Where the Earth Bleeds: Petromodernity, Petrocolonialism, and Indigenous Resistance in Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit

Authors : Nesrin Yavaş

Pages : 363-381

Doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1695021

View : 78 | Download : 821

Publication Date : 2025-12-29

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :This article analyzes Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit in the context of energy humanities and Indigenous studies, focusing on how the novel represents petroleum as a force of structural violence. Set during the Osage oil boom of the 1920s, the novel depicts oil not as a passive resource but as a central agent in the processes of dispossession, legal impunity, and cultural destruction. The article argues that Hogan exposes the foundations of petromodernity by highlighting the destructive consequences of settler colonial extractivism. Drawing on environmental justice and Indigenous epistemologies, the study examines how the novel critiques the commodification of land, the disruption of community. At the same time, the analysis engages Indigenous knowledge systems to show how the novel offers a narrative grounded in collective ethics, relational land practices, and moral accountability. Mean Spirit is not merely a historical novel; it is a critical intervention into the cultural narratives of fossil capitalism. By portraying petroleum as both a material cause of violence and a symbolic force of erasure, Hogan links the early structures of petromodernity to contemporary energy injustice. Embedding the narrative within Native epistemologies and disrupting settler histories, Hogan transforms the novel into a site of survivance and cultural restoration. As such, the article positions Mean Spirit as a foundational work of petrofiction that not only exposes the cultural and ecological violence of early oil capitalism, but also offers a literary framework for understanding how the legacies of extractivism and settler colonialism persist in present-day struggles for energy justice and Indigenous sovereignty.
Keywords : energy humanities, petromodernity, petrocapitalism, petrocolonialism, oil fiction, environmental justice, Indigenous resistance

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