Where the Earth Bleeds: Petromodernity, Petrocolonialism, and Indigenous Resistance in Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit

Abstract

This article analyzes Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit in the context of energy humanities and Indigenous studies, focusing on how the novel represents petroleum as a force of structural violence. Set during the Osage oil boom of the 1920s, the novel depicts oil not as a passive resource but as a central agent in the processes of dispossession, legal impunity, and cultural destruction. The article argues that Hogan exposes the foundations of petromodernity by highlighting the destructive consequences of settler colonial extractivism. Drawing on environmental justice and Indigenous epistemologies, the study examines how the novel critiques the commodification of land, the disruption of community. At the same time, the analysis engages Indigenous knowledge systems to show how the novel offers a narrative grounded in collective ethics, relational land practices, and moral accountability. Mean Spirit is not merely a historical novel; it is a critical intervention into the cultural narratives of fossil capitalism. By portraying petroleum as both a material cause of violence and a symbolic force of erasure, Hogan links the early structures of petromodernity to contemporary energy injustice. Embedding the narrative within Native epistemologies and disrupting settler histories, Hogan transforms the novel into a site of survivance and cultural restoration. As such, the article positions Mean Spirit as a foundational work of petrofiction that not only exposes the cultural and ecological violence of early oil capitalism, but also offers a literary framework for understanding how the legacies of extractivism and settler colonialism persist in present-day struggles for energy justice and Indigenous sovereignty.

Keywords

• energy humanities
• petromodernity
• petrocapitalism
• petrocolonialism
• oil fiction
• environmental justice
• Indigenous resistance

Kanayan Topraklar: Linda Hogan’ın Mean Spirit Romanında Petromodernite, Petrol Sömürgeciliği ve Yerli Direnişi

Abstract

Bu makale, Linda Hogan’ın Mean Spirit adlı romanını enerji beşerî bilimleri ve yerli bilgi sistemleri kuramsal çerçevesiyle ele almakta ve eserin petrolü yalnızca doğal bir kaynak değil, yapısal şiddetin bir aracı olarak temsil ettiğini ileri sürmektedir. 1920’lerde Osage topraklarında yaşanan petrol patlamasını merkezine alan roman, petrolün yerli halkın topraklarından edilmesini, topluluk yaşamının dağılmasını ve hukuki cezasızlığın meşrulaşmasını nasıl mümkün kıldığını ortaya koyar. Çalışma, Mean Spirit’in petromodernitenin ideolojik temellerini—toprak metalaştırması, bireycilik ve doğrusal ilerleme inancı—nasıl sorguladığını enerji beşerî bilimleri perspektifiyle değerlendirir. Aynı zamanda romanın, ilişkisel etik, topluluğa dayalı bilgi sistemleri ve ahlaki sorumluluk anlayışı doğrultusunda alternatif bir anlatı sunduğu gösterilir. Mean Spirit, yalnızca tarihsel bir roman değil; fosil kapitalizmin kültürel anlatılarına yönelik eleştirel bir müdahaledir. Hogan, petrolü hem maddi bir şiddet kaynağı hem de kültürel silinmenin simgesel bir aracı olarak kurgularken, petromodernitenin erken dönem yapıları ile günümüzdeki enerji adaletsizliği arasındaki sürekliliği görünür kılar. Roman, anlatıyı yerli bilgi sistemleri çerçevesinde kurarak yerleşimci tarih anlayışını kesintiye uğratır ve böylece edebi alanı yerli direniş ve kültürel hafıza için bir araç haline getirir. Bu yönüyle makale, Mean Spirit’i yalnızca erken dönem petrol kapitalizminin kültürel ve ekolojik şiddet biçimlerini görünür kılan bir anlatı olarak değil, aynı zamanda çıkarcılık ve yerleşimci sömürgeciliğin miraslarının günümüzdeki enerji adaleti ve yerli egemenlik mücadeleleri içinde nasıl sürdüğünü anlamaya yönelik edebi bir çerçeve olarak konumlandırmaktadır.

Keywords

• enerji beşeri bilimleri
• petromodernite
• petrol sömürgeciliği
• petrol kapitalizmi
• petrol kurgusu
• çevresel adalet
• Yerli direnişi

References

1. Alaimo, S. (2010). Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana University Press.
2. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (1989). The empire writes back: Theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. Routledge.
3. Balkan, S., & Nandi, S. (Eds.). (2021). Oil fictions: World literature and our contemporary petrosphere (pp. 1–18). Pennsylvania State University Press.
4. Barrett, R., & Worden, D. (2012). Oil culture: Guest editors’ introduction. Journal of American Studies, 46(2), 269-272. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23259136
5. Boyd, C. E., & Thrush, C. (2011). Phantom past, indigenous presence: Native ghosts in North American culture and history. University of Nebraska Press.
6. Boyer, D. & Szeman, I. (2014). Breaking the impasse: The rise of energy humanities. University Affairs, 40(3), 40-44.
7. Buell, L. (2005). The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Blackwell.
8. Buell, F. (2012). A short history of oil cultures; Or, the marriage of catastrophe and exuberance. Journal of American Studies, 46(2), 273-293. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23259137

