The Weight of the Past: Nostalgia and Neo-extractivism in Modern Cornwall

• In Event: Extractivism, Energy, and Environmental Justice

Abstract

This paper explores the role of history in extractive ideology. It will examine recent proposals for a return to mining and the opening of large-scale Lithium extraction in contemporary Cornwall. Cornwall was traditionally the heart of deep level metal mining in the UK and a core region in early industrialisation. Its history is therefore closely entangled with the emergence of what Malm terms Fossil Capital. It was also one of the first places in the world to experience the catastrophic collapse of extractive industry. However, that collapse did not extinguish the importance of mining heritage in modern Cornish identity, and even the turn towards the extractive logics of tourist capitalism did not eliminate either extractive industries or rather romantic post-industrial memories and representations of a proud mining heritage. Today, modern speculative capital seeks to actively mobilise these memories and representations through the appropriation and remaking of historical mythologies of Cornwall and Cornishness as essentially a mining culture. Such stories wound into the boosterism of the effort to exploit local Lithium and copper resources for a ‘green transition’ poses a serious threat both to the possibility of meaningfully contesting the so-called ‘return’ of mining in a County where Cornish people suffer relatively impoverishment amidst the homes and cars of wealthy in-migrants and to the possibility of serious thinking transition as an opportunity to move beyond a bankrupt and unsustainable automobile society. Historical work needs to urgently challenge the myths of the Cornish past and show how a radical departure from it can lead the way to a liveable future.

Author

• Timothy Cooper, University of Exeter