Read Prof. Stacey Balkan's Author's Note for Rogues in the Postcolony

Professor Stacey Balkan's appears in Energy Humanities (June 1, 2023).

An excerpt:

Upon encountering the title of my new book, colleagues often ask how one 鈥渘arrates extraction,鈥 which is to say: what do stories have to do with an economic and ecological process like resource extraction? This is a question with which I often grapple in the classroom. Perhaps a better, if more complicated version, would be something that I ask my graduate students: how do we understand the role of aesthetic expression in the manufacture and reinforcement of energopolitical desire鈥攁 desire, often fueled by fossilized carbon, to achieve something like 鈥渇reedom鈥 or 鈥減rogress,鈥 or any of a number of developmentalist euphemisms for a commoditized form of prosperity born of extractivist violence? In a similar vein: are there narratives that contest what have been called the 鈥渆nabling fictions鈥 of 鈥渆conomic development鈥? 听 []

Read the full text at .