Petronoia, Or the (Geo)political Unconscious of a Small and Open Extractive Economy

Abstract

Where petroleum is discovered but left in the ground in the Danish TV series Borgen: Power & Glory (2022), the Norwegian series Occupied (2015–2019) offers a more complex narrative where existing petroleum extraction is stopped by a green government but then forcefully restarted through a Euro-Russian invasion. Why is it easier to imagine the end of petroleum extraction in Denmark than it is in the petrostate of Norway? This article explores the way culture may be said to mediate the current mode of production, a perspective that can help us avoid ethical and voluntaristic judgments of climate inaction. Countering previous analyses highlighting Occupied as symptomatic of Norwegian disavowal or outright denial of its climate responsibility (with the effect that guilt surfaces from time to time), this article entertains the possibility that Occupied can be understood as an exploration of the entrenched nature of the political economy of petroleum, particularly its functioning in a neoliberal age hampering the state’s capabilities to change its political and economic direction of travel. This (geo)political context produces what I call “petronoia,” understood as an anxiety related to not only the chaotic powers inherent in the petroleum sector but also the prospect of a future without petroleum, especially if reached without conscious industrial planning.