Make America small again: the ruins of petroculture in Omar El Akkad’s American War

This article discusses the manner in which Omar El-Akkad’s dystopian novel American War (2017) portrays the future civilizational decline of the American South, which is embroiled in a second civil war against the North in the aftermath of environmental transformations and climate insecurity that had prompted the federal government to outlaw the use of fossil fuels. My analysis focuses on the representation of the United States as a declining petroculture and on the attempts by the seceding South to preserve their fossil fuel-based economy and way of life at the expense of millions of lives and a heavily receding landscape. I argue that, by looking at the conflict through the lens of the more recent war on terror, not only does the narrative bring home the societal breakdown in the Middle East, similarly driven by the glorification of oil and by heavy militarization, but it also forces Americans in the position of the radicalized displaced people from heretofore remote corners of the world.