‘Fossil fuel culture invokes ‘heroic masculinity’ which marginalises women — Donald Trump speaks to this’

Stephanie LeMenager is Barbara and Carlisle Moore Professor of English and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, she discusses the psychology of life in a petroleum world:

We normally don’t associate fossil fuels with emotions. But they are as deeply interwoven in these realms as in our vehicles, gadgets and lifestyles. Stephanie LeMenager has studied the traces — visible and hidden — of fossil fuels in our psyche and feelings. ‘The core of my research is looking at the ways material realities, like the extraction of fossil fuels, work their way into cultural expressions, affective states like love — and identity formation such as American modernity or American whiteness,’ LeMenager describes. Recognising just how deep oil and its siblings have drilled into our tangible and subconscious world is not easy. It works in phases. ‘One awakening came with the notion of ‘tough oil’ — this refers to when oil began to be recognised as creating more ecological consequences as a result of the depths people had to drill to get it or the modes of extraction used,’ says LeMenager. The term arose in the early 21st century in response to discussions of ‘peak oil’.

SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT: Fossil fuel work has largely been viewed as male, captured in the 1960 photo (L) of 'the boys' down in Bromley Pit, Surrey — but women always laboured in extractive industries, underground and on the surface, like these miners (R) in India in 1964. Picture courtesy: Getty Images

‘There was a sense that oil was running out. It then became clear to activists celebrating the end of the reign of oil as a prominent form of energy that the industry had a lot up its sleeve in terms of other modes of extraction — when the fracking industry became much more visible to the main-stream public, the term ‘tough oil’ was coined.



Thinking about this means recognising the profound externalities, the social damage and ecological costs involved in extraction.’ For many, this recognition came as a surprise. LeMenager wryly comments, ‘Often, we Americans are the last to learn — or admit — the violence that we do. There is both real and feigned ignorance about fossil fuel impacts but for many, ‘tough oil’ marked a point of realisation that fossil fuels had never been easy energy, a cost-free mode of supporting American lifestyles and over-consumption. The era of innocence — or feigned innocence — disappeared with ‘tough oil’ as a concept.’ Despite their profound consequences, fossil fuels were normalised in earlier times. LeMenager points to a 20th century media environment which was supported by fossil fuels and often directly involved petroleum products. ‘For many years, film stock was a petroleum product. Many inks used to print books are petroleum-based.

MAGA ISN’T GAGA: Donald Trump fuels heroic masculinity, based on extractive industries. Picture courtesy: iStockCalifornia famously has a culture of environmental consciousness which is also sustained by petroleum and its legacies — Hollywood and all its effects worldwide are a petroleum manifestation,’ she states. Perhaps that is why it has taken the film industry, as well as the world of art and aesthetics, so long to recognise the impacts of fossil fuels on how we relate to each other. ‘There is a powerful gender dimension to fossil fuel culture,’ explains LeMenager.

WE’RE SO SOUPED UP: Andy Warhol, with his pop art, sensed fossil fuelled-consumption


‘Political scientist Cara Daggett has written about ‘petro-masculinity’. My own work is in dialogue
with this idea — these extractive industries, from logging to petroleum, went hand in glove with an idea of ‘heroic masculinity’, a notion of labour taking energy from the ground and creating modern lifestyles from it. Here, male work was seen as the essential interface with the natural world. So, in a really fundamental sense,’ LeMenager emphasises, ‘American masculinities — and others in different degrees across cultures aspiring to fossil fuel modernity — are deeply tied to modes of extraction that we now understand as toxic. Toxic masculinity is also petro-masculinity.’ Such a view of gender spills over into contemporary lived spheres, including politics. ‘Daggett has written of the white supremacist violence of recent years in the US as often being tied to an anger about the disappearance of the valour once associated with such extractive work — men who earlier could see themselves as building the world, where they would guard and protect women, now face the dwindling of these industries and resources as well as the profound damage these industries have done."



Part of the harm is the marginalisation of women, their work and independent human identity. ‘The entire fossil fuel industry is portrayed as male, with women subordinated to such idealised petro-masculinity. Also, non-white people who played a profoundly important role in sustaining these industries and doing much of their hardest labour are eclipsed by this heroic whiteness. Women are sometimes used today as the face of these industries to soften the image a little bit but it is certainly still the case that when you listen to the rhetoric of the right in the United States — with people like Donald Trump, for instance — what they are talking about and speaking to is the sense of the decline of American masculinity, almost as if women and others are leading the charge against it.’ Some of this rage melts into what Le-Menager calls ‘petromelancholia’. She explains, ‘This means a ceaseless grieving of the whole complex of ideas around modern energy, particularly the notion of petroleum as easy energy which created endless freedoms for modern people. It is sadness for the innocence — or ignorance — many people had of what oil could do. Petromelancholia is anguish over this idea of energy as being only positive, with a wish that the old days could return — the ‘old days’ being a period of colonial capitalism where those who’d signed on to this hegemony weren’t entirely aware of the violence they were participating in.’

This is why the humanities must enter a field which until now has been handled by the sciences, engineering and policy. ‘The humanities must engage intensively with fossil fuel culture now,’ says LeMenager. ‘Many of our cultural artefacts are materially indebted to fossil fuels. As we try to transition away from fossil fuels, we must understand there is a profound set of cultural attachments which emanated from our engagement with fossil energies — whole identities were born from the extractive cultures of oil, coal and other fuels. So, to leave fossil fuels behind is to shed a kind of toxic attachment or what I call a ‘bad love’. This requires new cultural formations and respect for groups which never participated in these ideologies, including indigenous cultures which perceive the reality of white and extractive violence. We must seek,’ she underlines, ‘deeper respect for all forms of life and reparation for the cultures and ecosystems petro-modernity damaged.’

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