The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work

Description

In The Birth of Energy Cara New Daggett traces the genealogy of contemporary notions of energy back to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics to challenge the underlying logic that informs today's uses of energy. These early resource-based concepts of power first emerged during the Industrial Revolution and were tightly bound to Western capitalist domination and the politics of industrialized work. As Daggett shows, thermodynamics was deployed as an imperial science to govern fossil fuel use, labor, and colonial expansion, in part through a hierarchical ordering of humans and nonhumans. By systematically excavating the historical connection between energy and work, Daggett argues that only by transforming the politics of work—most notably, the veneration of waged work—will we be able to confront the Anthropocene's energy problem. Substituting one source of energy for another will not ensure a habitable planet; rather, the concepts of energy and work themselves must be decoupled. Cover ......Page 1 Contents ......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction. Putting the World to Work......Page 12 Part I. The Birth of Energy......Page 24 1: The Novelty of Energy......Page 26 2: A Steampunk Production......Page 44 3: A Geo-Theology of Energy......Page 62 4: Work Becomes Energetic......Page 94 Part II. Energy, Race, and Empire......Page 116 5: Energopolitics......Page 118 6: The Imperial Organism at Work......Page 143 7: Education For Empire......Page 173 Conclusion. A Post-Work Energy Politics......Page 198 Notes......Page 218 Bibliography......Page 250 B......Page 266 C ......Page 267 E......Page 268 G......Page 270 H......Page 271 L......Page 272 M......Page 273 P......Page 274 R......Page 275 T......Page 276 V......Page 277 W......Page 278 Z ......Page 279