Faculty of Arts Events Calendar
Research Seminar - in collaboration with School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow
Hosted by Dr. Rhys Williams (University of Glasgow)
Professor Pablo Mukherjee (U of Warwick ECLS)
Re-Charge: Postcolonial Studies and Energy Humanities
What do Postcolonial Studies and Energy Humanities have to say to one another? Given that the former is by now a well-established academic field and the latter a recently emergent one, we might expect the relationship between the two to be marked by wars of position and anxieties of influence. In this essay, however, I suggest that there is much to gain from cross-fertilisation and cross-hatching between the two. If Postcolonial Studies have often, with some justice, been accused of evacuating the matter of history from their purview, Energy Humanities have sometimes suffered from insufficient attention to the dynamics of empire. Not only can the proposed conversations, therefore, help correct the built-in perspectival lacunae of the two fields, but also help us understand how empire and energy are interconnected through a feedback loop.