Son[i]a #343
Cara New Daggett
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Reassessing and defamiliarizing historical narratives that sit at the core of white patriarchal societies, is a necessary feminist practice and one at which Cara Daggett, writer and researcher in the field of energy politics, excels at. Her genealogical approach to energy in “The Birth of Energy” unveils the deep political implications of this steam-born concept, showing how entangled energy is to power and work in today’s fossil-fueled imaginaries and why “an energy transition is not just as simple as switching fuel types”.
Currently an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech, she coined the word ‘petromasculinity’ in a homonymous article that outlined the historical role of fossil fuels in reinforcing the patriarchal order, channeling climate anxiety through authoritarian desires within the far-right. Cara Daggett is also founding member of The Mayapple Energy Transition Collective, together with her friends and scholars Shannon Bell and Christine Labuski, with whom she thinks of possible human-energy relations for a just energy transition.
In this podcast, energy, work, utopian demands, and unions, become intertwined with oil cultures, petromasculinities and ecomodernism, to reflect on growth, dependency, debt and energy transitions beyond extractivism. Degrowth, desire, pleasure, feminist science and new story-telling strategies are revealed as key ingredients for the recipe to reimagine ecologically generous ways of life on Earth.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with writer and researcher Cara New Daggett. We talk about the Mayapple Energy Transition Collective, feminist citation practices, collective writing and the difficulties academia still has with such exercises. We share the traumatic experience of being trolled after writing her essay "Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire". Coping with the pandemic and parenting with the climate crisis on the horizon are also brought to the table.
Jaime Vindel
We talk to researcher, teacher, and essayist Jaime Vindel about art, entropy and economics. We go into museums and petrol stations to understand their materiality. We talk about the universal exhibitions of the 19th century and how the removal of objects from their places of origin is directly linked to the process of environmental degradation. We look at their steel and glass pavilions, and find the concrete. We also discuss coal and oil, the concept of productivity, and the dark underbelly of certain visual imaginaries