In the first episode of the Carbon Critique podcast series, we talked to Cara New Daggett, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech, about her book “The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work.” In this book, Cara traces back the genealogy of energy, and offers an innovative, feminist and critical look at energy, demonstrating how the term has been socio-historically constructed in ways that connect energy and labor. Her book helped us to think about climate politics and to imagine other conceptions of energy. In what follows is the transcription of the interview with Professor Daggett by Cecília Oliveira and Alexandra Tost. You can find here the German translation of the interview.

Cecília Oliveira
Dear Cara, I need to confess to you while reading your book, I couldn't avoid this smile on my face of really watching this rebellion of energy that you bring up. So I think my first question to you is what bothered you to question and write a whole book about energy.

Cara New Daggett  
I sort of started by thinking about how carbon had become this code word in politics for almost like a polluting thing, when, in fact, we know that carbon has all these meanings. It's a building block of life. And I was just interested in the history of that. And that led me though, to what I thought was maybe a bigger question about how did energy come to mean fuel in politics. And what I knew, very, honestly, now I know that I didn't really know that much about energy. But what I knew about energy was that it could have all these different meanings, even within science. And I suspected it had this very rich history. And I was just wanting to follow the way it became politicized,and see where that led me. I really wasn't sure where it would.

Cecília Oliveira
So what do we miss out by not understanding that genealogy of energy that you trace, what were you trying to make visible with this genealogy?

Cara New Daggett  
What I'm concerned about is that when energy gets picked up, it does so in a certain very specific framework that is not necessarily always wrong. It's just particular and parochial. And yet, energy has this cachet. And especially with its association as a foundational unit in physics, as if it's a natural fact, or a universal knowledge or universal truth. So this sense of universality then justifies what I think is a very specific and particular way of thinking about energy. And what I mean by that is, is what I unpack in the book, it's an engineer's perspective on energy. How to put things to work and a concern with efficiency and a concern with productivity. And again, that kind of energy knowledge is useful in certain contexts and settings to, for example, figure out how to make a steam engine more efficient. But that way of understanding energy has kind of melded itself onto or helped to justify a broader set of ethics in the West, about how we think about change in the world. And so that's where it was interesting to me researching, just thinking about the history of energy in science, is to realize that energy was not actually a material thing that you can touch. It's an epistemology, it's a way of understanding the world. And physics is quite clear about this. It's a set of mathematical calculations, it's a way of naming how humans are trying to understand transformation and change.

Alexandra Tost 
One of the first steps of your book is to exercise the political etymology of the word energy and the cosmology disputes of the term. For example, you bring the Chinese understanding of energy with a key Hinduism with prana, or the stoic Pneuma, which means fire and air. But then you show how in the end, Aristotle's idea for energeia was captured by European empire culture because of its proximity to work. So could you talk a bit about this etymology and the crucial role of the work-energy nexus in that field?

Cara New Daggett  
Yeah, so with all those different terms that you mentioned, that was the part of the book where I was trying to dig into this longer history of an intuition or set of knowledges on the part of humans about conservation laws. So, this sense that there is something conserved across change, there is identity through time. And how do we name that, how do we understand that? And I wanted to really recognize that that is a long-standing and diverse tradition of human thought. And you mentioned some of the sort of highlight terms. The word itself "energy" in the West comes from Aristotle, and is a philosophical and poetic word, really, until it gets adopted into the science of thermodynamics in the 19th century. And Aristotle invents this term to talk about the dynamic, his dynamic sense of goodness. So he wants to point to goodness as not being a static achievement, something that you just are good and then that's the end of the story. Aristotle wants to point out that goodness is a process, it's an ongoing kind of struggle of becoming toward goodness. And so, energy, from its first emergence as a word, combines a sort of preference for dynamism with moral virtue. But of course, what Aristotle means by being at work, which is one way to translate that ancient Greek term, that kind of work that Aristotle is thinking of, or what is meant by that kind of dynamism, is very different in the 19th century, when you start talking about the industrial revolution.

Alexandra Tost 
So then taking this to another level would be to speak about an ernergopower. So, I would like to just very openly ask you, whether you could explain to us and to our listeners, what it is, and why it matters.

