Solar with the Punk: Degrowth Frictions in Technophilic Fictions
by Caleb O’Connor
Solarpunk, as an aesthetic and literary genre, has developed tremendously since its coining in 2008 by the blog “Republic of Bees” as a response to the Beluga Skysail, a cargo ship partially powered by wind;
So, in honor of the Beluga Skysail’s maiden voyage, I’m going to suggest a new literary genre: solarpunk. I think the best way to explain solarpunk is by contrasting it to the science fiction and fantasy genre called steampunk, from which the idea of solarpunk derives. Steampunk stories describe alternative futures or worlds in which steam technology (and Victorian technologies in general) were not pushed aside by oil-based technologies (…) Solarpunk also conflates modern technology with older technology, but with a vital difference. In the case of steampunk, the focus on Victorian technology serves as a guideline for imagining an alternative world. In the case of solarpunk, the interest in older technologies is driven by modern world economics: if oil isn’t a cheap source of energy anymore, then we sometimes do best to revive older technologies that are based on other sources of energy, such as solar power and wind power. That is why the Beluga Skysail is the official, honorary cargo ship of solarpunk. (“From Steampunk”)
Over the past decade and a half, the aesthetic and literary conventions which define solarpunk have been refined and developed through the imaginaries of authors, artists, and thinkers responding to increasingly dire global environmental and economic conditions. Rivero-Vadillo’s (2022) work registers these trends in solarpunk imaginaries and reads their aesthetic developments to measure the proximity of pseudo-utopian eco-futurities alongside contemporary political and social attitudes, such as degrowth.
To Rivero-Vadillo, the techno-optimism sewn into solarpunk fiction has hindered the genre’s capacity to sufficiently challenge the social and environmental dimensions of hyper-technologised futures – How prevalent is surveillance in these futures? What extractivist economies still exist to maintain these highly technological cities? Recently, guided by trends towards degrowth and solarity, some solarpunk narratives have imagined techno-solar cities which criticize solarpunk’s “technophilic premises, highlighting from the inside the different problematics embedded in these imaginaries” (2022, 42). This exciting resurgence of critique in literary punk movements, inspired by trends in social justice, has mobilized the solarpunk genre beyond an infatuation for the genre’s aesthetic pleasures.
This pushback against the technocentric aesthetics which originally defined the solarpunk genre has been heralded by solarpunk authors such as Andrew Dana Hudson, who has attempted to locate the role and agency of punk ideology within literary genre;
whatever Solarpunk is, it is deeply political. […] The very name ‘solarpunk’ implies that scientific breakthroughs alone won’t fix our environmental, social and economic problems. After all, it posits a world of solar-energy abundance and then argues that we will still have need of punks. No magical tech fixes for us. We’ll have to do it the hard way: with politics. (2017)
The absence of punk aesthetics from solarpunk literature is interesting as the focus on subaltern lives, nightlife, and dissidence expressed through the representations of queer characters and outcasts is visible in dystopic punk genres, such as cyberpunk. This raises the question of whether utopic ecological futurities imagine a space for subaltern communities, and what the implication of this absence means for wider environmental imaginaries. Hudston argues that the punkness of solarpunk finds itself embedded into the political impetus behind the genre itself, rather than in the characters and spaces written throughout sunny, bright, and clean solarpunk cityscapes. However, it remains unclear what might happen to the generic traditions of solarpunk if queer ecological thought or punk subaltern perspectives were explicitly included in the text. And would a solarpunk imaginary informed by degrowth theory necessarily make space for those more explicitly punk aesthetics?
