Abstract
Bob Johnson’s new book, Mineral Rites: An Archaeology of the Fossil Economy, seeks to unearth how fossil capitalism structures the epistemologies and ontologies of modernity. There have been a number of recent histories written on the role fossil fuels play in capitalist development. However, Johnson pushes against existing grand histories of fossil capitalism, focusing analysis on how fossilized carbon undergirds six modern artifacts: the hot yoga studio, a lump of coal on the Titanic, the idealized robot as “mechanical slave,” the road, a reality tv show about coal mining, and the cultural object of the novel. Through his nuanced accounts of the energetic relations entangled with objects, Johnson seeks to expose the complex relations of class, race, gender, and nationality that structure life under fossil capitalism.
Theoretically, Johnson attends to six modalities through which fossil fuels structure the quotidian rhythms and built environment of modern life. We rely on the ambient energy of heating and cooling systems to produce the modern habitus of home. The propulsive energy of fossil fuels has enabled new regimes of production and mobility. There is congealed energy embedded within modern monoliths of steel, glass, and concrete, which require massive energy inputs to create. Polymerized energy in the form of plastics has vastly expanded the world fiber supply. Feeding the global population relies upon the embodied energy of the modern food system. Finally, entropic energy drives forces of disorder through the way that fuel emissions disrupt patterns of life and the destructive potential of military apparatuses fueled by oil.
Johnson’s analysis is both provocative and accessible. It highlights the immanence of fossil fuels to the cultural practices of modernity. The energic potential of fossil capitalism enabled the vast technological apparatuses of modern life and bred faith in the capacity of technology to solve problems. But, as Johnson decries, the global infrastructure of fuel production and consumption has also increasingly distanced those who benefit under this energetic regime from their ethical obligations to those who suffer. This has enabled a radically unequal system to expand, enriching a small elite, improving the quality of life for a middle class, while foisting ever greater burdens on the global underclass.
Focusing on particular objects within the field of fossil capitalism highlights the need to take the cultural politics of carbon seriously, but it also reproduces particular blindspots. Johnson’s analysis, focused on the circuits of power within the fossil economy, particularly emphasizes the exploitative labor relations that underpin global fuel production. However, the growing population brutally excluded from the fossil economy and dispossessed of a means to survive often remains absent from the discussion. To imagine a life beyond fossil capitalism, Johnson argues that people must adopt a new structure of feeling and eschew the totalizing narratives of modern reason. However, with his analytic focus on objects under fossil capitalism, Johnson’s call for worlds otherwise lacks empirical heft. Fossil capitalism, even as it has created a global climate crisis, does not encompass all the ways that people enact relations to each other and the earth. To see worlds otherwise, we must not only nurture a new structure of feeling, but also extend analysis to relations beyond fossil capitalism.
