CGD Vectors for change lecture by Cara Daggett: "Power forever? On the relationship between fascism, energy and patriarchy"

This talk interrogates the centrality of patriarchal domination to the politics of energy expansion. The importance of gender and sexuality to energy politics is evident in far-right movements. Fossil fascist movements express ‘petromasculinities’ that celebrate their entitlement to the work of women, nature, and colonial land and labor. At the same time, large-scale solar and wind power plans are taking shape that also have a patriarchal and colonial relationship to nature, more often expressed through 'ecomodern masculinities' that rely upon technological innovation to sustain capitalist growth. Ecomodern masculinities are expressed in both fascist and liberal democratic states. A historical perspective shows these modes of (energy) governance and world-building are deeply entangled. The alliance between the far right and Silicon Valley in the U.S. – the merger of 'tech bros' and 'trad bros' – reflects this longer relationship, as do the ‘wind masculinities’ and ‘solar masculinities’ taking shape in the Hindutva movement in India, or the Erdoğan regime in Turkey. In this talk, I will explore the relationship between ecomodern and fossil fascist energy politics through a critical ecofeminist perspective.