Homebound: Compromised Petroculture Criticism in American Neoliberal Family Novels

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that the neoliberal family novel is by genre compromised to criticize fossil fuel extraction. I situate the claim against the rise of petrocultures studies, especially of novels consciously engaged with the post-9/11 extractivist boom. A good number of these novels are family saga, and this article focuses on two of them: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Lamar Herrin’s Fractures—the latter claimed to resemble Freedom but disproportionally underexplored. This article shows that the family thread in both novels tend to overpower and consume the ecopolitical thread, thereby undercutting the novels’ critical force against petrocultures. In demonstrating this point, I trace the evolving cultural construction of the (nuclear) family in relation to the postwar oil boom and the subsequent installation of neoliberalism. Then I show that the novels participate respectively in two modes of neoliberal family construction: a privatized consumer space detached from ecopolitical controversy, or a fully integrated neoliberal stronghold devouring anti-oil resistance. Either way, the textual mobilization of family logic and sentimentalized symbolism jeopardizes the anti-oil theme. Finally, as a way out, I identify an alternative coalitional structure of local anonymity at the end of Fractures that is potentially better positioned to articulate anti-oil politics.