A history of the energy economy from the perspective of critical theory
Working Nature offers a history of the energy economy and its representations over the 19th and 20th century.Russ argues that “Energy” is not a thing nor an ability, but a social relation to nature forged in capitalist industrialisation. The concept of energy mediates the appropriation of diverse natural forces - water, steam, coal, electricity – altering the way these forces would naturally behave to perform work in production. From the valuation of coal and crafting of the current to the formalization of the substitution of energy commodities, it asks how engineers, scientists and economists achieved the production and circulation of nature’s work against social and natural resistance. In so doing, they undermined the very purpose of the energy economy - to emancipate humanity from nature. Can there be a human reconciliation with nature’s resistance for our time?
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What do we talk about when we talk about energy? We do so all the time, but rarely does anyone bother to open this black box that fuels everything. In Working Nature, Daniela Russ makes the most classical critical move - stripping something of its presumed naturalness - and demonstrates that 'energy' is a regiment imposed on nature through myriad acts over the past centuries. No lump of coal ever jumped into the capitalist furnace of its own volition. Nature has been dragged into the fire, and not without resistance. Consistently brilliant and illuminating, Working Nature announces the arrival of a major new voice on the scene of ecological Marxism. -- Andreas Malm, co-author of The Long Heat In this brilliant book, Russ proposes that energy has a history: not just the history of a human idea, nor the simple materialist history of increasing exploitation of nature. Under capitalist industrialization, energy came into being as something new in the world, forming a novel arrangement of both natural things and human bodies. This "energetic economy" has served as both a misrecognized mode of domination and an unrealized promise of freedom -- Timothy Mitchell, author of The Alibi of Capital
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A CRITICAL HISTORY OF ENERGY
Introduction
1. Does Energy Have History?
2. Forces of Nature, Sources of Power
3. The Value of Coal
4. Electric Resistance
5. Governing Energy
Epilogue: Energy and Emancipation
Daniela Russ is a historical sociologist based at the Global and European Studies Institute of the University of Leipzig, Germany. Her research explores the history of the energy economy in a global perspective, the conflicts around the decarbonization of the electric grid, and the theory and practice of Soviet energy planning. Her work has been published by outlets such as Contemporary European History, Historical Materialism, and Stanford University Press.
