Cultures of Energy

Dominic and Cymene talk urban turkey encounters on this week’s edition of the Cultures of Energy podcast. With multispecies on our minds, we then (8:59) check in with Dartmouth’s Laura Ogden. We begin with her experience growing up in the Everglades and how it sparked a life long interest in multispecies relations and the hidden histories of landscapes often regarded as “wilderness.” We touch on her 2011 book Swamplife and talk alligator subjectivity, their relations with humans and the special challenges of thinking about predator-predator relations within multispecies ethnography. Laura gives us her take on the environmental challenges facing swamplife in the Everglades today and then we turn to her current work on invasive species in Tierra del Fuego. We hear how Peronism brought Canadian beavers to Argentina and how their spread into Chile helped her to rethink species assemblages. We talk about Laura’s collaborations with feminist performance artists and ecologists, why she thinks the term “resilience” is an anti-politics machine, and the first environmentalist victory in Chilean history. We close by discussing her current book project, Loss and Wonder at the World’s End.

California is burning again. So, in solidarity, Cymene and Dominic try to do an intro segment with N95 masks on and quickly realize this isn’t a good way to have to live. To learn more about the evolving field of wildfire management we then (13:40) chat with the amazing Adriana Petryna from U Penn. First we ask how a nice anthropologist like her became famous for studying disasters like Chernobyl. We discuss how she came to her concept of “biological citizenship” and her thinking about risk. That gets us back to wildfires and Adriana’s interest in scientific responses to our unpredictable climate. We get into how current models of fire suppression and prevention are deteriorating as fires become more unpredictable and as firefighters resist the idea that they become a military force tasked with fighting nature. Adriana describes the situation of responding to a changing climate as though it is not changing as “diligent insanity.” We then talk about how denialism is often linked to the idea that we’re protected (by a cult of first responders); about fire as a non-linear process; and about the need to update models of fire behavior to take “new fire” and new fuels into account. Finally. Adriana shares her thoughts on “retreat” as analytic and possible new mode of biopolitics in the Anthropocene. Want to read more? Check out Adriana’s brand new article on wildfires in Cultural Anthropology:https://culanth.org/articles/977-wildfires-at-the-edges-of-science-horizoning-work

Cymene and Dominic get their mojo back as they dip their toes into the blue wave. Then (13:12) we connect with Anne Galloway about her life and work as a scholar and a farmer. We start with Anne’s thoughts on how raising sheep as a farmer has made her part of a flock and how the complexity of those relations have changed how she thinks about the Anthropocene, in particular about death. Anne answers the question, “Can you kill something you love?” and this gets us to talking about ethics, responsibility and kinship in our relations with “livestock animals.” Anne explains why she finds it problematic that academics and activists often equate all animal husbandry with industrial farming practices. We talk about catching flak from farmers as well as academics, about companionate animals named and unnamed, the key characteristics of sheepishness, and turn from there to Anne’s interests in ethnographic and speculative design and her plan to do a second doctorate in creative writing. We close by wondering whether Anne has any chance of getting her sheep into Peter Jackson’s next Tolkien adaptation.

Cymene and Dominic recap their Halloween on this week’s episode of the podcast and plug the spooky new Cultural Anthropology series, “Time of Monsters,” (https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1584-time-of-monsters). Then (15:59) with many eyes on next week’s U.S. midterm election, Paige West joins us in the studio to process the social and environmental stakes of our contemporary political situation. We talk about slogging through the past two years of  Trumpism, the resurgence of interest in local politics, the politicization and erasure of climate issues in the U.S., and how much New Yorkers are still paying attention to climate change years after Hurricane Sandy. A frank conversation follows about what climate-minded scholars can really do to help in these political times and about the need to experiment with new media for public communication to help us find wider audiences. We consider whether we can assemble a coalition of scholars who will pledge to give free lectures on climate change at community colleges around the country. What do you think dear listeners? Would you join us? We close with the indigenous hip hop scene that is better than the punk renaissance we dreamed of in 2016. And we promise Paige an owl. PS You can listen to the Snotty Nose Rez Kids on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/snottynoserezkids

Dominic tries to sing Ted Cruz out of office on this week’s podcast and retells a story about the senator’s dirty shirt. Then (14:59) fellow anthropologist and environmental humanities podcaster Tim Neale (of Deakin University) joins us from the future in Melbourne. With him we review their very successful recent Anthropocene Campus and its effort to think deep thoughts and deep time through the lens of the elements while visiting exotic local Anthropocene sites like Melbourne’s “poo farm.” We then return to Tim’s own work and talk through his recent book, Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia (U Hawaii Press, 2017) which traces the rise and fall of Australia’s Wild Rivers Act and the ways in which the aestheticization of environment can contribute to the dispossession of indigenous peoples. We talk about effort to include and exclude rivers and aboriginal peoples from settler liberal politics, the impact of the 1992 Mabo Decision and the negotiation of usufructuary rights, why the Wild Rivers Act was eventually repealed and with what legacy. We then turn to Tim’s new research on fire management, carbon storage and risk modeling in Australia and close by plugging Tim’s own excellent podcast, anthropology@deakin, which you can find at https://soundcloud.com/user-910866758  PS American citizens, please don’t forget to vote!!  

