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

Jaksot(2160)

Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero, "Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization" (U California Press, 2024)

Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero, "Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization" (U California Press, 2024)

Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Kaika & Dr. Luca Ruggiero reveals something seemingly counterintuitive: that ninetee...

6 Maalis 20251h

Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)

Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)

Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting were the foundation of a kind of universa...

5 Maalis 20251h 8min

Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)

Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research examines race, video games, and the politica...

1 Maalis 202553min

Wan-Chuan Kao, "White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages" (Manchester UP, 2024)

Wan-Chuan Kao, "White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages" (Manchester UP, 2024)

White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao analyses premodern whiteness as operations of fragility, precarity and racialicity across bodily...

28 Helmi 20251h 8min

Linh Thuy Nguyen, "Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production" (Temple UP, 2024)

Linh Thuy Nguyen, "Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production" (Temple UP, 2024)

Nearly fifty years after the end of the war in Vietnam, American children of Vietnamese refugees continue to process the meanings of the war and its consequences through creative work. Displacing Kins...

26 Helmi 20251h 28min

Giampaolo Conte, "A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms" (Routledge, 2024)

Giampaolo Conte, "A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms" (Routledge, 2024)

A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms highlights how, since the recent financial crises, the expression ‘liberal reform’ has entered common parlance as an ev...

25 Helmi 202523min

Tabish Khair, "Literature Against Fundamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Tabish Khair, "Literature Against Fundamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism. Literature is a mode of thinking, stories being one of the oldest thin...

22 Helmi 20251h 15min

Eugene W. Holland, "Perversions of the Market: Sadism, Masochism, and the Culture of Capitalism" (SUNY Press, 2024)

Eugene W. Holland, "Perversions of the Market: Sadism, Masochism, and the Culture of Capitalism" (SUNY Press, 2024)

Perversions of the Market: Sadism, Masochism, and the Culture of Capitalism (SUNY Press, 2024) argues that capitalism fosters sadism and masochism--not as individual psychological proclivities but as ...

21 Helmi 20251h 45min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
tiedekulma-podcast
rss-poliisin-mieli
utelias-mieli
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-laakaripodi
rss-ammamafia
rss-opeklubi
docemilia
sotataidon-ytimessa
menologeja-tutkimusmatka-vaihdevuosiin
rss-vaasan-yliopiston-podcastit
rss-mental-race
rss-ylistys-elaimille
rss-lihavuudesta-podcast
rss-sosiopodi