Petromelancholia and the Energopolitical Violence of Settler Colonialism in Waubgeshig Rice's "Moon of the Crusted Snow"

By means of a close reading of Waubgeshig Rice’s novel "Moon of the Crusted Snow" (2018), this article explores how the energopolitics of settler colonialism, in the wake of fossil fuel extraction and the implementation of its concurrent infrastructures, violently disrupts Indigenous communities and forces them into experiencing petromelancholia—a subconscious life-depending need for fossil fuels. In doing so, the article aims to highlight the West’s inertia regarding their dependency on (infra)structures and the affordances that come with petrocapitalism, how such a framework is by no means a universal given, and how petromelancholia becomes a symptom of settler-colonial energopolitical violence.

Publication year:2020

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Authors from:Higher Education

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