petromodernity
Etymology
From petro- + modernity.
petromodernity means Those aspects of modern times that are dependent on and shaped by the availability of oil. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 82 out of 100.
Why this word is great
PETROMODERNITY — [Noun] The condition of a society whose social forms, economic structures, and cultural imaginaries are fundamentally scaffolded by the extraction and consumption of fossil hydrocarbons. From the combining form petro- (from Greek petra, "rock", referring to petroleum) + modernity (the quality or condition of being modern). Unlike postmodernity (which dissects the abstract cultural condition that follows grand narratives) or industrial modernity (which broadly credits the steam engine and the factory), petromodernity names the concrete, oily substratum of the twentieth century and beyond—the specific, liquid logic of cheap energy. It is the hum of the interstate at midnight, a river of light fueled by ancient sunlight; it is the cool, plastic sheen of a supermarket apple, polished and shipped across continents; it is the synchronized pulse of a million commuter engines on a freeway at dusk. We built a world of miraculous distance and instantaneity on the pressurized rot of prehistoric forests, and now must live in its long, hot shadow.
noun
- Those aspects of modern times that are dependent on and shaped by the availability of oil.“While Oil, its extraction, and the global petroculture and its role in transforming the planet's climate undoubtedly play a crucial role in the Antropocene imaginary — to the extent that petrofiction has been construed not just as a genre but as a periodizing gesture of "petromodernity" — it would hamper both the imagination and the root of petrofiction to restrict the range of this term to the en”