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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Laure Astourian, "The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema" (Indiana UP, 2024)

Laure Astourian, "The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema" (Indiana UP, 2024)

The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema (Indiana UP, 2024) traces the surprising role of ethnography in French cinema in the 1960s a...

14 Marras 202429min

Anthony Grasso, "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

Anthony Grasso, "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

The United States incarcerates its citizens for property crime, drug use, and violent crime at a rate that exceeds any other developed nation – and disproportionately affects the poor and racial minor...

11 Marras 202456min

Daniela Berghahn, "Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

Daniela Berghahn, "Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

Daniela Berghahn's award-winning monograph Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film (Edinburgh UP, 2023) is the first systematic analysis of decentred exot...

9 Marras 202438min

Non-literary Fiction

Non-literary Fiction

In this episode of High Theory, Esther Gabara talks with us about Non-Literary Fiction, that is, works of fiction that belong to the world of contemporary art, rather than the world of contemporary li...

9 Marras 202414min

Amín Pérez, "Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle" (Polity Press, 2023)

Amín Pérez, "Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle" (Polity Press, 2023)

How did the Algerian war of independence shape contemporary sociology? In Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle (Polity Press, 2023), Amin Perez, an Assistant P...

9 Marras 202436min

Doyle D. Calhoun, "The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)

Doyle D. Calhoun, "The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)

A note about content: This episode involves discussion of suicide, specifically in the contexts of slavery, colonization and empire. Please use your discretion and take care if you decide to listen. I...

6 Marras 20241h 11min

Anne M. Whitesell, "Living Off the Government?: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare" (NYU Press, 2024)

Anne M. Whitesell, "Living Off the Government?: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare" (NYU Press, 2024)

Who deserves public assistance from the government? This age-old question has been revived by policymakers, pundits, and activists following the massive economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Anne ...

3 Marras 202430min

Adam Hanieh, "Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market" (Verso, 2024)

Adam Hanieh, "Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market" (Verso, 2024)

Oil is everywhere. It’s in our cars, it’s in the fertilizer used to grow our food, and it’s in the plastics used to produce and transport our consumer goods, to name just a few prominent uses. How did...

2 Marras 20241h 31min

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