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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses Catholic interpretations of (hidro)electricity in the context of recent loss of empire to elucidate how political subjectivities, perceptions of national decline and gendered notions on how to recover the nation’s virility influenced energy debates and choices.

Paper long abstract:

1898 marks the final collapse of the once-large overseas Spanish empire in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. As the defeat prompted a deep identity crisis, gender anxieties came to influence how energy technologies and resources were represented: virile nations were those who invented technology and were able to exploit their natural resources; however, backward and barely industrialized Spain was at risk of becoming part of the emasculated, underdeveloped nations. Among those who tried to put forward several schemes to ‘regenerate' a decaying nation, this paper will focus on Spanish Catholics. First, it will analyze how theological and religious concepts around energy and aether shaped certain extractive imaginations in Spain's end of the century and how these in turn were connected to wider concerns regarding national decadence. Secondly, it will explore how Catholic systems of belief also produced an aestheticization of certain energy resources – in particular (hydro)electricity over coal – as to promote an industrializing scheme that fitted Catholic values. Finally, it will show how inner controversies around the introduction of the electric light in Spanish churches were also connected to broader debates on the changes in the gender discourse and the re-masculinization of Catholicism throughout the nineteenth century. By placing Catholic interpretations of electricity in a space where political subjectivities, perceptions of national decline and gendered notions on how to recover the nation’s virility converged, I wish to shed light on the cultural elements shaping our energy epistemologies and on the complex drivers of past energy transitions.