Now, since the lithium agreement has been pushed to Serbia, the question is what to do next? The protests are still going on, there will be more tensions, but it's nothing that big energy transnational companies haven't already encountered. The regime in power in Serbia is in the last stage of metamorphosis from post-war to neo-colonial. The road from one to the other is paved with nationalism. It's not unheard of either. Such a transformation has already taken place in the oil-rich regions of the Middle East. After the retreat of the empires came the period of neo-colonialism, which was matched by local authoritarian regimes. These regimes of deep inequalities create a semblance of social cohesion by investing part of the profits in the production and promotion of "traditional" values. It was these societies that gave birth to modern religious fundamentalisms. The question remains, how do transnational companies that exploit mineral resources and the local population relate?
Like oil and water, was the answer of the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh in his, now anthological, essay "Petroliterature" (Petrofiction), which he published back in 1992 in the weekly magazine The New Republic. His initial question was how is it possible that, in contrast to colonial collisions, the experience of the "Oil Encounter" did not produce a single literary work worth mentioning? The answer is simple and devastating: for the main protagonists of this collision of world-historical significance, which are, writes Gosh, "America and the Americans on the one hand, and the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf on the other," the history of oil is the subject of such unpleasantness bordering "on the unspeakable, on the pornographic" (italics in the original). But still, this encounter offers first-rate literary material. On the ground, the Oil Encounter is no less spectacular than its colonial predecessor. Goš notes that this meeting gives rise to situations that literature simply feeds on: "city-states where basically everyone is a stranger; mixtures of people and cultures in unimaginable proportions; cruel systems of slavery side by side with unimaginable wealth; deserts transformed by technology and militarism to apocalyptic proportions”. Already in these dashes, someone will easily recognize Belgrade on the water and Dedinje today, and western Serbia as early as tomorrow...
Nevertheless, Goš wonders, how is it that despite the undoubted thematic potential, this meeting turned out to be so "sterile for imagination"? Seen from the (neo)colonizing side, oil spreads an unbearable stench, literally and metaphorically. "It smells like pollution and endangering the environment. It sucks, it stinks, so it becomes a problem that can only be written about in the language of Solutions". That language is the language of specialization, which is the exact opposite of the language of literature. On top of that, from the outside, there isn't much to write home about. Gosh emphasizes that a lot has been invested in the "nemesis of the Oil Meeting". On the Western side, the deafening silence that surrounds it is produced through a “strict regime of corporate secrecy,” and on the indigenous side, through a sharp physical and demographic separation between foreign experts and the local population. The question is not whether someone will welcome the Rio Tinto engineers with bread and salt, but how they will respond to that hospitality: they simply do not need it. They are not here to stay, but to take what they want and move on. In that, they completely match the domestic regime.
Nevertheless, Goš emphasizes that the biggest obstacle to a literary articulation of the Oil Encounter is not Western corporations or local autocracies, but the writing regime itself, that is, the literary system that was formed precisely during the period of intensive energy exploitation, and thanks to it. Literature, especially high-circulation literature, cannot be displaced outside the system that enables it (Goš paid more attention to this problem in his book of essays Great Disturbance: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, 2016). It seems that the only way she can think of to deal with this problem is to try to ignore it and suppress it. "Ultimately, maybe the art of writing, that is, literature as we know it, is responsible for the silence of the Oil Encounter. The experiences made possible by oil are contrasted with many historical imperatives that have influenced literature over the last few centuries and shaped its specific forms". Gosh will devote a good part of his essay to those works of contemporary Arabic literature that, despite everything, try to give a literary shape to the Oil Encounter, primarily the novels of Abderahman Munif Iskopin (The Trench) and Cities of Salt.
Perhaps the lithium literature will be an offshoot of the hyper-literature of the nineties? Imagine a novel you're reading on a game console (or phone, or laptop...), and whose plot causes a lithium battery to ignite, thus self-destructing the medium it's written on? Speculations aside, what could the Serbian literature of the Lithium meeting look like? Will there even be one? And if it does, what kind of critical reflection on its own conditions of existence will it be able to engender? To what extent is a literature that cannot face the recent past even able to imagine the near future? Three years ago, Goš again briefly referred to "Petroliterature", concluding that 9/11 somewhat represented a turning point compared to the situation in the nineties, but only to the extent that Western, especially American literature and culture gained some awareness of oil exploitation as the basis of technological achievements and living standards in the developed world. Just like thirty years ago, the Oil encounter did not leave a deep mark in local literature.3 The "Lithium encounter" is much more recent than the oil encounter. And it has a completely different geography: the largest reserves, and the largest mines, are located in Australia, China and South America (Chile, Bolivia, Argentina). The "Lithium meeting" in a strict, neo-colonial analogy with oil, will take place in the latter countries, as well as in the southeast of Europe, in Serbia. The landscapes of the Atacama highlands correspond to the apocalyptic desert scenes of Oil Encounter. The idyllic landscapes of western Serbia are on their way to join them.
Bonus video:
