Petrofiction or oil fiction, [1] is a genre of fiction focused on the role of petroleum in society. [2]
Background
The concept was first developed by Amitav Ghosh to classify literature about the petroleum industry and the impact of oil on society. [3] He coined the term when reviewing Abdul Rahman Munif's Cities of Salt in 1992. [3] [4] When describing the concept, he noticed an absence of literature exploring the role of "oil encounters" between countries that extract oil and those that consume. [4] [5] Imre Szeman in a 2012 editorial introduction to a special edition of the American Book Review proposed a slightly larger scope: all works that explore "the important role played by oil in contemporary society." [2] [5]
Works of petrofiction proliferated in the 2000s and 2010s, along with a growing critical focus, as a result of concerns about climate change and peak oil. [6] Since its inauguration the term has been widely used in literary criticism to explore fiction which evaluates society's dominance by a petroleum economy and a related culture shaped by petroleum. [4] [7] Most critics were trying to find works that focused on the oil industry before Cities of Salt. [8] This genre has been particularly important in non-Western literature, exploring how encounters with oil are entangled with other issues in the Global South. [1]
Some critics have connected the role of petrofiction to the emergence of climate fiction, in that both are evaluating and addressing the concerns brought on by the Anthropocene. [9]
Notable examples
- Petroleum, Petroleum (1903) by Gustav Meyrink [5]
- Oil! (1926-27) by Upton Sinclair [9]
- Greenvoe (1972) by George Mackay Brown [10]
- Rabbit Is Rich (1981) by John Updike [11]
- Cities of Salt (1984) by Abdul Rahman Munif [3] [12]
- Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990) by Karen Tei Yamashita [13]
- Tropic of Orange (1997) by Karen Tei Yamashita [13]
- GraceLand (2004) by Chris Abani [2]
- Things We Didn't See Coming (2008) by Steven Amsterdam [5]
- Oil on Water (2010) by Helon Habila [4]
- World Made by Hand (2008) by James Howard Kunstler
References
- ^ a b "Oil Fictions: World Literature and our Contemporary Petrosphere Edited by Stacey Balkan and Swaralipi Nandi". www.psupress.org. Retrieved 2021-04-17.
- ^ a b c "Call for Papers, Oil Fictions: World literature and our Contemporary Petrosphere | Global South Studies, U.Va". globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-17.
- ^ a b c Xinos, Ilana (Winter 2006). "Petro-capitalism, petrofiction, and Islamic discourse: The formation of an imagined community in Cities of Salt". Arab Studies Quarterly. 28: 1–12.
- ^ a b c d Riddle, Amy. "Petrofiction and Political Economy in the Age of Late Fossil Capital". Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group. 31 (2).
- ^ a b c d Szeman, Imre (2012). "Introduction to Focus: Petrofictions". American Book Review. 33 (3): 3. doi: 10.1353/abr.2018.0084. ISSN 2153-4578. S2CID 150227700.
-
^ Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew (2015).
Peak Oil : apocalyptic environmentalism and libertarian political culture. Chicago.
ISBN
978-0-226-28526-9.
OCLC
897001614.
{{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) -
^ LeMenager, Stephanie (2016).
Living oil : petroleum culture in the American century (Oxford University Press paperback ed.). New York, NY.
ISBN
978-0-19-046197-3.
OCLC
927363764.
{{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) - ^ Bergthaller, Hannes (2017). "Cli-Fi and Petrofiction: Questioning Genre in the Anthropocene". Amerikastudien / American Studies. 62 (1): 120–125. ISSN 0340-2827. JSTOR 44982310.
- ^ a b Bergthaller, Hannes (2017). "Cli-Fi and Petrofiction: Questioning Genre in the Anthropocene". Amerikastudien / American Studies. 62 (1): 120–125. ISSN 0340-2827. JSTOR 44982310.
- ^ Macdonald, Graeme (2017-05-04). ""Monstrous transformer": Petrofiction and world literature". Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 53 (3): 289–302. doi: 10.1080/17449855.2017.1337680. ISSN 1744-9855. S2CID 148809903.
- ^ Krieg, C. Parker (2017). "Energy Futures: John Updike's Petrofictions". Studies in American Fiction. 44 (1): 87–112. doi: 10.1353/saf.2017.0003. ISSN 2158-5806. S2CID 164787923.
- ^ Xinos, Ilana (2006). "Petro-Capitalism, Petrofiction, and Islamic Discourse: The Formation of an Imagined Community in "Cities of Salt"". Arab Studies Quarterly. 28 (1): 1–12. ISSN 0271-3519. JSTOR 41858517.
- ^ a b Tanaka, Shouhei (2020). "The Great Arrangement: Planetary Petrofiction and Novel Futures". MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 66 (1): 190–215. doi: 10.1353/mfs.2020.0008. ISSN 1080-658X.