Editors' Note

Contributors

Phantasmagorias of Energy: Toward a Critical Theory of Energy and Economy by Brent Ryan Bellamy and Jeff Diamanti

Brent Ryan Bellamy and Jeff Diamanti make the case for the critique of energy by arguing that “the core contradiction of today’s economic system is and always has been tied to its facility with energy.” A critical standpoint on our ongoing economic and ecological crises demands a new historical account of energy.

Long Waves of Fossil Development: Periodizing Energy and Capital by Andreas Malm

Andreas Malm tracks a long history of capitalist expansion and crisis to make the case that its “contradictions and convulsions” are the moments that energy consumption and production do the most to “reproduce the fossil economy on ever greater scales.” Examining economic slowdowns or moments of depression might provide insights into the expansion of fossil fuel energy dependence.

Mapping the Atomic Unconscious: Postcolonial Capital in Nuclear Glow by Katherine Lawless

Turning to the ways immaterial forms of “accumulation and material forms of labor intersect” under postcolonial capitalism, Katherine Lawless maps the relation between cultural media and the flow of energy and asks: “What happens if we map the emergence of global memory cultures alongside the transition to nuclear energy?”

Petrofiction and Political Economy in the Age of Late Fossil Capital by Amy Riddle

Amy Riddle focuses on two novels, Oil on Water and Cities of Salt, to explore the “cultural logic of late fossil capital,” exploring the relation between oil as a commodity form and oil as part of nature, on one hand, and on the other, the distinction between realism and naturalism as argued by Georg Lukács in “Narrate or Describe?”

The Political Energies of the Archaeomodern Tool by Amanda Boetzkes

Taking up work from the 2015 Venice Biennale and Fredric Jameson’s Representing Capital, Amanda Boetzkes explores the intersection of the use of energies in both political struggle and the work of machines, arguing for reading the importance of Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “archaeomodern tool,” in which political energies can be gauged in their representation as petrified objects.

Keeping the Lights On: Oil Shocks, Coal Strikes, and the Rise of Electroculture by David Thomas

David Thomas takes a close look at the United Kingdom during the 1970s to examine the emergence of “electroculture.” Mapping class struggle, dispossession, and state violence onto a history of oil, Thomas makes the case that labor politics and energy politics are deeply intertwined.

Antiphysis/Antipraxis: Universal Exhaustion and the Tragedy of Materiality by Alberto Toscano

Through a prolonged engagement with two indispensable works on the critique of energy — Fossil Capital and Capitalism in the Web of Life — Alberto Toscano develops a theory of universal exhaustion, positing a dialectics and tragedy of depletion and exhaustion that points to the limits to both nature and capital.

Afterword by Oxana Timofeeva

Through the dialectic of parasite and host, Oxana Timofeeva underscores the link between capital and energy, pressing this dialectic into a brief comparison of labor and oil to reiterate the importance of Marxist dialectics to the study and critique of energy.

Book Reviews

Anthropocene Marxism by Thomas Laughlin

Thomas A. Laughlin reviews Marx and the Earth by John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett.

“In the Heat of this Ongoing Past”: Three Lessons on Energy, Climate, and Materialism by Jordan B. Kinder

Jordan B. Kinder reviews two books by Andreas Malm.

Aesthetics and Activism by Stacey Balkan

Stacey Balkan reviews Shelley Streeby’s Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making Through Science Fiction and Activism.