ABSTRACT
An energy determinism is unsustainable. The claim that energy has no impact on literature and culture is equally unsustainable, whether we understand this impact in a narrowly material sense—in the very substance of the acrylic paints used on modern canvases, the stock used to shoot films, or in the electricity required to run printing presses and generate cable signals—or socially, through its figuration of social capacities and expectations. There is a strong correlation between energy use and GDP; increases in energy use per capita inevitably lead to economic growth and higher living standards. Nevertheless, attention to energy differentials has largely been absent not only from critical investigations of literature and culture, but also from literature and culture itself. At a minimum, tracking levels of energy use can be used to identify nodes of power in the world, and to consider the impact of these differentials of power in relation to cultural production.
