Abstract
I want to begin my commentary on Lifeblood by stating unequivocally that I loved this book. Potential readers should not be fooled, however. Lifeblood is not primarily about oil. Instead, what author Matthew Huber tries to do – and does very well – is provide a cultural explanation of the rise of American conservatism and suburban populist anger, of how a middle class that became such precisely because of state intervention acceded to an apolitical economy in which the state was seen as the problem, of how neoliberal governmentalities – or what he calls entrepreneurial life – took hold in ways that defined White middle class identities, and of how ideas of freedom somehow became consistent with neoconservative suppression of social freedoms. Without explicit reference, basically what Huber provides is an explanation of the rise of the American Tea Party. Where oil enters is in the observation that Tea Party politics are entirely wrapped up in the lifestyles afforded by abundant oil, as indicated in their rallying cry of the 2008 presidential elections: ‘drill, baby, drill’.
While others have placed the rise of consent to neoliberalism in reaction to the gains of the 1960s and 1970s by social movements and non-White folk, Huber places the rise of consent in an earlier era. For him, consent was already immanent in bargains that were forged during the New Deal and the early Fordist era. His argument is that the essential Fordist postwar bargain was a rote, albeit well-paying job for a good home life. The sphere of social reproduction became where freedom was experienced and where meaning was to be made. Consent was therefore not derived from false consciousness but from a clear separation of ‘life’ and ‘work’, so much so that the home itself was a factory of sorts, where the family had ownership of the means of social reproduction. (That homes and washing machines are private property is not incidental to his analysis.) Where false consciousness makes its subtle entry is with the pervasive idea that this good life enjoyed by the American middle class resulted from the ‘can-do’ of individuals when in fact the state was everywhere in making this life possible, from implementing social security programs to building the interstate highway system. False consciousness is also reflected in the pervasive neglect that this was a way of life afforded primarily to White people.
Huber uses oil to understand what made these geographies possible as material phenomena. It is not that oil does not do other work in this book: Huber regularly points readers to the particular resource qualities of oil that did not determine productive relations but certain shaped them. Its dense energy, propensity to flow, and chemical composition were central to the development of American capitalism more generally. And Huber is careful not to fetishize oil. He is clear that oil does not make war – people do, although oil’s materiality and how it has been mobilized historically shape peoples’ ideas of what they want and need. Here, Huber’s ontology is squarely in the vein of the ‘old’ materiality such that ‘things’ do not have a life of their own but rather come into being through human relations. His primary point, though, is that it was oil that made automobility and suburban life possible – not just the roads and cars but the ‘consumer durables’, labor saving devices, and even the ample and convenient food. Oil, then, was crucial in the creation of consent. To demonstrate this point empirically, Huber makes good use of advertisements to demonstrate how oil production and consumption were closely tied to middle class aspirations. He also judiciously uses letters to the editor to demonstrate that Americans were enrolled in this culture. Oil’s major role in the making of consent thus explains why discursive threats to oil abundance, whether in the form of ‘peak oil’, ‘energy conservation’, or ‘climate change’, are ideas that many Americans resist, dispute, or deny.
Reading the book as a food scholar, I enjoyed finding the many parallels and articulations with food and oil, notwithstanding that food is more universally understood as essential to life. One was that oil is a source of energy, as are calories. It was calories that fueled muscle power, which prior to automobiles and machinery did the work of capitalism. A second is that both food and oil are subject to discourses of scarcity among plenitude. Like food, that is, the distributive problem with oil has been systemic overproduction – and glut. And yet ideas of scarcity continue to shape ideas of how to manage production. For example, like small food producers, small oil producers have resisted attempts to rationalize marketing and have made themselves price takers. A third is the fallacy of arguments that blame consumers for either scarcity or waste. Like the consumption of ‘cheap food’, the consumption of ‘cheap oil’ has become the primary way to hang on to middle class status when wages are poor, debt is high, and insecurity is pervasive. Where I might differ with Huber is in his discussion (pp. 88–9) of the emergence of discourses of personal responsibility in relation to health and the imperative to self-fashion around dietary discipline and healthy food choices. While I concur that neoliberalism has generated such ideas about food and bodies (as I have argued at length elsewhere), my sense is that Huber’s subjects are not particularly enrolled in the cultures of food he describes. To the contrary, many might reject the restrained and effete eating associated with ‘yuppie chow’ and prefer ‘super-sized’ fare, with its analogs in gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles (SUVs). It is Tea Party politicians who have been put on record as opposing regulations to ban trans fats or create higher nutritional standards for school meals. Often invoking the so-called nanny state, they suggest that eating whatever you want is central to America’s freedom. That Huber misses this connection leads me to one of the three critiques I had for the book, made in the spirit of generativeness.
One is about interpellation. A question that has nagged me ever since reading Paul Robbins’ Lawn People, in which Robbins suggests widespread but not universal enrollment in cultures of the perfect American lawn, is how it is that some people are interpellated into particular cultures while others are not. 1 What makes some manicure their lawn and others grow cactus gardens in the desert? Analogously, what makes some desire the suburban home while others, even those with the means to obtain it, reject such a culture? The issue at hand is one of subjectivity. Huber’s book is effectively providing an argument about middle class subject making, but I came away unsure of his theory of the subject.
A second is about gender. To discuss at length the centrality of the private home and the sphere of social reproduction as where middle class life is made begs the question of the division of labor within those private spaces and whether this good life is equitably shared among family members. It also raises questions about how shifts from the so-called family wage to two-wage-earner households have perhaps shifted meanings about this life. Following from comments above, I also think there was material to explore regarding masculinity and gas-guzzling cars. No one book can do everything, but I wonder what a gender analysis would have added.
A third is about new articulations of work and life. Huber’s book intervenes at a time when the separation of life and work is increasingly difficult to sustain – and in ways that do not necessarily defy alienation. As Kathi Weeks writes, with the imperative of productivity, work intrudes so deeply into life right now (e.g. work at home arrangements, work that far surpasses the 40-hour week, workplace leisure, and social activities) that even vacations can no longer be seen as disengagement from capitalist work processes since they are so purposed around renewal for work. 2 At the same time, the precarity economy has given rise to a new generation of young adults who either refuse work or have come up with creative ways to manage artistic and pleasurable pursuits while somehow making ends meet. Huber’s analysis does not really provide the tools to think through these emerging articulations of work, life, and livelihood.
Nevertheless, in looking at the present moment and imminent futures, Huber does one thing very well. Notwithstanding the desires of DIYers to return to a world fueled by muscle power, he recognizes the widespread fear that a loss of cheap energy may instill. A return to drudgery is not a vision that is likely to win many hearts and minds. His is a more forward-looking imaginary that recognizes the problem lies not with machines, but in our failure to recognize, and here I quote from the last sentence of the book, ‘the social and collective forces that make any life possible’ (p. 169).
All in all, Lifeblood is brilliant, novel, and important, and I hope it gains a readership beyond academia. I intend to use it in my own undergraduate teaching. Those who are similarly inclined might consider omitting parts of chapter 1, where less trained readers may be challenged with some of Huber’s theoretical musings over the real subsumption of work and life, as thoughtful and illuminating as they are.