Virginia Tech Professor Pioneers Study of Petro-Masculinity

The Left has been warning us for years that fossil fuels pollute the environment. Now it’s found a social ill to blame on oil and gas. “As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny,” Virginia Tech professor Cara Daggett warns in an essay on Petro-masculinity in Millennium: the journal of international studies. “Rather than consider these resentments separately, this article interrogates their relationship through the concept of petro-masculinity, which appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing white patriarchal rule.”

“Petro-masculinity is helpful to understanding how the anxieties aroused by the Anthropocene can augment desires for authoritarianism. The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics. Moreover, through a psycho-political reading of authoritarianism, I show how fossil fuel use can function as a violent compensatory practice in reaction to gender and climate trouble.”

Professor Daggett has also written on Drone Disorientations:How “Unmanned” Weapons Queer The Experience Of Killing In War for The International Journal of Feminist Politics.

Related Topics