The Nonhuman Narratives of Energy - Multispecies Encounters in Extraction Zones

This book brings the emerging field of petrocultures and energy humanities discourse into conversation with the field of animal studies. Taylor examines how fossil fuels have frequently been described as the lifeblood of capitalist modernity, making petroleum appear as something intrinsic to human life. Through examining works such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Nnedi Okorafor s Lagoon and Michel Faber s Under the Skin, this book highlights the commodification of nonhuman life in the history of energy and, paradoxically, how these nonhuman actors have been unacknowledged and silenced through time.

List of contents

1: Introduction: Alliance of Fields, Petrocultures and Animal Studies.- 2: Politics of Attention and Ethics of Vulnerability.- 3: Magnifying the Peripheral, Meat and Oil.- 4: Infrastructure of Energy, Oil Spills and Road Kill.- 5: Transitions, Energy Futures and Multispecies Relations.- 6: Conclusion: Vulnerability and Co-Existence.

About the author

Josephine Taylor
is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland, where she works on the Energy Narratives and Change in Coastal Communities in Ireland project. She undertook her PhD research at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, in Comparative Literature and Culture. Her research specialisations are interdisciplinary in scope, exploring areas of feminism, science fiction, energy cultures and animal studies.

 

Summary

This book brings the emerging field of petrocultures and energy humanities discourse into conversation with the field of animal studies. Taylor examines how fossil fuels have frequently been described as the lifeblood of capitalist modernity, making petroleum appear as something intrinsic to human life. Through examining works such as Herman Melville's
Moby Dick
, Nnedi Okorafor’s
Lagoon
and

Michel Faber’s
Under the Skin,
this book highlights the commodification of nonhuman life in the history of energy and, paradoxically, how these nonhuman actors have been unacknowledged and silenced through time.

Product details

• Authors: Josephine Taylor
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.09.2025
• EAN: 9783031943317
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3194331-7
• No. of pages: 168
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 13 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 330 g
• Illustrations: XI, 168 p. 5 illus.
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Moby Dick, Soziale Auswirkungen von Umweltfaktoren, Literatur: Geschichte und Kritik, Medienwissenschaften, Herman Melville, auseinandersetzen, Nnedi Okorafor, Ecocriticism, Animal Studies, Ursula Le Guin, Extraction, World Literature, Environmental Communication, Amitav Ghosh, Energy Futures, Human-Animal Relations, non-human relations, Cindy Mochuziki, Michel Faber, Petrocultures, Rob Nixon, Fossil Fuel Economy, Rita Wong, Non-anthropocentric, Oil Spills, Zones of Extraction, Multispheres