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E-book Atlas of Petromodernity

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Penilaian

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In classical mythology, Atlas carries the weight of the world and the star-studded sky on his shoulders. Much like his brother Prometheus, Atlas, a Titan, is punished by the victorious Olym-pian gods, led by Zeus, for siding with Kronos and the humans created by the Titans in the war against them. Prometheus is also notorious for having given humanity fire. Consequently, he is viewed in the Western tradition as a benefactor of culture.1 Similarly, the culture of the modern age can, and indeed should, be viewed as Promethean.2 Never have more fires burned so hot. The industrial age began with the utilization of fossil coal as an energy source on a massive scale. With the advent of oil and natural gas, collectively referred to by engineers as “petroleum,” the turn of the twentieth century saw the emergence of new sources of energy, resources, uses, and effects, unprecedented in both quality and quantity. The atlas you hold in your hands hopes to examine this era of petromodernity, powered as it is by oil and gas: the intensification of a modern age already defined by fossil fuels.3For his betrayal of the gods’ secret, Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains and sentenced to have an eagle peck out his liver, only for his body to heal itself each night, ready for the ordeal to be repeated the next day. Atlas was banished to the western edge of the world, to the Strait of Gibraltar, and condemned to carry the weight of the Earth and the sky on his shoulders for all eternity. Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells of how Atlas was punished a second time, for refusing to allow Perseus, hero and son of Zeus, to seek shelter in his kingdom and threatening to attack him. In return, Perseus showed him “the visage of the dread-ful Medusa,” the severed head of the Gorgon whose gaze would turn the beholder to stone, and which he carried with him in a sack: “Atlas, as great as he was, became a mountain; already his beard and hair are transformed into woods: his shoulders and hands become mountain ridges; and what was previously his head is now a peak on the summit of the mountain. His bones become stones; then, being enlarged on every side, he grows to an immense height (so ye gods determined) and the whole heaven, with its stars so numerous, rests upon him.”4Atlas — who, according to various sources was born either directly of Gaia, the Earth mother, or of one of her children — is the bearer of an embodied knowledge of the laws of nature and the stars, because he does not carry it within himself as abstract, linear knowledge subject to the law of a single god, but as the plurality of its manifestations: "Atlas, the vanquished warrior, forced to immobilize his strength, unfortunate hero oppressed by the weight of his punishment, eventually becomes an immense and moving thing, rich with wealth of teachings. He has given his name to a mountain (Atlas), an ocean (the Atlantic), to an under-water world (Atlantis), to all kinds of monumental, archi-tectural statues designed to support palaces (atlases), and soon a new kind of knowledge intended to gather, through images, the dispersion — but also the secret coherence — of our entire world". An atlas in this latter sense constitutes a spatial and visual mani-festation of knowledge, a book you might sooner flick through than read from cover to cover, a book you open at a certain page and then leaf through, a landscape to wander, but also a mine from which to salvage treasures that could well be explosive.6 An atlas gathers together in images or maps a series of “presents,” layers, or sections, condensed or splayed out horizontally. These can relate to completely different norms or fields of knowledge; even historical or chemical processes can be translated into the geographical or artistic style of a map or an image. And they create connections, linking to a network of knowledge or uncovering patterns or hidden causal links without this interac-tion being bound to a single set structure or regularity.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

665.5 KLO a

Penerbit

USA : Punctum books., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

361 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781685712198

Klasifikasi

665.5

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Technology of Industrial Petroleum

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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