Petro-Imperialism with Timothy Mitchell Part II

The Dig

Daniel Denvir

News, Politics

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2018

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the second of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In part 1, we talked about a lot of things, including how the rise of coal made both industrial capitalism and newly powerful worker resistance possible; and how the shift to oil then facilitated the persistence of imperialism in a decolonizing world while thwarting worker organizing. In this installment, we discuss imperialist assaults on worker struggles in Iraq and Iran, the cooptation of those struggles by nationalist elites, and how those imperialist attacks facilitated the rise of the Baathist security state. We'll also look at how the true history of the 70s oil shock undermines the conventional account, how the protection of minorities was used to legitimate imperialism, how petro-dollars fueled the global arms trade, in what sense the Iraq War has been a war for oil, and the US strategy to seek advantage through the continuation of conflict and instability across the Middle East. Finally, we'll address petro-imperialism’s bedrock alliance with right-wing Islamists against democratic movements of the left in Saudi Arabia and beyond, and why we must fight to ensure that the coming energy transition is a just one. That review of Yascha Mounk's book that Dan wrote with Thea Riofrancos https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/zombie-liberalism/ Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig, where you can also check out the first edition of our new weekly newsletter.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon and by Verso Books,
0:05.0	which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.
0:11.0	One that you might like is duty-free art, art in the age of planetary civil war, by Hito Styrl.
0:19.0	What is the function of art in the era of digital globalization?
0:23.6	How can one think of art institutions in an age defined by planetary civil war,
0:29.6	growing inequality, and proprietary digital technology?
0:33.6	The boundaries of such institutions have grown fuzzy. They extend from a region where the
0:39.9	audience is pumped for tweets to a future of neurocurating, in which paintings surveil their
0:46.0	audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their popularity and to scan for suspicious
0:53.7	activity.
0:55.0	In duty-free art, filmmaker and writer, Hito Styrl wonders how we can appreciate or even make art in the present age.
1:03.9	What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global
1:12.2	futures market detached from productive work. Can we distinguish between information,
1:18.2	fake news, and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring subjects as diverse
1:25.4	as video games, WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of free ports and political actions.
1:31.1	She exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.
1:40.5	Duty-free art, art in the age of planetary civil war by Hito Styrill.
1:45.9	Out now from Verso Books.
1:56.3	Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin Magazine.
2:00.9	My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.
2:06.0	This is part two of my interview with Timothy Mitchell, a political theorist and historian of the Middle East at Columbia.
2:13.5	We're talking about his book, Carbon Democracy, Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso.
	...

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