9. Bullard, R. D. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality. Westview Press.
10. Citino, N. J. (2023). Gender, domesticity and speed: American petro-modernity. In Life Worlds of Middle Eastern Oil (pp. 275–297). Edinburgh University Press.
11. Clark, T. (2015). Ecocriticism on the edge: The Anthropocene as a threshold concept. Bloomsbury Academic.
12. Cole, L. W., & Foster, S. R. (2001). From the ground up: Environmental racism and the rise of the environmental justice movement. NYU Press.
13. Conway, K. (2022). Chronotopes of petromodernity: Oil and mobile privatization in the 1950s. Nordia Geographical Publications, 48(6), 47-61. https://nordia.journal.fi/article/view/90709 (Original work published March 10, 2020)
14. Coulthard, G. S. (2014). Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. University of Minnesota Press.
15. DeLoughrey, E., & Handley, G. (Eds.). (2011). Postcolonial ecologies: Literatures of the environment. Oxford University Press.
16. Garrard, G. (2012). Ecocriticism (2nd ed.). Routledge.
17. Ghosh, A. (2005). Petrofiction: The oil encounter and the novel. In Incendiary circumstances (pp. 138-151). Houghton Mifflin Company. (Original work published 1992)
18. Ghosh, A. (2016). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. University of Chicago Press.
19. Glotfelty, C., & Fromm, H. (Eds.). (1996). The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. University of Georgia Press.
20. Grann, D. (2017). Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. Doubleday.
21. Grewe-Volpp, C. (2020). Petrocultures. Ecozon@, 11(2), 273–277. https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2020.11.2.3535
22. Habila, H. (2010). Oil on water. W. W. Norton & Company.
23. Heise, U. K. (2008). Sense of place and sense of planet: The environmental imagination of the global. Oxford University Press.
24. Hogan, L. (1990). Mean Spirit. Atheneum.
25. Huseman, J., & Short, D. (2012). A slow industrial genocide: Tar sands and the Indigenous peoples of northern Alberta. The International Journal of Human Rights, 16(1), 216–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2011.649593
26. Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (Eds.). (2014). Material Ecocriticism. Indiana University Press.
27. Kinder, J. B., & Szeman, I. (2020). Literature and energy. In N. Ahuja et al. (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of twentieth and twenty-first century literature and science (pp. 79-96). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48244-2_5
28. LeMenager, S. (2014). Living oil: Petroleum culture in the American century. Oxford University Press.
29. Macdonald, G. (2012). Oil and world literature. American Book Review, 33(3), 7, 31. https://doi.org/10.1353/abr.2012.0079
30. Macdonald, G. (2017). Monstrous transformer: Petrofiction and world literature. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 53(3), 289–302. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2017.1337680
31. Mitchell, T. (2011). Carbon democracy: Political power in the age of oil. Verso.
32. Mohai, P., Pellow, D. N., & Roberts, J. T. (2009). Environmental justice. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 34, 405–430. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-082508-094348
33. Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press.
34. Munif, A. (1989). Cities of salt (P. Theroux, Trans.). Vintage International.
35. Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard University Press.
36. Parlee, B. L. (2015). Resource extraction and the politics of disruption: Indigenous peoples, cumulative effects, and environmental futures. World Development, 74, 425-436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.03.004
37. Schlosberg, D. (2007). Defining environmental justice: Theories, movements, and nature. Oxford University Press.
38. Sedighi, M., & Albader, B. (2019). Framing a new discourse on petromodernity: The global petroleumscape and petroleum modernism. Planning Perspectives, 34(2), 345-353. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2018.1561323
39. Simpson, L. B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 1-25.
40. Szeman, I. (2012). Introduction to focus: Petrofictions. American Book Review, 33(3), 3. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/480500
41. Szeman, I. (2019). On petrocultures: Globalization, culture, and energy. West Virginia University Press.
42. Szeman, I. & Boyer, D. (2017). Introduction: On the energy humanities. In I. Szeman & D. Boyer (Eds.), Energy humanities: An anthology (pp. 1–13). Johns Hopkins University Press.
43. Wenzel, J. (2016). Taking stock of the energy humanities. Reviews in Cultural Theory, 6(3), 30-34.
44. Szeman, I., Wenzel, J., & Yaeger, P. (Eds.). (2017). Fueling Culture: 101 Words for Energy and Environment. Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823273935
45. Tanaka, S. (2020). The great arrangement: Planetary petrofiction and novel futures. Modern Fiction Studies, 66(1), 190-215. https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2020.0008
46. Vizenor, G. (2008). Survivance: Narratives of Native presence. University of Nebraska Press.
47. Westman, C. N., & Joly, T. L. (2019). Oil sands extraction in Alberta, Canada: A review of impacts and processes concerning Indigenous peoples. The Extractive Industries and Society, 6(3), 775-783. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.02.008
48. Wilson, S., Carlson, A., & Szeman, I. (Eds.). (2017). Petrocultures: Oil, politics, culture. McGill–Queen’s University Press.
49. Yusoff, K. (2024). Geologic life: Inhuman intimacies and the geophysics of race. Duke University Press.