Oil in Sicily: Petrocapitalist imaginaries in the shadow of old smokestacks

By describing the long trajectory of petrochemical industrialization in a Mediterranean area in southeastern Sicily locally known as the triangle of death, this article discusses how the widespread, long‐term, and nearly invisible nature of everyday forms of catastrophe generate effects that at times are even more insidious than a major disaster. Indeed, like the fumes rising from an industrial smokestack, oil culture seeps into the imaginaries and epidermises of the people for whom petroleum represents both a blessing and a curse.