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In the Time of Energy, it is Time to Make Place for Energy in Cultural Production 

IMRE SZEMAN 2019, On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture, and Energy. Morgantown: 
West Virginia University Press, 288 pp. ISBN 978-1-946684-88-2 
 

Keywords: Petrocultures, Critical Theory, Energy, Globalization, Modernity, Climate 

Change. 

This thought-provoking book is a collection of essays that cultural theorist Imre Szeman has 

written over the last two decades. The author takes us through an informed epistemological 

journey in the deconstruction of the complex and paradoxical relationship between modern 

society and hydrocarbons. In his book, Szeman probes the nature of critical thinking and 

whether the autonomy of critiques of the modern world can be possible while it is 

maneuvered and pervaded by hydrocarbons. Szeman proposes that it is indeed oil that shapes 

culture, as all forms of energy have done in the past, enabling hegemonic systems such as 

Dutch mercantilism, British imperialism and US transnationalism (93-94). However, there has 

not yet been a cultural production which has actually challenged the energy systems in which 

it lives and from which it is sustained. The author, therefore, calls for new forms of 

“petrocultures.” 

The concept of culture, so central in the book by Szeman, is indeed a hybrid. In fact, ‘culture’ 

in this book is the product of humanistic understandings together with more social aspects. 

Nevertheless, in the book the humanistic perception of culture as aesthetic production remains 

stronger than a culture understood and analyzed in terms of social relations. This is why, as an 

anthropologist, I took some time to identify with some of Szeman’s claims about culture. 

Szeman’s culture is presented, for instance, throughout in reference to a rich body of major 

contributions to cultural theory and applied to the analysis of globalization, modernity and 

climate change. In Chapter 1, the informative re-evaluation of Fredric Jameson’s “national 

allegory” calls for an “attempt to make sense of the relationship of literature to politics in the 

decolonizing world” (24). In fact, the author argues that “national allegory” is of value 



 

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because it is heavily contextualized and politicized. In contrast, the “rough assemblage of 

literary-critical commonsense” (25) that has clogged the cultural production since the fall of 

colonialism, serves only the de-politicization of capitalism. In the same chapter, Szeman 

stresses mediation as a key component of the cultural project itself (33). Hence the cultural 

project must be one of the platforms on which the gap between politics and human desire and 

freedom of expression can be bridged. Chapter 2 focuses on problematizing at large how the 

role of culture has shifted since globalization and how it “has circulated in and alongside 

globalization discourses” (49). Chapter 3 deals chiefly with the literary criticism that has 

played an essential political role during this era of globalization. The chapter aims to discuss 

globalization as a political project, with the author claiming “there is a politics that extends far 

beyond the establishment of aesthetic categories” (77). In fact, the possibility of literary 

criticism lies not only in the re-definition of the practices of globalization “in light of a world 

of transnational connections and communications” (81), but should also be open to 

experiment with new narratives, imagination and critics (86).  

Another significant reference to major contributions of cultural theory is introduced in 

Chapters 5 with the deconstruction of Richard Florida’s “creative class category,” a mere 

allowance of capitalism to human creativity at the expense of autonomy. In fact, according to 

Szemen, the oxymoronic strategy embedded in the “production of creativity” is powerful in 

shaping space and labor, especially in modern urban city hubs (122-123). As a result, 

creativity becomes but an essential asset for economic capitalistic growth. Chapter 9 also 

addresses the role of entrepreneurship as the new and at times only common-sense way of 

“navigating the inevitable, irreproachable, and apparently unchangeable reality of global 

capitalism” (201). In Chapter 7, the author dissects narratives of petrocultures embedded in 

movies and documentary productions. 

Chapter 4 is one of the more compelling chapters in the book where the author succeeds in 

conveying the power of dependency of modern life on petroleum. Szeman is inspired by 

thinkers such as Amitav Ghosh, who, in books like “The Great Derangement: Climate Change 

and the Unthinkable” (2016) interrogates the motives and consequences of human inertia 

when faced with climate change. This is evident in Chapter 4 where Szeman eloquently 

demonstrates the polarization of anticipation of the end of hydrocarbons embodied in the 

practices of either left-wing pessimistic “apocalyptic environmentalists” (103) or by their 

ruthless right-wing counterpart, the “strategic realists” (98). Not much hope is afforded to 



 

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those in the last category that Szeman individualizes, the more optimistic “techno-utopianists” 

(100), who have blind faith in contradicting and unreliable technological strategies (100).  

