Can a waste product marketed as a valuable fuel be treated proactively as both a clear and present danger and as a public monument? Such an approach is suggested by current philosophy and cultural critique. The materialist turn toward the “agency of things, “vibrant matter,” and “speculative realism” is driven by a need to come to grips with the suicidal overproduction that structures contemporary society. The handful of petcoke that you can pick up along the side of the river becomes the withdrawn index or impossible clue to the vast interlocking system of energy production and its consequences, on the scale of the planet earth and in the dimension of geological time.