Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism (Elements)

Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism (Elements)

In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Both envision solar-powered futures where renewable energy redresses gentrification, systemic racism, and underemployment. However, as Myles Lennon argues in Subjects of the Sun , solar power is no less likely to exploit marginalized communities than dirtier forms of energy. Drawing from ethnographic research on clean energy corporations and community solar campaigns in New York City, Lennon argues that both groups overlook solar’s extractive underside because they primarily experience energy from the sun in the virtual world of the cloud. He shows how the material properties of solar technology—its shiny surfaces, decentralized spatiality, and modularity—work closely with images, digital platforms, and quantitative graphics to shape utopic visions in which renewable energy can eradicate the constitutive tensions of racial capitalism. As a corrective to this virtual world, Lennon calls for an equitable energy transition that centers the senses and sensibilities neglected by screenwork: one’s haptic care for their local environment; the full-bodied feel of infrastructural labor; and the sublime affect of the sun. “An exquisitely crafted call to action! With incisive ethnography and a sharp theoretical lens, Myles Lennon delivers a powerful critique of the dominant visual narratives surrounding solar energy. Lennon’s focus on the tension between digital utopias and the lived, embodied experience of energy production challenges us to rethink our relationship to energy, labor, and the environment in ways that truly honor both people and planet. A must-read for anyone serious about environmental justice and the complexities of technological progress.”― Ruha Benjamin, author of , Imagination: A Manifesto “Myles Lennon demonstrates the importance of reading solar energy not as a neutral resource to be freely exploited but instead as a classed, raced, gendered, and historical product that fundamentally and importantly has the possibility to be otherwise. Showing how disembodied data and techno-utopian approaches to solar energy both create and maintain white colonial logics, Subjects of the Sun will provoke important conversations about the symbiotic relationship between racial capitalism and energy systems and how they reproduce one another.”― Cymene Howe, author of , Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene “With generosity and care, Myles Lennon shows us how community environmental justice work can unwittingly reproduce the structures it wishes to counter. We learn how racial capitalism is not only driving climate change, it also dwells in the mundane details of datafication and solar panel placement. Lennon reminds us to orient to the materialities of sun, relationships, and feeling instead of screens and tech as crucibles of justice.”― M. Murphy, author of , The Economization of Life Myles Lennon is Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment and Society and Anthropology at Brown University.