Abstract
Using media sources such as websites Energy in Depth (EID) to analyze the positions put forward by the gas and oil industry about the harm to human life and health as a result of fracking. EID identifies itself as a research and public outreach campaign sponsored by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents thousands of independent oil and natural gas producers in the United States. The EID website publishes articles and interviews offering proindustry, prodrilling perspectives and in many ways serves as a central mechanism for launching attacks against antifracking activists. The discourse analysis presented in this study is primarily based on press releases and online blogs by pro–gas and oil industry supporters. Using Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics and power, thereby arguing the ultimate expression of sovereignty is the capacity to ‘let live and make die,’ or rather the right to kill and expose people to death. As slow death is mediated by technologies, I center the focus on environmental technologies and examine the nature of this relationship between slow death and environmental technologies by understanding fracking as a necrotechnology. In this view we might think about fracking as a mechanism for the ‘deathscape.’
Presenters
Kristen Abatsis Mc HenryAssistant Professor, Political Science, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Fracking, Environment, Energy industry, Discourse analysis
