Petro-hegemony and the matrix of resistance: What can Standing Rock’s Water Protectors teach us about organizing for climate justice in the United States?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article asks what scholars of climate justice politics and activists in the climate justice movement can learn from the Standing Rock Sioux’s fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota. It reviews Patricia Hill Collins’ insights on intersectionality and the matrix of domination and suggests that the matrix of domination for which fossil fuel companies are responsible establishes the conditions for the possible emergence of what I call a matrix of resistance, rooted in intersectionality, collective liberation, and negotiating tensions between universalism and particularism. I go on to demonstrate how Gramsci’s theory of hegemony has been applied to understanding the fossil fuel industry’s power. Rereading Gramsci, I suggest that hegemony must combine three relations of power: consent, compliance, and coercion. Applying this to the fossil fuel industry, I introduce the term petro-hegemony. Drawing on preliminary field research, I show how petro-hegemony revealed itself during the struggle against the DAPL and argue that the Indigenous-led uprising provides clues into how the construction of a matrix of resistance might be used to strategically counter petro-hegemony.