Cara New Daggett  
Energopower, I drew that directly from an anthropologist named Dominic Boyer, who is really a leader in the field of energy humanities. And I believe his term is an energopolitics, which is his way of pushing us to understand how fuel -- and for me it's understanding even more broadly how energy as this kind of a sociomaterial concept and set of fuels and relationships between bodies and machines – so, how fuel/energy is very important to politics. And by politics, I mean the arrangement of power. Now, on the one hand, you could look at that quite simplistically as kind of a resource politics, which is what I wanted to expand beyond and what I think energy humanities and scholars like Boyer are expanding beyond. Meaning, it's not just this as another source of power. And if you have more power than, you know, as a nation will be able to use that to your advantage materially, not that that's not true. But this field of energy humanities, and this concept of an energopower, \ is especially about the way that energy names an ethics, a set of narratives, expectations about what the good life is, and cultures about how we use and value all energy and activity. Energy names this conglomeration that really does have to do with justifying and also generating power differentials, who has more power, who has less power. As a simple example, you can think about the way energetic metaphors and energetic thinking is very much present in the defense of the idea of meritocracy in the US. And so, you will see, often, people denigrated as being lazy or unwilling to work or having less energy somehow, and conversely, the celebration of capitalist elites as energetic doers. So, I'm interested in unpacking those assumptions about energy which, in the book, I explore it as energetic racism, but there's also of course, gender and class going on, as well.

Alexandra Tost
Generally, the relationship between energy and work is very central to your analysis. And there I also have a quote from your book where you write: "to become a citizen in carbon democracy was to become a waged worker, a valorized subject. The drive for equitable inclusion in the waged work system would catalyze many citizen movements in the 19th and 20th century, including civil rights and women's movements. And according to this political logic, a loss of energy as a threat to jobs would pose a threat to democracy itself." You conclude that energy needs to be reconceptualized for societies to overcome their dependence on fossil fuels. Why, in your view, is it so important that we as a society change how we understand energy in order to imagine new conceptions of work and post-work approaches? And why in your view, is it necessarily a first step to question our mindset?

Cara New Daggett  
I did not know that I would be writing about work. Again, in retrospect, it feels ignorant to admit that because of course, it was going to be about work. But I didn't know that. I really didn't know what I was going to find in the history of energy. But very quickly reading around the period in which thermodynamics emerged, it became evident to me that the concept of work, the work of engines then mapped onto the work of bodies, the work of countries, the work of empires, that work and energy became so entwined. We have these much longer histories of capitalism and work and empire that predate the emergence of thermodynamics. My argument is that thermodynamics gave this modern science to the governance of work, and sort of further stamped on a sense of scientific objectivity and conformity to "natural truth," which, again, this is a useful knowledge, for example, to making an engine more efficient or even to making bodies more efficient. But what happens is, the longer-standing work ethic that is kind of churning forward especially in Anglo Protestant areas, gets further valorized through this association with engineering and the physics of energy.Once I kind of came to work through the research, when I then started taking that perspective, or new understanding and reading contemporary debates about energy, it became clear that although there are so many ways of thinking about energy, you could even think about New Age ways of thinking about energy and other religious perspectives on energy. I mean, energy is certainly not captured by this engineering, thermodynamic logic. But I think it is, when it comes to how it gets discussed in modern culture, and especially in the West. I think, this kind of engineer's approach to energy is very dominant. And so not only by noticing that this approach to energy was dominant, it is also noticing that our understanding of work, and I keep using the word " we," that's because I associate myself with this kind of Northern/Western culture but I don't mean to say it universally. This Western approach to work is still very much how we conceive of energy and by that, I mean it's very rare to question things like, okay, we like purposeful activity, but towards what end? What are we trying, what do we really want out of that? There's this assumption that the activity itself, the productivity itself, the ever-expanding realm of capital and energy itself, will produce wellbeing, will produce goodness, and almost will indefinitely. So, the need to me then felt like we really needed to start problematizing those assumptions and critique work, not so much a critique of, again, activity or having a purpose or doing something with a passion but critiquing what kind of work gets valued. I think this has very practical applications. For example, a lot of Green New Deals, especially in the US, a lot of policy around energy is still so centrally anchored on jobs, and the promise of green jobs. But there's an assumption that in order to sell an energy transition to people, we have to promise jobs. That's because we still have in the US this culture where to be a waged worker is to become an ideal citizen, without consideration for what kind of work even gets counted as work. So, from a feminist perspective, for example, all the activity and energy expended that is unpaid or underpaid or still invisible. Sometimes that is starting to get mentioned in some of the policy, but still, the idea of green jobs and the advertisements around it, and the narratives around it, are like about becoming a solar panel technician.

Cecília Oliveira 
This makes me think also a little bit how this idea of green jobs, works more or less in parallel with many discourses of populists also. That in the end, they also say that they are trying to defend jobs, this is what I see, for example, in Brazil with Bolsonaro and with Trump in the US. Do you see that maybe also, these different ways of challenging this logic of energy can also make us understand this dispute today between a more sustainable approach trying to then protect the democracy against the populist takes of work? So how do you see this relationship with your experience in the US as well?

