Oil, life, and everyday fossil fascism: appropriative signification in U.S. petroleum supremacy

Abstract Fossil fuels face an uncertain future, but they have strong adherents as well as detractors. Even as California debates halting oil extraction, the Biden administration approved large new drilling projects on federal land, in keeping with the United States’ policy of “energy independence” (also called “energy dominance” under Trump). This article examines the Janus face of fossil fuels’ future, reading recent cultural moments in the western US. It shows oil producers (oil lobbyists and oil workers) appropriating acts of signification that affirm life (in particular, in domains of civil rights and environmental justice), inverting language and aesthetics of liberation and resistance to circulate microfascist petroleum supremacy. Such projections of strength may belie a moment of existential precarity for the industry, but these weaponized cultural significations still aim to do harm.