Late Petro-State Politics: The Struggle for Temporal Hegemony in Guyana

• In Event: Passive Revolution in the Postcolony

Abstract

In 2015, ExxonMobil discovered oil off the coast of Guyana at a time when climate science and international climate governance, marked by the landmark Paris Agreement, demanded the world phase out fossil fuels. Despite this, fossil fuel production in Guyana and continues to accelerate. Scholars point out that the petro-state is rooted in maintaining the appearance of unlimited growth, yet the temporal limits which climate logics seek to impose suggest a fundamental question about the continued legitimation of this foundational common sense. This article investigates how the Government of Guyana legitimates its petro-state amid escalating climate catastrophe and how counter-hegemonic actors intervene in the consolidation of the petro-state. Turning to content analysis of legal cases, development plans, and political speeches in the paradigmatic case of Guyana from 2015-2023, this study finds that temporal tactics are a central mechanism through which petro-state hegemony is constructed and contested in what I call late petro-state politics. I define late petro-state politics as the contested political project through which state actors mobilize temporal tactics of acceleration, inertia, and deferral to legitimate fossil-fuel-led development in the face of decarbonization timelines, while counter-hegemonic actors intervene by deploying counter temporal tactics of delay and anticipation to demand environmental regulation and challenge compounding climatic harm. In doing so, this article demonstrates how environmental and climate discourse operates not as a constraint but a resource of petro-state legitimation while also furnishing advocates with tools to contest temporal hegemony. This study contributes to theorization about how temporal tactics function as a central mechanism of state legitimation and political struggle and complicates extant literature on climate obstruction in the Global North, clarifying how late petro-state politics are deployed to defer and deflect blame for contributing to climate change and, in doing so, become complicit in its worsening impact.

Author

• Anna Feign, University of California-Berkeley