askland, 2020, p. 2). The idea that in extractive conflicts emotions can become tools used by hegemonic forces to impose upon the internal lives of affected populations is present in other work too.…”

The final voids: the ambiguity of emptiness in Australian coal mine rehabilitation

“…As Askland further argues in relation to the mining voids explicitly, ‘[M]ining has dug not only dirt and minerals but also people and emotion out of place. It has left a void – physical, social, and temporal’ (2020: 2). This sort of solastalgia represents an intimacy with the landscape, and a latent politics in which landscape becomes integrated into human well‐being beyond its extractive value, including for non‐Indigenous people.…”