Imaginations (Journal)
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RESISTANCE IS FUTILE? ENDURING HEGEMONY DESPITE IDEOLOGICAL CHALLENGE
Get PDFHegemonic discourse often portrays as “normal” or desirable the use of fossil fuels, despite the devastation brought through accessing those fuels. Currently, some of the worst examples of this devastation result from the petroleum industry. However, efforts to challenge its practices–and its hegemonic power–in fact reinforce other forms of hegemonic power. This article examines some of those instances. This article analyzes filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s 2009 documentary Crude.Crudefeatures the lawsuit filed by 30,000 Ecuadorian people against Chevron. Ironically, Crude shows how Western upper-class privilege is invoked to solve the Ecuadorians’ problems. We can infer their resistance to one hegemonic power–i.e., a multinational petroleum corporation–is only possible through using other hegemonic power like white, male, upper-class privilege. This article draws upon Gayatri Spivak’s canonical text “Can the Subaltern Speak” and Louis Althusser’s concept of ideological apparatuses to support this claim
OIL IMAG(E)INARIES: CRITICAL REALISM AND THE OIL SANDS
Get PDFThis photo-essay constitutes an initial attempt to map out the forces and dynamics of capital at work in Fort McMurray, Alberta—a primary site of global oil extraction and a space that is now at the heart of the contemporary Canadian economy; it does so through the practice of ‘critical realism’ advocated by artist and critic Allan Sekula. The essay consists of three parts. In the first part, we describe the characteristics of Sekula’s critical realism, focusing in particular on his employment of this aesthetico-political practice in his book Fish Story (1991), an attempt to challenge dominant narratives about globalization as immaterial and unrepresentable by means of a focus on the transportation of goods by container ships. In the second part, we explore the challenge of representing another all-too frequently hidden material dimension of globalization: our continued dependence on oil and its by-products. Instead of focusing directly and literally on the site of oil extraction, the photo-essay we produce in the third part probes the effects of oil on life and labour in Fort McMurray. We do so in order to better understand the city’s specific socio-political challenges and to grasp the broader implications of oil for contemporary politics, culture and representation
IMAGINING THE TAR SANDS 1880-1967 AND BEYOND
Get PDFFor much of the history of Alberta’s tar sands, a series of visual conventions have shaped Canadian imaginaries of the resource, the emergence of the non-conventional oil industry, and the mining of oil. We introduce a series of archival images dating from 1880 until the opening of Great Canadian Oil Sands (Suncor) in 1967, to analyze how visual representations were used to justify government and public support for bitumen mining and refining, to legitimate state research into the separation of oil from the sands, and to ideologically sustain public funding of the development of this unique Canadian resource industry. We conclude that many elements of these early positive normative conceptual frameworks remain in play today, used by corporate and government meaning–makers to blunt contemporary critiques by the public of social and ecological tradeoffs, and ultimately to legitimate Alberta and Canada’s pursuit of non-conventional oil as an acceptable energy future
THIS IS NOT A PIPELINE: THOUGHTS ON THE POLITICO-AESTHETICS OF OIL
Get PDFThis piece is a dialogue between Andrew Pendakis and video artist Ursula Biemann. In it they attempt to work through questions pertaining to the aesthetics of petroculture: How can one represent oil? Is there a generalized aesthetics of oil? What are the linkages between oil and secrecy? What strategies are best avoided in attempting to force into visibility the complex realities of oil culture
STEALING OR STEELING THE IMAGE? THE FAILED BRANDING OF THE GUERRILLERO HEROICO IMAGE OF CHE GUEVARA
Get PDFThis article traces the ongoing tension between those who would characterize Alberto Korda’s famous image of Che Guevara, The Guerrillero Heroico, as a brand, trademark or logo, and those who insist it is a political/cultural icon and non-commercial and that these categories are mutually exclusive. The question of whether the image has been emptied of political content, and the debate around the copyrighting of an image considered by many to be in the public domain and a cultural icon are explored. The long-lasting struggle over the meanings and collective memories associated with this image indicate the possibility that both processes of commodification and radicalization of the image of Che Guevara can coexist. Using the literature on consumer research to engage definitions of branding as a commercially geared venture, this article teases out the problematics of different uses of the photograph and its derivatives, and highlights ambiguities around the notions of creation and authorship. After examining this image’s role within Cuba, Cuban use outside of Cuba, and its commercial and non-commercial uses by non-Cubans, I conclude that attempts at branding products with this particular image fail, and therefore its copyrighting is irrelevant
(E)MERGING DISCOURSES: ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
Get PDFThree recent works, Rosalind Galt’s Pretty, Anne Cheng’s Second Skin, and Daniel Purdy’s On the Ruins of Babel incorporate architectural history and architectural discourse into their analyses in ways that are new to their respective fields ranging from studies of film, gender, and race to intellectual history. Placing these three works in one essay allows for a detailed review of the ways in which each author employs architecture, at the same time as it reveals the benefits and challenges of incorporating architecture into cultural studies. The essay discusses the contributions of each work to their fields and also takes advantage of the different approaches to culture and architecture to explore the ways in which this relationship might continue to inform and generate productive studies
RETHINKING BITUMEN: FROM “BULLSHIT” TO A “MATTER OF CONCERN”
Get PDFWhat is the current state of discourse about bitumen and how might it be changed? Philosopher Harry Frankfurt defines “bullshit” as any attempt at persuasion that is “unconnected to a concern with the truth” (Frankfurt). By looking at a variety of recent examples from the debates over bitumen extraction, “Rethinking Bitumen” argues that these debates have many of the characteristics that Frankfurt ascribes to “bullshit.” It is argued further that the debate’s disconnect from a concern with truth is rooted in what Bruno Latour calls “matters of fact” (“Critique” 226). Attempts to persuade are built on “matters of fact”—which can be debunked by both sides as ideological—when they should be founded on the ecological consciousness of what Latour calls “matters of concern” (ibid.) Literature offers one means of effecting this transition from “matters of fact” to “matters of concern.” This article considers Marc Prescott’s play Fort Mac as one example of a literary text that creates an opportunity for engaging in ecological thinking about bitumen and for deploying affect and sensation to change the prevailing values about it, to see bitumen as a “matter of concern.