Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025)

Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025)

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 Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2025), 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. Myles Lennon is Dean's Assistant Professor of Environment and Society and Anthropology at Brown University. Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics” (Wiley Blackwell, 2016)

Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics” (Wiley Blackwell, 2016)

Why is it controversial to cast light-skinned actress Zoe Saldana as the lead character in a film about the performer Nina Simone? How should we understand the coexisting desire and revulsion of the b...

15 Marras 20161h 6min

Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race” (Verso, 2016)

Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race” (Verso, 2016)

Widely known for his pioneering work in the field of settler colonial studies, Patrick Wolfe advanced the theory that settler colonialism was, “a structure, not an event.” In early 2016, Wolfe deepene...

7 Marras 201650min

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016)

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016)

How did the preeminent theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault experience and observe the Iranian revolution? How did he find the revolution disruptive of a teleological notion of history? And how di...

6 Marras 201638min

Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present” (Palgrave, 2016)

Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present” (Palgrave, 2016)

What is the relationship between the sea and culture? In Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present (Palgrave, 2016) , Charlotte Mathieson, a lecturer in English Literature at the Uni...

27 Loka 201648min

Andrew Cole, “The Birth of Theory” (U. of Chicago Press, 2014)

Andrew Cole, “The Birth of Theory” (U. of Chicago Press, 2014)

Was Hegel a medieval thinker? In The Birth of Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Andrew Cole puts forward a reexamination of Hegelian dialectics that embeds Hegel in a long tradition of medi...

27 Loka 20161h 3min

Matthew MacWilliams, “The Rise of Trump: America’s Authoritarian Spring” (Amherst College Press, 2016)

Matthew MacWilliams, “The Rise of Trump: America’s Authoritarian Spring” (Amherst College Press, 2016)

NB: Because Amherst College Press is open-access, this book is available free for download here. Just when I thought I had a pretty good handle on the ways and means of American politics, Donald Trum...

22 Loka 201650min

McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015)

McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015)

McKenzie Wark’s new book begins and ends with a playful call: “Workings of the world untie! You have a win to world!” Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (Verso, 2015) creates a conversation be...

10 Loka 20161h 2min

Stevphen Shukaitis, “The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor after the Avant-Garde” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)

Stevphen Shukaitis, “The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor after the Avant-Garde” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)

How is the notion of the avant-garde in art relevant today? What can contemporary social movements learn from the Situationists? What is the meaning of artistic value to forms of resistance? These, an...

5 Loka 201639min

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