Our current industrial way of life is premised on the widespread availability of massive amounts of cheap energy, specifically in the form of oil. In recent years, two intertwined but distinctive crises have emerged that challenge our continued reliance on this resource: climate change and peak oil (or the decline of cheap reserves of conventional oil). Yet, while the first crisis, climate change, has been hotly and widely debated, the second has been almost completely ignored if not outright dismissed by policy makers, opinion leaders and the general public. Using the discursive lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis as well as Slavoj Zizek's discussion of "kettle logic" as a means by which ideological systems attempt to evade and defend themselves against the traumatic recognition of a fundamental challenge to their underlying symbolic framework, I will argue that this denial the very possibility of peak oil is not a reflection of the theory's factual inadequacy or inaccuracy but rather the profound threat it poises to the ideological and symbolic underpinnings of our current sociopolitical milieu.
Light refreshments will be served.
An RSVP is requested but not required to: sara.mckeon@ualberta.ca
We look forward to seeing you at this event!
About Dr. Richard Kover
Richard Kover earned his PhD from the Higher Institute of Philosophy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. His research interests are primarily in the fields of environmental philosophy, philosophy of technology, social, political and cultural theory, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. His most recent article "Are the Oil Sands Sublime?: Edward Burtynsky and the Vicissitudes of the Sublime" was published in Found in Alberta: Environmental Themes For the Anthropocene(2014). The focus of his current research is on an examination of the oil industry, particularly in its Albertan context, within the discursive framework of Lacanian political theology.