MEDIATING ENERGY: RHETORIC AND THE FUTURE OF ENERGY RESOURCES by Brian Cozen A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication The University of Utah December 2015 Copyright © Brian Cozen 2015 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Brian Cozen has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Danielle Endres , Chair 5/18/2015 Date Approved Kevin M. DeLuca , Member 5/18/2015 Date Approved Glen Feighery , Member 5/18/2015 Date Approved Robert W. Gehl , Member 5/18/2015 Date Approved Robert Stephen Tatum , Member 5/18/2015 Date Approved and by Kent A. Ono , Chair of the Department of Communication and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT Discourse regarding the societal role of “energy” and the “energetic” has implications for environmental politics and the future of energy resources. This dissertation offers rhetorical analyses of three media case studies on energy resource futures. I argue that such energy resource texts constitute a politics of common sense around the necessitated expansion of energy production. This political position manifests discursively by emphasizing the central societal role of energy in building the mobile, modernist world. This central role emphasizes energy’s mediating function as an immaterial force that enlivens modern society and the automobile human subject. My first chapter, along with outlining the three case studies and their political thread, elaborates on these articulations between energy and media, energy and modernity, movement, and mobility, and energy and rhetoric. The three analysis chapters offer close readings of media case studies in order to elaborate on rhetorical strategies that highlight these various articulations to energy resources. Chapter Two examines commercial advertising campaigns from three major oil companies: Brazil’s national company, Petrobras; Royal Dutch Shell; and ExxonMobil. I examine how these campaigns associate movement, mobility, and energy as the purview and purpose of the oil company. Chapter Three turns to the pronuclear documentary, Pandora’s Promise, as an exemplar case study for the relationship between modernization and theology in contemporary eco- modernist discourses. Chapter Four analyzes the relationship between the United Nations and the television series Revolution. I argue that linking energy poverty campaigns with a dystopian narrative about the sudden loss of electricity has implications for how people understand the humanitarian role of energy access. The concluding chapter further examines these humanitarian implications. Universalizing discourses that link energy expansion to human progress has implications for critical cultural studies, rhetorical theory and criticism, and energy politics. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………..……….vii CHAPTER ONE. ENERGY RESOURCES AS THE ENERGETIC CAPACITIES OF THE MODERN WORLD..……………………………………………………………………...1 Energy Resource Futures and the Politics of Common Sense………………….....6 Energy as Media(tion)………………………………..…………………………..12 Energy Determinism and Rhetorical Modernism: Producing the Automobile Subject……………………………………………………………………15 Energy Rhetoric: Energy and Rhetoric as Capacities……………………...…….21 Reading Media Texts…………………………………………………………….25 Chapter Previews………………………………………………………………...29 Notes……………………………………………………………………………..31 TWO. THE IMMUTABLE ENERGY MOBILE: OIL COMPANY ADVERTISEMENTS AND THE MOBILITY PARADIGM…………………...……...34 Circulating Discourse: Mobility Systems and Human Movement………………37 Contemporary Oil Company Advertisements……………………………………43 Immutable Energy Mobiles: The Oil Company Mobilizes Your World………...48 Conclusion………………………………..……………………………………...70 Notes……………………………………………………………………………..74 THREE. PRONUCLEAR ADVOCACY: PANDORA’S PROMISE AS MODERNIZATION THEOLOGY.…………………………….……………….………77 Modernization Theology as Rhetorical Heuristic…….………………………….82 The Eco-Moderns Hold a Revival…………………………………………….…87 Pandora’s Promise’s Path to Salvation as Modernization Theology……………97 Conclusion………………………………..…………………………………….117 Notes……………………………………………………………………………122 FOUR. FACTING FICTION: REVOLUTION, THE UNITED NATIONS, AND CULTURAL POLITICS OF ELECTRICITY………..………………………………...125 Revolution and the Circulation of its Energy Access Thematic………………..128 Revolution Meets the United Nations: Framing the Millennium Development Goals in Terms of Energy………………………………………………131 Fears, Futures, Orientations: Articulating the Lost Electric Sublime with Energy Poverty…………………………………..……………………………...138 All is Lost: The UN Meets Revolution’s Dystopian World…………………….141 Conclusion………………………………..…………………………………….162 Notes……………………………………………………………………………166 FIVE. CONCLUSION.