In 2009, journalist and writer Simen Sætre published a remarkable travelogue titled Petromania. The book describes a six-month journey through some of the richest oil countries in the world: Kuwait, Qatar, the Emirates Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Iran, Angola, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. Inspired by New Journalism and Terry Lynn Karl’s The Paradox of Plenty, the Norwegian traveller-writer investigates a peculiar form of madness allegedly typical for oil-exporting countries.
Petromania is defined as “a state of euphoria/ megalomania/ lack of restraint with an unconscious change in personality/ mentality/ thought patterns and loss of perspective/ self-insight/ power of judgment as a result of extraordinary hydrocarbon profits, associated with booming petrostates”. Protestant Norway is no exception, according to Sætre.
The book interrogates what it means to be a petrostate, focusing on the transformative power of oil money. Petromania is also a book that warns against national exceptionalism.
The research project Translatability of Oil (TOIL) has encouraged Simen Sætre to revisit his now sixteen-year-old book. Scholars of various nationalities and disciplines are eager to learn more about Sætre’s oil-globetrotting during the winter of 2007–2008. Among the questions we would like to raise are: to what extent is it meaningful to translate insights from one petrostate to another? Which are the benefits, and which are the pitfalls of comparing oil cultures across the globe? Is national exceptionalism a problem even in scholarly works on oil? Could Petromania have been written today?
Welcome to an informal conversation about oil, traveling and writing!