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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Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016)

Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016)

Todd McGowan‘s Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (Columbia University Press, 2016) elegantly employs psychoanalytic thinking to unpack the lure of capitalism. He argues that we a...

19 Mars 201759min

Emily K. Hobson, “Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left” (U. Cal Press, 2016)

Emily K. Hobson, “Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left” (U. Cal Press, 2016)

In Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left (University of California Press, 2016), Emily K. Hobson challenges conceptions of LGBTQ activism as single-issue analogous to...

16 Mars 20171h 10min

Nancy Wang Yuen, “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism” (Rutgers UP, 2017)

Nancy Wang Yuen, “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism” (Rutgers UP, 2017)

How can we challenge the way film and television represents the world around us? In Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (Rutgers University Press, 2017) Nancy Wan Yuen, and Associate Professo...

14 Mars 201738min

Christopher Lowen Agee, “The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950-1972” (U. Chicago Press, 2014)

Christopher Lowen Agee, “The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950-1972” (U. Chicago Press, 2014)

Policing tactics have recently been the subject of lively political debates and the target of protest groups like the Black Lives Matter movement. Police reform is not new, of course. The 1950s and 19...

9 Mars 20171h 8min

Andre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)

Andre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)

Have you ever watched a futuristic movie and wondered if there will actually be any black people in the future? Have you ever been surprised, disappointed, or concerned with the lack of diversity demo...

3 Mars 20171h 5min

Leilah Danielson, “American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the 20th Century” (U. Penn Press, 2014)

Leilah Danielson, “American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the 20th Century” (U. Penn Press, 2014)

During a life that stretched from the Progressive era to the 1960s, A. J. Muste dedicated himself to fighting against war and the exploitation of working Americans. In American Gandhi: A. J. Muste and...

28 Feb 20171h 6min

Ryan Vieira, “Time and Politics:  Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World” (Oxford UP, 2015)

Ryan Vieira, “Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World” (Oxford UP, 2015)

How did the idea of time change during the nineteenth century? In Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World (Oxford University Pre...

24 Feb 201749min

Amy Brown, “A Good Investment? Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School (U. Minnesota Press, 2015)

Amy Brown, “A Good Investment? Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School (U. Minnesota Press, 2015)

There has been much talk in the news recently about funding for public education, the emergence of charter schools, and the potential of school vouchers. How much does competition for financing in urb...

23 Feb 20171h 4min

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