Spatiotemporal Profiling and the Need for Energy Commons in Stuart McMillen’s Peak Oil

Abstract

Intersecting at the crossroads of explainer comic and petronarrative, Peak Oil (2015) by Stuart McMillen is a graphic adaptation of how geoscientist Marion King Hubbert developed the peak oil theory. Through its 120 pages of black and grey panels, this graphic narrative narrates human history’s transition from coal to oil, oil to peak oil, and the subsequent possible changes the World might face. The present research aims to study how Peak Oil represents a necessity for energy commons through the formal elements employed by McMillen. Energy commons, according to Imre Szeman, is an ideology to regulate energy as a vital resource, a deviation from which may turn hazardous to the living communities. In his graphic narrative, McMillen employs various spatiotemporal techniques by placing the character of Hubbert in almost all the pages of the text. This research attempts to study Hubbert’s spatiotemporal profiling through Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope and Lefèvre’s terms for space construction in comics.

Keywords

• spatiotemporal profiling
• energy commons
• focalization
• peak oil
• stuart mcmillen
• pascal lefèvre
• postmaterialism
• imre szeman
• graphic petronarrative