Petrophonics

David Janzen; Reuben Martens

doi:10.18357/anthropologica66220242684

Authors

David Janzen University of Lethbridge https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7491-1515
Reuben Martens University of Waterloo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8274-7201

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica66220242684

Keywords:

petrophonics, energy humanities, sound studies, anthropology of sound, petrosonic, autoethnography, climate crisis

Abstract

Drawing from sound studies, energy humanities, and anthropology, this essay identifies a critical gap in the academic recognition of “petrophonics”—sonic and vibrational byproducts of fossil fuel dependency that pervade contemporary soundscapes—within sound and soundscape studies as well as the environmental and energy humanities, where such phenomena are often dismissed as “white noise” or background ambience. Through theoretical analysis and empirical observation, we attempt to define petrophonics as both an object of study and a framework for critical engagement. Focusing on traffic noise—the most accessible example of petrophonics—as a cultural and material phenomenon rather than a mere auditory background allows us to explain and propose a speculative definition of petrophonics, characterized by its materialist grounding in fossil fuel infrastructures and its capacity to exist independently of audibility. This essay concludes by emphasizing the political, temporal, and decolonial dimensions of petrophonics, advocating for an ethico-affective approach that foregrounds the relational and infrastructural realities of petromodernity. This framework invites scholars and practitioners to re-attune to the pervasive yet overlooked sounds of fossil fuel dependency and imagine alternative, post-petrocultural phonic worlds.

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Editor & editorial board: profiles
Academic society: Canadian Anthropology Society
Publisher: University of Victoria

Author Biographies

David Janzen, University of Lethbridge

David Janzen is Assistant Professor in New Media at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. His work explores intersections of environment, media studies, and crisis theory. Current projects draw on field research, contemporary philosophy, sound studies, and research-creation to examine human-nature entanglements in environmental media. Janzen has published journal articles in a wide range of disciplines, from Soil Biology and Biochemistry to Historical Materialism. He is also a writer, poet, and artist; his recent collection of poems, titled nature : nurture, is published by Baseline Press.

Reuben Martens, University of Waterloo

Reuben Martens is an AMTD Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo. His work is mainly situated within the fields of the energy humanities, ecocinema, contemporary North American fiction, sound studies, and critical infrastructure studies. He has published articles on energy and ontology in The Matrix trilogy in ISLE; on petromelancholia in Indigenous Canadian literature in American Imago; on the dynamics of infrastructural prolepsis in contemporary American fiction in Resilience; and renewable energy politics of the solarpunk movement in Extrapolation. He is also a sound artist, poet, and screenwriter.

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