Oecologies

Anna Dobrowolski (UC Davis)

On Friday, October 25, the Oecologies working group discussed Francis Bacon’s and Boccaccio’s versions of the Prometheus myth along with Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer’s introduction their Energy Humanities anthology. The conversation anticipates the upcoming conference, Energy Transitions in Long Modernity, which will take place at UCLA’s Clark Library on January 10, 2025.

Tiffany Jo Werth (UC Davis) opened the discussion by inviting participants to consider narratives of energy predating the use of fossil fuels. Inspired by Olivia Judson’s article in Nature Ecology and Evolution, which identifies five energetic epochs—geochemical energy, sunlight, oxygen, flesh, and fire—Werth suggested reimagining these epochs as part of a broader history of energy rather than a modern phenomenon. She suggested that what is at stake is not just the type of energy but how it is narrativized over time.

Todd Borlik (Purdue University) expanded on Szeman and Boyer’s introduction, calling attention to two of their proposed interventions, “grasp[ing] the full intricacies of our imbrication with energy systems (and with fossil fuels in particular), and second, map[ping] out other ways of being, behaving, and belonging in relation to both old and new forms of energy” (8). Though energy is largely discussed in modern terms (at least in the energy and environmental humanities), early modernists can adapt certain strategies such as “reading for energy” or “back-projecting” as we think of our own present-day energy regimes. These so-called retrofuturist perspective—past visions of [energy’s] future—might illuminate potential practices we can recycle, reactivate, or reboot, especially as we think about imaging a future where we consume less.

Reading for energy also ties to questions of belonging. In what ways do energy regimes of the past help us reconceptualize cultural narratives? Who has access to the rights and freedoms related to energy? Who is displaced? Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer use oil and petrocultures to address energy unconsciousness by making visible those energy sources that shape our everyday lives. Borlik suggests that we reread texts like Bacon’s New Atlantis and other examples of early science fiction—even pastoral poetry—to look for similar interventions.

As a case study and exercise, Werth shared Ruben’s preparatory study Prometheus and asked participants to think deeper about fire as an energy source. Without reading the placard, the group observed how the painter renders fire (i.e. without smoke or soot, the source seems sanitized). Werth turned our attention to the affective registers of Prometheus moving away from a mysterious, divine source of light and energy. One participant, Mikhaila Redovian, noted the glint reflected in Prometheus’s eye as contrasting other ambiguous sources of light in the scene. Vin Nardizzi pointed out that Prometheus’s taut muscles and clenched toes suggests a struggle against the wind during his descent, which tied back to a line in Szeman and Boyer’s introduction: “There may have been coal capitalism and oil capitalism; there cannot be solar or wind capitalism.” This provoked further discussion about energy crossing domains (celestial/divine to terrestrial). Borlik connected the painting’s illicit activity of stealing energy from a divine/celestial source to Oppenheimer saying “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” after the first detonation of the atomic bomb; the parallels between mastery of fire and mastery of atomic energy both point to destruction. Robert Watson (UCLA) expanded on the striation from solar power to combustion to produce heat and light; the myths’ implied threat of replacing the sun with fire at night. If solar/wind is clean (cheap, free) [but the act of harnessing it is illicit, costly and destructive], then haven’t we already moved beyond the question of solar/wind capitalism?

Wallace Cleaves (UCR) added this quote from the National Ignition Facility to illustrate that the Promethean myth is still relevant today: “To answer that old question of, over those 60 years, what team would be the modern Prometheus to bring star fire to the Earth, and when would that time be — and it’s you and it’s now,” NIF&PS Principal Associate Director Jeff Wisoff said. https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/llnl-scientists-cheer-dawn-of-the-era-of-ignition

After looking at the image, the group revisited the Boccaccio/Bacon readings to contemplate Prometheus’s descent and fire’s future utility. In both readings, fire is a “civilizing” force that enables cooking, heating, and seeing in the dark. An allegorical reading of the Promethean myth (fire as a source of knowledge, movement from darkness to light) also provides a Janus-like rhetorical move: as he turns away from the divine origins, he looks towards a future in which energy is quite literally in his hand (the role of homo faber comes to mind). However, negative consequences of this regenerative energy source led to a brief digression to the Promethean myth as construed in later periods, such as Percy Shelley’s poem Prometheus Unbound and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Discussion of these more modern constructions asked participants how they might connect the dots, or rather the relationship between terrestrial and celestial domains, in Boccaccio’s and Bacon’s texts? As a jumping off point, participants discussed the contrast between fire’s generative, life-giving associations against the image of the eagle eating the ever-regenerating stomach. To what extent is regeneration a punishment?

One question that arose was whether allegory (versus analogy) continues to be a useful framework within energy humanities (especially when rhetorical strategies prioritize data and survey results). Borlik offered the idea of homo faber for further contemplation on human labor in energy studies, and Joseph Campana (Rice University) alluded to History of the World in 7 Cheap Things by Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel as an example of a text that questions how coal, petroleum, energy panels, etc. shape cultural productions. Should future discussions about energy sources in early modern texts be framed in terms of value—of thinking through the fire, sunlight, wind, labor, and the fennel stalk used to carry the fire as accessible commodities?