Cara New Daggett  
That connection between populism and promising jobs, I think, is very much premised upon the fact that to be well, to support life, to have basic needs a job is necessary. It is, right now, pretty much the path to be able to survive. So, it's not surprising that then a lot of movements on the Left orient themselves around labor, and the way labor, especially if the working class gets devalued, it's not surprising that the response will be to a revaluation of labor, a celebration of labor. My concern is that in doing so we cede the ground of talking about what kinds of labor actually are leading to wellbeing, what kinds of labor do we need? Are there other ways that we can meet people's needs? Are there other paths to wellbeing? And we can already see that, for example, there are lots of studies that energy, like income, up to a point is very important for people's wellbeing and reported happiness. And that makes sense. And that's often the argument, especially for people who are living in energy poverty. So, environmentalists get backed into the corner of well, how can we reduce energy when so many people still need energy? And the answer is, of course, to a point, energy is associated with wellbeing. But most of the Global North is well beyond that point. And studies show that, like income, reported happiness, wellbeing and indicators of health, education and so on, kind of plateau after that point. So, this ongoing assumption that in order to fix social problems, what we need is more work, and more energy. I think it's important to start with that question rather than cede that ground that that is the only real path to ensuring people can meet their needs and live lives of dignity.

Cecília Oliveira
One picture that comes to my mind, in the 19th century of a resistance of workers is always this idea of a break or stopping the machines and that this was maybe the way that they would subvert and resist against this logic of energy. But then when we are trying to then work and challenge these logics, bringing up ecofeminism, post-work, post-carbon, how then could we maybe figure out pictures of resistance today and work specifically. Because at the time, we have this relationship of work, and the parties, and a specific idea of anti-politics playing an important role of bringing the ideas and the wishes of workers as an organized group. But now with financialization, and the digitalization of technology, how can we think of work today in the interesting path of resisting this logic of energy?

Cara New Daggett  
Oh, it's a great question. I love the reference to the Luddites. I often joke that I am a Luddite. And I do think that they sometimes are misunderstood as just being anti-machine, when, like you said, that was a means of resistance, not necessarily a stance to be opposed to all technology or all machines. It was more about the way that machines were being used against their artisanship and the value and dignity of their labor. I do think that it is common for these critical, radical ideas that we're talking about to be lumped as somehow anti-technology or wanting to go back to an imagined pre-modern time. And I think it's important to resist that framing of these ideas, and to say, it's not so much about being against machinic or technological opportunities as who gets to come up with those ideas and design those machines? And in whose interests are they operating? Which I do think is in the Luddite's spirit, the machines that they were breaking were the machines that were not in their interest and not being put to work for the betterment of their lives, certainly. So, in terms of resistance of work, it is important to, I think, build further connections between worker movements and environmental movements. And the labor movement has been instrumental not only in, there certainly is that dimension of the celebration of labor that I think deserves more complexity, as we've been talking about, but at the same time, some of the big achievements of the labor movement historically have been things like a shorter working week. Those kinds of policy changes, I think, are important in terms of thinking about how we can build a more just and sustainable energy system.

Cecília Oliveira 
In fact, I was picturing the Spanish civil war and this emblematic picture of this girl with the flag. And it's one of the pictures that remind me of this, breaking the machines and the strikes and the power of strikes at that time. But yes, I think my last question to you is, then, what is your current project? Are you still working with energy? Or are you embracing the other kinds of projects that you think that can bring, again, this ecofeminist idea or a different way of studying the politics of science? Could you share with us? What is bothering you now?

Cara New Daggett  
In some ways, what I'm working on now is a continuation of the book. And it is veering a little bit away from energy per se, but I think it's still very much conceptually relevant and important to talking about energy and that is growth. I'm starting to write what will become a second book about growth as a science, and also religion in much the same way that I approached energy. And here I'm interested not only in what we all know, is the kind of rapacious commitment to growth that we see in Northern capitalism, but also the way that this preference for movement and dynamism and action enters into the Left. And so, my question is, what is the history of that, not only in science.  I think there's a lot about assumptions that come out of evolution to do with understanding growth and change. But also, what does this commitment to dynamism obscure for us conceptually? And I think in my book I probably went too fast to saying, "well, let's take up the foil of that," let's think about the other side of that. Lassitude, inertia -- what are some of these assumptions we make and how are they racialized and gendered? And I think that is important. But even that binary between motion and stasis or work and inertia, I think that very way of coding the world is problematic. And you can see it even in the way we understand the more-than-human world. For example, the idea of vegetative, or the idea that plants didn't move or don't move was very much a way of kind of demoting them on the tree of life because they weren't as active. And of course, now we know much more about plants. And we know that they do move and they are very active. But I'm interested in how this bias towards activity and dynamism infects, I think really across the board, how we think about not only work but life and so part of it too will be exploring some different cultural and religious approaches to movement and change.