The book is a challenging read. At certain moments, such as in Chapter 1, the reader is at a 

loss to comprehend the relevance of the sophisticated interaction between critical theory and 

the broader scope of the book, which aims to create “a critical theory of energy” (9). 

However, On Petrocultures arrives at a decisive moment in the production of knowledge. In 

fact, more than ever the survival of the humanities and social sciences is threatened unless it 

functions, impacts and services global capitalism. Szeman skillfully reveals the deep 

entanglements of oil within human phenomenology: the way we, citizens of the modern 

world, perceive, understand and act has enormous consequences, such as climate change, 

precariousness, increased global social inequality and vulnerability. In addition, Szeman 

warns of an epistemological project of culture that, since oil, is fast shifting and becoming a 

token, an entrepreneurial asset of an accelerated capitalistic world. The author is rightly 

concerned about the future of “real” freedom of expression. Szeman certainly succeeds in 

transmitting a sense of uneasiness and a deep concern not only for the future of our planet and 

our future generations, but also for the future of the achievement of expression, free 

expression of the human body, mind and soul. Moreover, Szemen clearly warns against the 

dangerous omission of politics in cultural production. He warns against the reduction of 

uncountable narratives, for example of nation states, but also of smaller scale realities like 

communities and groups to the dangerously homogenizing one of the “globalized world.”  

There is a “fake universality” (43), a “falsely utopic space” (42) which is unfortunately 

reproduced in cultural production. These narratives, coined as “strategic realism,” “Techno-

utopianism” and “apocalyptic environmentalism,” although seemingly contrasting, are similar 

in the sense that neither of them leave room for imagination, creation or “real” possibilities 

(see Chapter 4).  

Throughout the book, Szeman laments the fact that culture is becoming or has already become 

dangerously a-political. The book skillfully unveils numerous paradoxes of culture and 

cultural life being created and continuously controlled and shaped in the function of 

capitalism, like a sad “domestication of art” (131) in the form of “allowances of capitalism” 

(131). In Chapter 6, the author paints the picture in even darker tones: oil is “the structuring 

‘real’ of our contemporary sociopolitical imagery” (138). Due to this fact, in the dangers of 

“colonization of the globe by capital” (84), the lack of imaginative vocabulary, the absence of 

alternative metaphors and counter-narratives to globalization stop alternative understandings 



 

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and thus challenge dominant narratives (84). In Chapter 8, the author’s argument is that as 

there are multiple ways to relate to and therefore to know oil (for example as a resource, an 

obstacle, a course or a blessing) and that the “how” individuals and states relate to oil is 

fundamental for building the critical theory of oil. In Chapter 10 Szeman claims that adding 

“energy” in its various manifestations to world literature, might generate a new “ecological 

relationship to the apparatuses and objects of modern petroculture” (234) and thus a new way 

to comprehend climate change. The last two chapters of the book (Chapter 11 and 12) focus 

on oil infrastructures: on the role that especially pipelines play in politics and culture. The 

presence of these pervading entities is not only physical –as they cross lands and sea- but also 

ideological as they affect geopolitical decisions and thus cultural choices and production 

across the world. 

Ultimately the book is a valuable contribution to the establishment of a “critical theory of 

energy” and a call for a more interdisciplinary approach to the study, deconstruction and the 

critique of energy systems. A critical theory of energy is a body of expertise, that comes from 

the humanities and social sciences, which is profoundly inspired and informed by energy. At 

the same time, the aim of the critical theory of energy is to examine and deconstruct the socio-

historical and political contexts of energy dynamics and ultimately provide constructive 

concrete solutions to the challenges created by our petro-controlled world. Nevertheless, the 

book is a challenging read for those who are not familiar with literary criticism or cultural 

theory. At times, for this audience, namely social scientists and non-humanists in general, it 

may verge on the inaccessible. This is not to say it is not an excellent book. Given the scrutiny 

and deeper consideration it deserves, On Petrocultures produces many valuable reflections, 

providing ample food for thought. These reflections should be assimilated to constitute a 

starting point from where a paradigmatic shift in cultural production, critical theory and 

analysis should start. I would therefore highly recommend this reading to all academics who 

deal with research on the energy and oil complex. 

 

References: 

Ghosh, A. (2018). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. Penguin UK. 

 



 

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Marianna Betti holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen, Norway. 

She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya, Norway and Italy. Her research interests 

lay in the fields of political ecology, the anthropology of development and religion and the 

anthropology of oil.  

 

 

© 2020 Marianna Betti 

 

 

 


