Ghosn, R., Vronskaya, A., Jia, R. orcid.org/0009-0007-3307-3467 et al. (4 more authors) (2024) The afterlife of energy post-carbon and feminist post-work politics. Journal of Architectural Education, 78 (2). pp. 638-648. ISSN 1046-4883
Abstract
In the conclusion to her book The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work, political scientist Cara Daggett considers “A Post-Work Energy Politics” in which she examines the historical coupling of energy and work—meaning human, waged work—in an invitation to disassociate their values and futures. The exponential power of fossil fuels animated the pipedream that powerful, inorganic slaves could substitute unfree human labor, ideas that have driven European imperialism. Fossil fuel systems did not lead, however, to a world beyond work. Rather, today’s “patriarchal slave states” continue to manage the project of putting the world to work through the maximization of productivity, and the subordination of racialized, immigrant, and gendered bodies—who would work for lower, or for no, wages. “The project of work,” Daggett argues, “is in tension with the project of life.” Footnote1 And the rise of “work–life balance” is a mere tactic of governance in which the enemy is fatigue, exhaustion, and burn-out. She suggests, in turn, an alliance between post-carbon and feminist post-work politics and asks: what might it mean for energy politics to refer to the politics of ensuring public vitality? In order to advance a feminist revaluation of work, Daggett draws on Kathi Weeks’s The Problem with Work to outline a project that makes two utopian demands. One demand articulates a paradoxical relationship between the pragmatism of (present) demands and the speculative seeds of possibility; a second demand outlines a utopian form for such politics: partial, fragmented kin to the genre of the manifesto. Daggett concludes with an invitation that “a radical planet politics, if it seeks to contest ecomodernist claims, needs its own politics of pleasure.” Footnote2 In an echo to Daggett’s invitation, the authors of this Educators’ Roundtable were invited to contribute a short text that picks up on the possibilities of a post-carbon, post-work politics.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Architecture and Landscape |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 05 Nov 2024 16:27 |
Last Modified: | 05 Nov 2024 16:27 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10464883.2024.2382059 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/10464883.2024.2382059 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219264 |
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