Abstract

This talk addresses the question of fuels (as distinct from energy systems). I am asking if fuels might serve as a form of pure potentiality, that is, power, but before it is used (up). The scope of my project is not practical. That is, I am not analyzing fuels from a scientific or social scientific perspective in order to contribute to a discussion of alternatives to fossil fuels. However important such a discussion may be, my research is more about the broad question: What can critical theory, literature and film help us understand about fuels?

My talk is part of a larger research agenda considering the relation of the humanities to climate change. Various actors have recently come to invoke the humanities as contributing to “communicating” science to the public or as serving as a kind of “soft” form of behavioral psychology, convincing consumers to conserve or adopt alternative forms of energy. For me, the reduction of the humanities to something like journalism is extremely dangerous. Why should the humanities be asked to serve a “practical” role in the face of the genuinely unfathomable that is climate change? Indeed, anthropogenic climate change is a phenomenon so potent, so heterogeneous that it might be said to exceed any practical academic disciplines. And yet there is a risk that critical thought could lead to an abysmal renunciation. Fuel as potentiality, then, might serve as a mode of mediation and meditation. A form of hope….

Bio

Karen Pinkus is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. For about the past ten years, most of her work has been directed toward thinking about the humanities in relation to climate change. She has published many articles on topics ranging from literary theory and the internal combustion engine to the temporality of carbon management. She has a book, forthcoming, on fuel. And a digital project sponsored by the Duke University Franklin Humanities Center and the Rice University Humanities Research Center, exploring the differential relations between the subsurface, surface and atmosphere, through case studies of four places. At Cornell Karen co-teaches (with Natalie Mahowald of Earth and Atmospheric Science) a course titled “Humans and Climate Change.” She is active in the climate change focus group of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.