Settler Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipedreams: An Ideology Critique of Western Alienation

Applying concepts from Žižekian and Lacanian psychoanalytic social theory to the case of the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) project, this paper offers an “ideology critique” of the environmental discourses surrounding the TMX. Chapter One argues for the applicability of psychoanalysis to social and political theory, and to environmental politics in particular (climate change, environmental justice, the politics of energy infrastructure). Chapter Two examines TMX discourse as a network of settler Canada’s social fantasies – namely, (a) “Western alienation” and the settler origin story of Buffalo, (b) “landlocked” Alberta oil and mythical markets in Asia Pacific (with the promise of total enjoyment), (c) the (sexual enjoyment of) scapegoating environmentalists and “foreign” threats, and (d) denial and disavowal of the climate change implications of tar sands development. My overall argument is that “Western alienation” serves as an origin story for Alberta’s extractive industries, one that configures resistance to pipeline development as a centuries-long attempt by “external entities” to hold back Alberta from realizing its autonomy and self-sufficiency. Ultimately, each of these social fantasies works in concert to disavow and conceal the antagonisms inherent to tar sands expansion and pipeline development (Canadian settler colonialism, fossil capitalism, and global climate change), serving to mobilize consent for the TMX.