Tough Oil Gothic

This chapter explores world-gothic forms and figurations relating to the enclosure, extraction, and global distribution of oil in contemporary literary fiction from Denmark and Nigeria. Touching on key issues of visibility, vulnerability, and world-systemic interrelation, the chapter argues that gothic as a form of irrealism excels in revealing the bewildering experience of a lifeworld remade around fossil fuels. As fossil extraction is undeniably experienced in hugely unequal ways across the world-system, this chapter highlights the need for cross-hemispheric readings of contemporary petrofiction to identify and relate these differences in a short story by the Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor – ‘Spider the Artist’ – along with two recent texts from Denmark that touch on offshore oil, namely Jesper Brygger’s collection of poems Transporterne (2017; The Transporters ) and Gitte Broeng and Lasse Krog Møller’s very short monologue Mare (2023).