Solarity: Tomorrow in Our Terms
By Caleb O’Connor
“Solarity”, argues Imre Szeman and Darin Barney in their formative introduction to Solarity, a special edition of Duke University Press’s South Atlantic Quarterly (2021 p7), “insists on an understanding of energy as more than the fuel that powers the engine of society, but also as a force in the destitution and constitution of social and political forms”. As a transition towards solar energy picks up steam, new terms and vocabularies must be coined to support the imagination of alternative methods for governing systems previously ensnared by carbon-dependency. The concept of solarity developed throughout this special edition, which informs the critical use of the term throughout this blog, refers to a social condition and emergent form of ecological imagination, not just an energy source.
Solarity, as a revolutionary political form and aesthetic mode for imagining a just transition, offers artists and scholars a vocabulary to critically reflect on the petro-cultural assumptions upon which our relationship to political, economic, and social structures are predicated. Szeman and Barney (2021 p4) define that ““The point of thinking about solarity is to consider the transition to renewables as a process involving political and economic structures and relationships, as well as social and cultural upheaval” . Of course, this broad definitions only whet our desire to see solarity applied to different frontiers of energy politics and cultural criticism – how will it apply to our food system? Gender dynamics? Community development? Politics of care? Well, reader – I’m glad you asked.
Below, I have compiled together a short indicative bibliography to offer you a flavour of solarity. I hope you’ll enjoy revelling in some of the new phrases and ideas scholars have created to frame the dynamics of an ideological transition away from petromodernity and towards the solar elsewhere. From Williams evocative notion of “engineerification”, and the use of solarity to write back against the depoliticization of food, to Wilson’s clear distinction between solar cultures, which intend to palimpsest solar energy atop pre-existing models of petro-capitalism, and the inherently revolutionary force of solarity. Their manifestation in cultural production and community-based activism, such as the Michigan-based Soulardarity campaign mentioned below, are flourishing today – heralding exciting, emergent approaches to renegotiating culture-energy relationships into the future.
Cross, Jamie. “Viral solarity: Solar humanitarianism and infectious disease.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120.1 (2021): 123-136.
How is it that the relations that characterize fossil fuelled capitalism are normalized and naturalized by those who also say they want to disrupt and transform our socioeconomic system through the energy of the sun? (Cross 2021, p130)
In this article, Cross critically reflects on the carbon-dependant and capitalist forms of care which govern approaches to global humanitarian aid before examining what characterises the kind of solarity manifested by solar companies seeking to expand access to electricity in contexts of humanitarian emergency. The article goes on explain how energetic biopolitics—or “energopolitics” (Boyer 2019)—of humanitarianism are rooted in the history of capitalism. Drawing from Daggett’s (2019) work on feminist solar-politics, this article argues that similar to legacies of imperialism being predicated on logics of science and religion, emergent solar photovoltaics herald a rationale for market-led development across Africa. This manifests in Cross’ central argument, that the legacy of carbon-fuelled modernity as it is manifested in the built environment, in technology or, we might add, in humanitarian sentiments—can have no place in the revolutionary adaptations required by climate change.
Williams, Rhys. “Turning Toward the Sun: The Solarity and Singularity of New Food.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120.1 (2021): 151-162.
This article explores the relationship between emergent biotechnologies which lead the way for New Food systems, such as precise fermentation and precise biology, and solar energy. New Food and solar energy were coupled together by NASA, partnered with the European Space Agency, to develop a system of food production on Mars. “The basic logic of the solution is that of apparently uncoupling from the Earth and its ecosystems in order to save both it and ourselves”. This conceptually links New Food systems and their solar agricultures to Yates (2021) work on techno-utopian imaginaries of white flight, where she observes a connection between capitalism in crisis, cheap food, race, and the imaginary of leaving earth in pop culture today. To William’s, this engineerification of food and biology (not his term) depoliticises food, as a movement away from plants and animals towards microorganisms reorganises the way food interacts with dominant discourses of power. In building new narratives to orient New Food’s positive relationship with business-as-usual and entrepreneurial capitalism, corporations have started borrowing from “neoliberal narrative coordinates (…) casting them as heroes, making itself material by providing the value system by which to translate actions and money into infrastructure, and so into concrete politics”. By Wilson’s definition, the neoliberal logic underlining New Food would posit that it approximates solarcultural imaginary over a solarity, as the latter assumes a disruption or resistance to dominant systems of power.