Dominic and Cymene talk foot injuries, bears, and a project called "smell my box." We then (15:52) welcome to the podcast the marvelous Caroline Jones from MIT who talks about her amazing research and curatorial work on bioart, biofiction, psychology, phenomenology, neuroscience and much much more. We start with her provocative concept of “symbiontics” which points toward a change of human consciousness necessary for our survival as a species. She tells us about the works of artists like Jenna Sutela, Tomás Saraceno and Annicka Yi who have helped inspire her symbiontic thinking. We talk cultural evolution, survival of the most interdependent as an alternative to survival of the fittest, art as philosophy and politics, feminist bacteria, and the ethics of interspecies art. We turn from there to her current collaboration with historian of science Peter Galison on visibility and invisibility in the Anthropocene. We close on cybernetics, the idea that consciousness doesn’t stop at the limits of the individual mind and what we could learn from splicing a bit of sequoia genetic material into our own.  

We get to hear about Cymene’s mod years and her experience this week with “cat therapy.” And then (14:06) Dominic speaks with Cambridge environmental historian Paul Warde about his new book, The Invention of Sustainability: Nature and Destiny, ca. 1500-1870 (Cambridge UP 2018) which traces our contemporary interest in sustainable futures back to the concerns and inventions of early modern politics and economy. We start with the endemic problems of sustenance and fuel that were much on the mind of early modern European government and how they helped to shape future resource provision into a durable political problem. Paul explains how also changing was the idea that government should be responsible for resource provision in the first place and how this suggests that sustainability is an intrinsic feature of modern politics rather than a problem that is likely to be solved through particular policy interventions. We talk intergenerational ethics, the circumstances surrounding the transition from wood fuel to coal, the rise of a concept of “state” as autonomous political entity, the preoccupations of early political economy, early technoptimism, urbanization, metabolic rift and much more. We close with Paul’s thinking about energy policy today.

Dominic and Cymene talk about the country’s first robot sex brothel coming to Houston. And then (14:40) we welcome the amazing Cara Daggett to the podcast. Cara has an amazing book in press with Duke that everyone should pre-order. It’s entitled The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics and the Politics of Work and it describes how the modern conceptualization of the term “energy” only came about during the Victorian period. Cara begins by explaining how Aristotle’s conceptualization of energy as “dynamic virtue” was different from our own imagination of the relationship of energy and work as having to do with moving matter. From there we move to exploring the labor/energy nexus that proved so vital to European modernity. We talk about what empire, evolutionary theory, Presbyterianism and thermodynamics contributed to Victorian thinking about energy. We turn to entropy, decay and waste and how Victorian energy imaginaries have been extended to include much discourse on renewable energy too. We make a brief detour through the Victorian Anthropocene before asking whether it is possible to unwind energy conceptually from a soul-crushing Protestant ethic of perpetual work. We close with a discussion of Cara’s recent article on petromasculinity and the misogyny of fossil fuel use and what it was like to become a target of radical right venom. What would a feminist energy system look like? Listen on!

This week’s episode starts with some serious reflections on cracked masculinity, misogyny, 1980s culture, and the Supreme Court. But in the spirit of demanding better worlds to come, we then (15:30) welcome Darin Barney (McGill U) and Imre Szeman (U Waterloo) to talk through how best to imagine and enact positive solar futures. We start with their planning for After Oil 2: Solarity, a conference that will take place at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/) in Montreal May 23-25, 2019. Imre begins by walking us through logic behind the first edition of After Oil (http://afteroil.ca/what-is-aos/), which brought together forty people from diverse backgrounds to write a manifesto on life after petroculture. Darin then explains the concept for Solarity and how it seeks to push the speculative dimension of energy humanities farther in order to help break with the hegemony of various forms of petroknowledge. We talk about solarity as a zone of contestation, solarity as menace, solarity as emancipation from other social ills, and raise questions such as ‘what would solar theory look like?’ After hearing about their exciting plans for Solarity, we close by catching up with Imre and Darin about their own latest research projects. PS Go McGill for moving one step closer to fossil fuel divestment!

Cymene and Dominic debate whether dogs can have bullshit jobs on this week’s podcast. Then (13:46) we are most fortunate to welcome NYU’s Rosalind Fredericks to the podcast to talk about her brand new book, Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal (Duke U Press). But before getting there we ask Rozy why she thinks garbage/waste/discard studies are becoming so popular these days and what its lively interdisciplinary conversation is teaching us about value and materiality. Rozy tells us about how sanitation infrastructure first got her interested in understanding waste and how the trash strikes that took place during her fieldwork cemented her commitment to studying the politics and materiality of garbage in Dakar. We talk about the Set/Setal movement and how it utilized garbage work as a medium through which to revitalize Senegalese politics. From there we turn to the intersection of waste with Islamic ideas of purity and practices of piety, the political power of wastework, consumption and recycling, urbanization, climate refugeeism and the African Anthropocene. Rozy explains to us what she means by “vital infrastructures” and “salvage bricolage” as we turn to her new research on the work of trash reclaimers at one of Dakar’s largest dumps. We close with Rozy’s distant past life as a dumpster diver and her prize mini bottle collection.