petromodernity

English

Etymology

petro- +‎ modernity

Noun

petromodernity (uncountable)

1. Those aspects of modern times that are dependent on and shaped by the availability of oil.
   • 2015, Adrian Daub, Elisabeth Krimmer, Goethe Yearbook 22, page 96:

     While Oil, its extraction, and the global petroculture and its role in transforming the planet's climate undoubtedly play a crucial role in the Antropocene imaginary — to the extent that petrofiction has been construed not just as a genre but as a periodizing gesture of "petromodernity" — it would hamper both the imagination and the root of petrofiction to restrict the range of this term to the encounter with fossil fuels within a carbon imaginary.

   • 2019, Cymene Howe, Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene:

     After all, they embody petromodernity in almost every way, from their masculinist stereotyping to their fossil-fueled metabolism. Trucks would seem to be a survival of petromodernity rather than a signal of its end.

   • 2019, Christy Desmet, Sujata Iyengar, Miriam Jacobson, The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation:

     But I like the honesty of literary critic Stephanie LeMenager, who concludes that we love oil petromodernity – and the world it brings us – theater, movies, books, plastics, air conditioning, central heat, air travel.