Article Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "pk": 40985,
    "title": "Petro-Modernity and the Racialized Politics of Extraction: ENI and the making of the African Anthropocene",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "<p>Analyzing two ENI documentaries from the 1960s, <em>Oduroh</em> (1964) and <em>Uomini del petrolio</em> (1965, <em>Oilmen</em>), this article considers the historical and contemporary logics shaping Italy’s extractive relationship with Africa. Framed by the recent revival of Enrico Mattei’s legacy in Giorgia Meloni’s government current “Mattei Plan for Africa,” the essay reads these corporate films as crucial interscalar devices. The films reveal ENI’s strategy of using developmentalist narratives and specific visual representations to naturalize its largescale interventions. <em>Oduroh</em> shows the making of African subjects suitable for extractive work, while <em>Uomini del petrolio </em>documents the physical reshaping of African landscapes for resource exploitation. Together, these films exemplify what the paper identifies as the dual processes of cultural and material transformation necessary for establishing extractive operations in Africa. The article contributes to discussions of petro-modernity, the African Anthropocene, and racial capitalism by showing how ENI’s simultaneous construction of extractive infrastructure and developmentalist narratives produced new ways of imagining Africa’s territories and futures.</p>",
    "language": null,
    "license": {
        "name": "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial  4.0",
        "short_name": "CC BY-NC 4.0",
        "text": "Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.",
        "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0"
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "extractivism"
        },
        {
            "word": "developmentalism"
        },
        {
            "word": "racial capitalism"
        },
        {
            "word": "industrial cinema"
        },
        {
            "word": "african anthropocene"
        },
        {
            "word": "petromodernity"
        },
        {
            "word": "ENI"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Critical Essays and Articles",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ph8b7jr",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Emiliano",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Guaraldo",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Other",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": "2024-11-02T06:47:31-07:00",
    "date_accepted": "2025-07-04T11:21:25.070000-07:00",
    "date_published": "2025-10-21T07:05:00-07:00",
    "render_galley": {
        "label": "PDF",
        "type": "pdf",
        "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cisj/article/40985/galley/40778/download/"
    },
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cisj/article/40985/galley/40778/download/"
        }
    ]
}