Magic and Haunting: Oil Media at Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo

Abstract

Energy humanities emanating from the Global North often presents questions of oil disinvestment through a linear narrative of enchantment and disenchantment. According to this narrative, modern humankind has enjoyed the benefits of oil without much question, and it is only after the effects of climate change are felt that one arrives at a moment of disenchantment from oil’s allure. This article seeks to complicate this narrative by focusing on mediations of Venezuela’s oil extraction epicenter: Lake Maracaibo. Through textual and visual analysis of Standard Oil’s El Farol (1935–75) and the independent documentary film Pozo Muerto (1968), the article suggests that the persistent language of magic, bedazzlement, and enchantment is not the only register available to understand complex landscapes in regions where oil development is perceived as a cyclical, disruptive process rather than as a finished one. Inspired by María Pilar Blanco’s notion of ghost-watching (2012) and paying attention to local visual practices, I suggest that a language of haunting is better suited to explain the lived experience of petroculture from the perspective of extraction enclaves such as Lake Maracaibo. Unlike the register of magic, which presents oil as a transformative agent that converts the subsoil into wealth at great speed, a register of haunting effectively registers the histories of dispossession, interruption, and uncertainty that permeate the experience of petroculture in Venezuela. Ultimately, I argue for a perspective that examines the labor of constructing oil as a miraculous mediator while acknowledging alternative registers to understand petrocultures.