# Where is the Punk in Solarpunk? Questioning Tradition and Innovation in an Eco-optimist Digital Aesthetic?

Théo Maligeay

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Théo Maligeay. Where is the Punk in Solarpunk? Questioning Tradition and Innovation in an Eco-optimist Digital Aesthetic?. Journée d'études: "From Cottagecore to Solarpunk: New Political and Aesthetic Readings of the Pastoral", Etudes Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone, Nov 2023, Montpellier, France. hal-04295131v2

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# Where is the Punk in Solarpunk? Questioning Tradition and Innovation in an Eco-optimist Digital Aesthetic?

Théo Maligeay - Etudes Montpelliéraines du monde anglophone

Journée d'études: “From Cottagecore to solarpunk: new political and aesthetic readings of the pastoral”

17 November 2023

Although solarpunk is “still in its infancy” to quote a 2022 article by Alejandro Rivero-Vadillo, the term is becoming increasingly well-known, and might already be familiar to some of you. Part of the reason why the word, and various solarpunk works are getting traction is because of their controversial definition. One only has to scroll back to 11/11/23, less than a week ago, to find a recent example of this on Reddit’s dedicated message board, a community of some 124 000 members. User u/Thatannoyingturtle writes:

> This is just a mild pet peeve of mine. It's people [labelling] non-solar punk stuff as solar-punk. Just because it's happy and green, just because it's futuristic doesn't make it solar punk. I see a lot of people label cottage core as solar punk when it makes no use of futuristic or even modern technology. Or people labelling any futuristic setting that isn't cyberpunk and has like, 1 plant as solar punk. Solar punk is greenery, eco friendliness, and anti-consumerism in conjunction with technology.<fnref n="1" />

Despite its cantankerous tone, the comment offers a relevant entry point into solarpunk. Not only does it highlight the potentially controversial nature of the solarpunk denomination, it also identifies its most important thematic elements: the omnipresence of vegetation, caring about ecology, anti-capitalism and an optimistic tone (“Just because it’s happy and green doesn’t make it solar punk”). On a side note, you will surely have noticed that u/Thatannoyingturtle also compares solarpunk to cottagecore, which really points to the relevance of the connection that

<footnote n="1">¹ u/Thatannoyingturtle, (11 novembre 2023), “People mixing up solar punk”, [Reddit post], https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/17sjwv5/people_mixing_up_solar_punk, 17 juin 2024.</footnote>
we are trying to put forward today. In the comment section, the discussion kicks off with an
ambivalent counterargument:

At [the] same time that I want to ridicule your definition by posting pictures of corporations investing heavily in ecological friendly spaces, like Apple, I also want to complain that too many posts here about gatekeeping instead of gardening.

This prompts the original poster to disambiguate by stating the clear difference between his version of solarpunk and corporate greenwashing which he goes as far as calling “cosplaying” in reference to popular costuming practices. Later in the thread, multiple users emphasise the fluidity of solarpunk. Just after the previous exchange, u/afraidtobecrate writes “Solarpunk doesn’t have a clear definition or aesthetic. Without that, people will just post stuff they think is related that looks cool.” Lower down u/Menacebi confirms what we may already have begun to suspect : “People arguing about what is and isn’t solarpunk is solarpunk”, a comment which u/orthomans takes to its logical conclusion: “Rule 1 of solarpunk is nobody agrees on what solarpunk is.”

Thankfully however, some definitions are oecumenical enough to offer some frame of reference.
First, the moderators of the Reddit solarpunk board give three different definitions in different
sections of the website:

1) Solarpunk is a genre and aesthetic that envisions collective futures that are vibrant with life, as well as all the actions, policies, and technologies that make them real. We are interested in science fiction, social movements, engineering, style, and anything that inspires a future society that is just and in harmony with its ecology

2) Solarpunk is everything from a positive imagining of our collective futures to actually creating it”

3) What is Solarpunk? Solarpunk is an aesthetic and a literary genre that has grown out of existing social movements. Fundamentally, solarpunk is about imagining possible good futures and working to create them: just as the earth is made up of different biomes, there is not one definitive solarpunk future. A solarpunk future is one where we’ve leveraged technology to care for all
humans, to restore and tend the ecosystems around us. Solarpunk also aims to undermine the systems currently in place that endanger the future we are working to create. Solarpunk is collectivist: it's about working together for the common good. Solarpunk is polyphonic: one cannot speak for other Solarpunkers, only be in dialogue and in chorus with them. While Solarpunk seems utopic, it is grounded in reality and it is not without struggle. Solarpunk aesthetics change depending on how far you look in the future.

This is followed by a list of “conflicting concepts”: capitalism, ecofascism, greenwashing and anarcho-primitivism and finally, it catalogues 76 ways to get involved depending on your housing situation or the level of commitment you can afford. This definition seems reliable enough since it is invoked as an argument of authority in the thread that we read previously: “the sub [subReddit] literally explains that anarcho-primitivism ISN’T solarpunk”. All three of these definitions bring to the fore major aspects of solarpunk, notably its optimism, and its dual, political-artistic nature.