Wilson, Sheena. “Solarities or Solarculture: Bright or Bleak Energy Futures and the EL Smith Solar Farm.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120.1 (2021): 137-150.
We need to transform our imaginaries of who we are in relationship to this planet and to what futures are possible. And we must avoid retreating to small-minded thinking grounded in scarcity mentalities that foment the violences of the current petrocultural age.
This article leads a rigorous investigation into the friction between two burgeoning forms of solar imaginaries: solarculture and solarity. Wilson argues that “to solarize is to contest and subvert, rather than to reproduce, the material relations of petroculture.” This definition works to embed a clear dialectic between the use of solar energy to reproduce “business as usual” capitalism in solarcultural futures, and the possibility of solar energy systems to help us reimagine social norms and infrastructures in prospective solarities. Also, this article highlights that the mobilisation of Edmonton towards adopting solar energy was led by the city’s only indigenous councillor, Aaron Paquette, and supported by a collaboration between local climate activist groups and the participation of diverse community members. This emphasis on the role of indigenous, activist, and diverse community collaborations to facilitate space for solar energy is impressive, and heralds the future of solarities centring community empowerment. This is also captured in the idea that “Intersectional knowledge and multidirectional learning will help us to solarize: to mitigate and adapt to climate change in ways that create more equitable and just futures for us all.” The friction that exists between these indigenous and community-based activist coalitions and performative allyship of Kenney’s United Conservative Party’s (UCP) demonstrates the ideological tug-of-war between solarities which attempt to mobilise solar technology for social justice, community empowerment and environmental sustainability, and solarcultures which effectively greenwash slow violence to maintain capitalist systems.
Starosielski, Nicole. “Beyond the Sun: Embedded Solarities and Agricultural Practice.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120.1 (2021): 13-24.
This article questions the formation of subject identities in relation to solar economies. By tracing the contours of solar theory, from Scheer’s (2002) notions of solar abundance to Lorenz-Meyer’s (2017) concept of liberation from earthbound resources. Instead of leaning further into these invisible and carbon-neutral imaginaries where energy takes a backseat in the public consciousness, Starosielski observes Jue’s (2020) idea of milieu-specific environmental analysis, where subjects are made responsible for becoming different kinds of consumers to perceive solar energies in new materialist ways. This heliocentric perspective on solarity questions anthropocenic relationships with solar, denaturalising the idea that we are the primary receivers of solar energy and emphasising the relationships we share with non-human others to whom we are entangled by solar energy. “The central contribution of this article is to shift focus from directional solar rays, delivered by the sun, to what I call embedded solarities, the ways that solar energy, effects, and affects permeate the environment itself” (p15).
Szeman, Imre, and Darin Barney. “Introduction: from solar to solarity.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120.1 (2021): 1-11.
In this article, Szeman and Darin argue that solar is becoming a complicated concept-object: an ideology blending together concept, fantasy, and infrastructure. This convergence of fantasy with reality under solar ideology creates friction between the sentiment that “the sun can meet our energy needs and take care of humanity, and can accomplish both via technology alone” and the challenge of producing an energy transition “in turning toward the sun we tend to turn away from the ground and the body, where the actual work of energy transition gets done”. Szeman and Darin conceptualise “solarity” as a point of investigation into the great transition from oil to solar, and the conditions of social and political possibility solar might generate. Personally, I am intrigued by the inclusion of Michigan’s community organisation Soulardarity, who measure solar success in civic engagement, such as through solar-powered street lighting and integration of internet services. This application of solar energy to repeal dominant racial and economic power structures and empower low-income neighbourhoods across the United States is precisely the form of solarity which Wilson mentions in her article.