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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Stuart Elden “Foucault’s Last Decade” (Polity Press, 2016)

Stuart Elden “Foucault’s Last Decade” (Polity Press, 2016)

Why did Michel Foucault radically recast the project of The History of Sexuality? How did he work collaboratively? What was the influence of Antiquity on his thought? In Foucault’s Last Decade (Polity...

21 Syys 201649min

Mary Hawkesworth, “Embodied Power: Demystifying Disembodied Politics” (Routledge, 2016)

Mary Hawkesworth, “Embodied Power: Demystifying Disembodied Politics” (Routledge, 2016)

How can we explain the “occlusion of embodied power” and “lack of attention to race, gender, and sexuality” in the discipline of political science, a field “that claims power as a central analytical c...

16 Syys 20161h 3min

Darian M. Parker, “Sartre and New Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling” (Lexington, 2015)

Darian M. Parker, “Sartre and New Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling” (Lexington, 2015)

Darian M. Parker joins the New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, Sartre and No Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling (Lexington Books, 20...

12 Syys 201636min

Matt Dawson “Social Theory for Alternative Societies” (Palgrave, 2016)

Matt Dawson “Social Theory for Alternative Societies” (Palgrave, 2016)

What can social theory offer to visions of an alternative society? In his new book, Social Theory for Alternative Societies (Palgrave, 2016), Dr Matt Dawson, a Lecturer in Sociology at the University ...

9 Syys 201641min

Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” (Nation Books, 2016)

Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” (Nation Books, 2016)

Ibram X. Kendi is an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books, 2016) of...

8 Syys 201657min

John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco, “Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975” (Cambridge UP, 2015)

John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco, “Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975” (Cambridge UP, 2015)

John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco’s new book, Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), reaches across the Atlantic ocean and connects j...

29 Elo 201650min

Jean Chalaby, “The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution” (Polity, 2015)

Jean Chalaby, “The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution” (Polity, 2015)

Television had been transformed by the rise of the format. In The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution Jean Chalaby, Professor of International Communication at City University London, ch...

29 Elo 201641min

Peter Trawny, “Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)

Peter Trawny, “Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)

In Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Peter Trawny, professor of philosophy and founder and director of the Martin Heidegger Institute at the Univ...

15 Elo 201621min

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