On Reddit, one can also find a link to “Solarpunk: Notes towards a Manifesto”, written by essayist Adam Flynn in 2014. The slogan: “We’re *solarpunks* because the only other options are denial or despair.” The political references: “Solarpunk draws on the ideal of Jeffersonian yeoman farmer, Gandhi’s ideal of *swadeshi* and subsequent Salt March and countless other traditions of *dissent* (for what it’s worth, both Gandhi and Jefferson were inventors”. In the second part of this 600-odd-words long essay, Flynn delineates the core visual influences of solarpunk:

The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. As it stands, it's a mash-up of the following:
- 1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)
- Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird)
- Jugaad-style innovation from the developing world
- High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs. Obviously, the further you get into the future, the more ambitious you can get.
In the long-term, solarpunk takes the images we've been fed by bright-green blogs and draws them out further, longer, and deeper. Imagine permaculturists thinking in cathedral time.
Consider terraced irrigation systems that also act as fluidic computers. Contemplate the life of a Department of Reclamation officer managing a sparsely populated American southwest given over to solar collection and pump storage. Imagine “smart cities” being junked in favor of smart citizenry.
A few lines later, the author mentions the work of Japanese director and founder of Ghibli Studio Hayao Miyazaki.

Before we dive into some of the critical issues that surface from the works of Flynn and others about solarpunk, I would like to finish this description with a few examples of solarpunk works in art and in the world. First, the Beluga Skysail, a hybrid cargo ship which uses sail power to supplement the ship's engines. It made its maiden voyage in March 2008 making a two-month trip from Germany to Venezuela, the US and Norway, and achieving 20% fuel savings over the course of the trip thanks to the motive power provided by the sail. It was the Beluga Skysail that led the author of the blog "Republic of the Bees" to write the post "From Steampunk to Solarpunk" in May 2008, the earliest known use of the term. In literature, solarpunk thrives in the short story form with collections such as *Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers* and its sequel *Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters* edited by New Mexican author Sarena Ulibarri. In the former, Julia K. Patt's "Caught Root" tells the story of a diplomatic encounter between the technophile city of Hillside and the less-industrialised municipality of New-Ur. In the words of Alejandro Rivero-Vadillo "On the one hand, Hillside is depicted as the archetypical technophilic Solarpunk city, with "shining towers [that] reach for the blue sky", building materials that are"recycled, unblemished, new looking", and with heavily automated solar-powered technology and a climate-controlled atmosphere. On the other hand, New-Ur "seems born from the very rock, all adobe and stucco and low-sitting buildings". Everything in the city is built from "reclaimed and reused materials", and even vital infrastructure, such as water purification systems, are made from sustainable materials such as "porous clay". Another story "A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine" by Jaymee Goh recalls the original solarpunk cargo ship as it recounts a young woman's crossing of the Pacific onboard a solar-powered vessel. Finally, "Watch Out Red Crusher!" by Shel Graves addresses the issue of emotional sustainability by depicting a world where nanotechnologies allow humans to change their skin colour to match their emotions. As a fictional setting, solarpunk can easily combine with other fictional genres, as shown by various solarpunk mystery narratives: "Grover: Case #C09920, 'The Most Dangerous Blend'" by Edward Edmonds or the upcoming *Murder in the Tool Library* by A.E. Marling. In parallel to its development in literature, solarpunk's influence on the visual
arts is also growing. Artists such as Rita Fei, illustrator of both the covers of *Murder in the Tool Library* and *Multispecies Cities, Solarpunk Urban Futures* have made a style out of solarpunk by developing a visual language fitting its themes and ideas. On the other hand, searching for solarpunk images on Google will lead to a plethoric collection of images, only growing larger as the production and dissemination of images generated by artificial intelligence programs become more prevalent.

I would like now to focus on solarpunk's relationship with punk itself, the musical and aesthetic genre invented and popularised by British and American bands such as The Sex Pistols, The Ramones and The Clash. The punk in solarpunk derives from steampunk another subgenre of speculative fiction from which the author of "The Republic of the Bees" explicitly drew his inspiration:

I think the best way to explain solarpunk is by contrasting it to the science fiction and fantasy genre called steampunk, from which the idea of solarpunk derives. Steampunk stories describe alternative futures or worlds in which steam technology (and Victorian technologies in general) were not pushed aside by oil-based technologies.

