Cara Daggett sparks a dialogue on dynamism and works to demystify the human relationship to energy.

Cara Daggett is an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech and the author of The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-birth-of-energy), a book that explores the histories of energy from the perspective of feminist political ecology. In this conversation, Daggett makes it clear that the system of global capitalism has not captured all of our relationships and that other models of collective flourishing exist. That, in spite of the many indications that the late Anthropocene is accelerating past a crucial tipping point, we can still model a means of communicating against powerlessness. In pursuit of this, Daggett offers a timely and historical reevaluation of the drive for dynamism since the 19th century, a drive to put the world to work which she exposes as the heart of so much suffering. Her work takes aim at the anthropocentric and often misogynistic roots of violence and outlines some ways that we can demand a healthier future with less work, more pleasure and adequate abundance.