In his recent article, “A Solarpunk Manifesto” (2023), William Joseph Gilman traces the theoretical commonalities between degrowth and solarpunk by situating solarpunk within a wider history of punk politics, arguing that:
The punk identity was built from a feeling of being trapped as spectators in a fast-moving and heavily consuming society. As a form of existential revolt, punks wanted to subvert the status quo to reclaim their future (…) A solarpunk society is a just society, not only for humanity, but for non-humanity as well. (…) In an act of existential revolt, solarpunk subverts the nihilistic and ‘no future’ rhetoric of classic punk and replaces it with hope and optimism: optimistic that there is a future although drastic social change and resistance is necessary to reach it; optimistic that this imaginary can become a reality and stay as such (…) Under ideal conditions, it is easy to dream that this future could come to be; however, with the global economy nested within the state system, complete social reconstruction will be difficult. Fortunately, there are policies for proponents of a solarpunk future to promote in guiding society towards this goal, the first action being ‘degrowth’. (2-5)
By coalescing the desire for agency and social change which led to the construction of the punk identity by working-class people in the 1970’s with the impetus behind degrowth theory, which calls for cooperative production and fulfilment over consumption, Gilman highlights how degrowth lends itself as a political device for contemporary punk ideologies. Gilman’s emphasis on what he terms “classical punk” and it’s no futurity rhetoric is interesting, as notions of no futurity have popularly belonged to a legacy of queer theory. How Gilman would frame this “classical punk” as perhaps more radical, queer, and opposed to the optimistic ideas of solarpunk might elucidate why visible queerness and revolt often does not transpire in solarpunk fiction.
Rivero-Vadillo argues that solarpunk and degrowth “at least in socio-economic and environmental terms, could not be more similar. Not only do both aim to restructure human/non-human relationships, but they also both attempt to develop positive, post-capitalist imaginaries” (2022). This compatibility between degrowth and solarpunk makes for an interesting conceptual framework, yet I find myself still wondering how punk (queer, subaltern) perspectives might critique some of these overarching theoretical frameworks. Where are the queer (solar)punks? What do they have to say?
Solarpunk, as a literary genre and artistic form, offers readers and viewers the opportunity to indulge in a bright, hopeful futurity where the ethics of degrowth and sustainability are sewn into a vibrant ecological utopia. Solarpunk imaginaries are also deeply political, as the speculative worlds they describe each inherently respond to the social, economic, political, culture, and environmental barriers which currently prevent us from achieving those promising tomorrows. However, despite its reverence for degrowth, sustainability, and proposed interest in equality and post-consumerism, solarpunk’s heavy emphasis on utopian aesthetics has precluded queer and subaltern narratives. The questions of who these sustainable imaginaries are being built for, who is excluded from them, and at what cost, are often undervalued in the genre which is foremostly invested in producing its utopic aesthetics. While a movement away from technocentrism and towards degrowth in solarpunk literature hints at a critical consciousness which derives from anti-establishment punk ideologies, the genre has yet to offer room for the punks to tell their stories and claim their spaces.
Works Cited
Alexander, Samuel, and Brendan Gleeson. 2019. Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan
Farver, Kenneth. 2019. “Negotiating the Boundaries of Solarpunk Literature in Environmental Justice.” WWU Honors Program Senior Projects, 124. https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwu_honors/124/
“From Steampunk to Solarpunk.” Republic of Bees. 27 May 2008. https://republicofthebees.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/from-steampunk-to-solarpunk/
Gillam, William Joseph. 2023. “A Solarpunk Manifesto: Turning Imaginary into Reality.” Philosophies 8(4) 73-85.
Hudson, Andrew Dana. 2017. “On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk.” Medium, October 15, 2017. https://medium.com/solarpunks/on-the-political-dimensions-of-solarpunk- c5a7b4bf8df4
Kallis, Giorgios, and Hug March. 2015. “Imaginaries of Hope: The Utopianism of Degrowth.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105 (2): 360–68.
Rivero-Vadillo, Alejandro. 2022. “Challenging Solarpunk’s Technophilia through Degrowth Imaginaries in Julia K. Patt’s “Caught Root” and Linda Jordan’s “Reclaiming”.” Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities 3(1) 41- 55.