Contextualizing Petro-Sexual Politics

Abstract

Petro-violence is a feminist issue. Through the examination of U.S. mainstream narratives of gender violence and petroleum violence within Nigeria, the author reveals how gender and sexuality are central to representations of terrorism and ethnic-gang conflict within petroleum politics. Through a framework of petro-sexual politics, which links histories of gender and petroleum violence together, the author considers how petro-violence materializes in multiple forms that have always been gendered and systemically violent. By demonstrating that gender violence is not merely an effect of petro-violence, the author argues it is the necessary condition for such violence to even take place. Understanding petro-politics means recognizing that gender violence is part of a larger political economy of violence that creates the conditions fostering and facilitating petro-politics in the first place.