…………………………..……………………………………..170 Summary of Major Themes………………………………..…………….…......171 Implications of Primary Themes…..………………………………..…………..178 Conclusion………………………………..…………………………………….188 Notes……………………………………………………………………………190 REFERENCES………………………………..………………………………………..191 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In September 2014, in the midst of writing this dissertation, a blackout kept eighteen hundred Salt Lake City residents, including myself, without power for several hours. The experience brought into focus the relational dependencies, and constitutions, of energy in modernized lives. During the blackout I walked around my neighborhood, strolling along streets with lights on one side and complete darkness on the other. I have tried to write and think in this metaphorical space between: to understand the produced desires for modern industrial energy, while acknowledging the political ramifications of embracing that side as a humanitarian good uncritically examined. First, I acknowledge the energy-intensive practices and environments that have in part constituted who I am and, as such, speak through the pages that follow. To the people who have influenced these pages, offering specific names also shades over the significant experiences left unsaid. This list is partial and limited. My acknowledgements do little justice to the gratitude I have for all that, and for all who, inspired along the way. To Danielle Endres, whose guidance traces back well before the start of this dissertation. Thank you for all of the direct contributions offered over the course of my doctoral work. Also, thank you for the opportunities you have given me, including the various collaborative research projects. While none of the dissertation was directly funded, multiple projects through Dr. Endres’ grants, particularly those that took me to energy related conferences, undoubtedly permeated my thinking. Thank you in particular to the National Science Foundation for their generous funding on the largest and most recent of these grants. I would also like to thank the generous contributions of the James A. Anderson Research Award for allowing me to not (overly) worry about finances while I completed this dissertation. I would also like to thank my committee, Kevin DeLuca, Glen Feighery, Robert Gehl, and Stephen Tatum, for all of their insights that further pushed my thinking. Also thank you to all other faculty and staff at the University of Utah’s Department of Communication, especially to Jessica Tanner whose commitment led me through all of the logistical obstacles one must maneuver past to get to this point. Thank you to all of my friends who have directly or indirectly offered support while I worked on this dissertation. From help translating Portuguese to general respites, I could not have gotten through this experience without the social networks and emotional strength you all supplied. I tried to compile a list of names but realized it was a futile attempt to name everyone whom has helped, and so I hope you see your presence in this paragraph. That said, I’d like to extend particular gratitude to Megan O’Byrne, Nicholas Paliewicz, and the greatest Klezmer clarinetist of all time, Ryan Yuré. Finally, thank you to my family. To my older sister, Heather Cozen, for all her successes in life that provided templates for my own goals and aspirations. Thank you for always setting the bar so high. And to my parents, Dennis and Shirley Cozen, none of this is without you. My appreciation for all you have done grows everyday. viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: ENERGY RESOURCES AS THE ENERGETIC CAPACITIES OF THE MODERN WORLD Questions regarding the political and economic futures of energy resources also raise theoretical concerns as to what it means to live in the world. To theorize life is also, often, to theorize “energy,” or the energetic vitality of the planet. Alongside discourses on what it means to live energetically run parallel discursive arguments about the essential nature of the energy resources that make a vital world possible, specifically as they facilitate one’s everyday experiences. For instance, in ExxonMobil’s recent commercial, “Enabling Everyday Progress: Egg,” the advertisement juxtaposes a woman boiling an egg with a montage of the corporation finding and exporting the energy required to transport the eggs, to heat the stove, and so on (ExxonMobil, 2014b). Here, ExxonMobil constructs its persona less around supplying oil and more around supplying the infrastructural capacity to convert that oil into the heated water that boils one’s egg. Energy converts the world to meet one’s specificities. The logic of