With particular emphasis on developments in Norway after 1970, researchers will discuss how the aesthetics of oil may have contributed to preventing the transition to alternative forms of energy.
About the project
A starting point is that a shift from fossil to green energy requires a combination of different translation skills, which makes it possible to communicate across ideological, professional, linguistic, and generational dividing lines.
With a comparative approach to energy cultures, where Norwegian oil culture forms the nodal point of investigation, the research will contribute to nuance the hitherto North America dominated research in petroculture studies.
By combining methods from literary studies, didactic research, film studies, and theology, the researchers will map and compare different representations of oil.
Translatability in culture and society
The work packages are conceptually connected in that they all explore the translatability of oil in different ways.
Firstly, we will investigate translatability in the specific linguistic sense of the word, as when books and films are translated from English or Arabic into Norwegian reaching a new audience in a new country.
Secondly and more generally, translatability is studied as a form of displacement, interpretation, dissemination, transformation. Examples might be when school students are presented to different views on oil in different academic contexts, or when the physical substance oil is given a spiritual meaning in a religious setting, or when societies based on private motoring have to think about mobility in new ways.
By analyzing various examples of successful and unsuccessful translation, which take place in connection with both the introduction and dismantling of petroleum-based cultures, the researchers aim at strengthening the role of hermeneutics within the interdisciplinary field of energy humanities.
Background
Time frame: 01.08.23 – 30.07.27
Sub-projects
- Petrofiction in Translation
- Didactics of Oil
- Screen Petrocultures
- Petroleum as Religious Substance
Financing
VELKULSAM, NFR 335373
Cooperation
Universitetet i Agder, NTNU og MF vitenskapelig høyskole