Peak Oil and the Narrative Construction of Unmarked Identities

Resource depletion is usually an ecological or economic issue, but I approach interpretations of peak oil as the interplay between local and cultural knowledge during narrative identity construction. I examine two internet resource depletion blogs finding that bloggers compete for narrative control using identity unmarkers. Identity unmarkers are taken for granted understandings of normativity. I call this process narrative unmarking. I discuss four identity unmarkers that play on everyday sentiments of normativity: doing something, doing rationality, making plausible insights, and proposing solutions.