Steampunk itself derives its name from cyberpunk, the original -punk subgenre of science-fiction. Best exemplified by William Gibson's 1984 *Neuromancer* novel and the two subsequent volumes of the Sprawl trilogy, cyberpunk's origins can also be traced back to Philip K. Dick's *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeps* and its adaptation in film, *Blade Runner*. Prominent motifs include cybernetic implants, neon architecture, surveillance and Japanese or Far Eastern influences. The most widely accepted definition of dash-punk denominations is that they take the technological and cultural paradigm of one era and stretch it to its limits. For example, the Victorian period for steampunk. Energy sources are particularly important in that perspective. In both solarpunk and steampunk, the steam engine or renewables are central to both aesthetics as they drive the technologies that make them unique. This is also true of other more minor -punk subgenres such as dieselpunk (think *Mad Max*) or atompunk. As far as that definition offers a fairly solid understanding of emerging fictional practices, the dizzying multiplication of -punk subgenres and the weird concatenations that they produce can sometimes
go beyond the reasonable, as shown by Giscardpunk, the creation of French artist Florent Deloison, which I cannot believe is completely serious, especially since it has begun its own digital interactive existence.

Solarpunk however stands out from all the other punk subgenres because it is more grounded in political criticism and activism. In the words of “The Republic of the Bees”:

> Obviously, a major difference between solarpunk and steampunk is that solarpunk ideas, and solarpunk technologies, need not remain imaginary, and I indulge a hope of someday living in a solarpunk world. [...] I find it very unlikely that a transition to renewable energy can be accomplished without serious political fights.

Here we find once again the importance of hope which ultimately appears as important as renewable energies and sustainable agriculture in defining solarpunk and differentiating it from other -punk subgenres. If we go back to Flynn’s “Notes towards a [solarpunk] manifesto” the same idea is emphasised: “Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and more importantly for the generations that follow us [...]. Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies” Solarpunk’s resolute optimism eventually leads to a more complete understanding of the prefix solar- contained in its name. Indeed, in solarpunk the sun is not only present as a source of physical energy, but also as a provider of spiritual and emotional energy in the context of growing climate anxiety. A symbol of hope and life and an affirmation of completeness.

However, this puts it strongly at odds with the original tenets of punk as expressed and practised by impoverished youth in Britain and the United States during the 1970s, and this issue regularly surfaces in solarpunk discussions. For example, immediately after the paragraph extolling optimism as a central component of solarpunk, Adam Flynn defends his position and solarpunk in general against potential criticism:

> And yes, there's a -punk there, and not just because it's become a trendy suffix. There's an oppositional quality to solarpunk, but it's an opposition that begins with infrastructure as a form of resistance. We're already seeing it in the struggles of public utilities to deal with the explosion in rooftop solar. “Dealing
with infrastructure is a protection against being robbed of one's self-determination," said Chokwe Lumumba, the late mayor of Jackson, MS, and he was right.

Similarly, in the comments below u/Thatannoyingturtle's post we find this interesting exchange between u/jjSuper1 and u/ArmorClassHero:

u/jjSuper1: I think my major misunderstanding with the genre is all the political nonsense. I focus on the tech. However, just about every magazine, pdf, website, video, blog, podcast, and media out there seems to focus on the political aspect because apparently there wasn't a place to discuss the implications of politics.

u/ArmorClassHero: In order for something to be -punk it has to be axiomatically anti-capitalist and therefore political. What did you think the -punk meant?

The main accusation levelled against solarpunk is that it is too mild, not rebellious enough to be worthy of the punk moniker. Both u/ArmorClassHero and Adam Flynn's silent critics find fault in solarpunk because it is too much an artistic trend and not enough a political movement. This is a very puzzling argument given that punk was born in the music of British rock bands and that the most iconic punk band of the Seventies were the Sex Pistols whose formation was mostly the result of manager Malcolm Mac Laren's commercial strategies: punk was not, originally, a pristine cultural revolution. Nevertheless, although it succeeds in defending solarpunk as a worthy political resistance, Adam Flynn's counter argument does not address another deep-seated opposition between punk and solarpunk. Whereas the latter is optimistic by definition, amplifying the trends of previous British popular culture movements such as the Mods or the Teddies extensively studied by the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, punk artists promoted nihilistic attitudes. One only has to listen to the shouting outro of the Sex Pistols' controversial "God Save the Queen": "No future No future No future for you No future No future No future for me No future No future No future for you No future No future for you". Nothing could be more antithetic to solarpunk's core values.
In conclusion, I would like to point out that although solarpunk can only ever be imperfectly punk, because of that fundamental divergence between optimism and nihilism as their chosen answer to the social challenges they face, one should also bear in mind that solarpunk projects often display very distinctly punk characteristics. The importance of do-it-yourself for example is a major common point between the struggling concert goers of 1970s North London and the practitioners of off-the-grid permaculture nowadays around the world. Furthermore, although solarpunk has been known to sell-out, putting its radical style and ideas at the service of the establishment in pursuit of monetary clout or gain, the solarpunk community has also been able to mobilise and respond to the encroachment of commercial interests on the aesthetic in particularly punk-like fashion. For example in the case of the “Dear Alice” commercial for Chobani yoghurt, the video has been reposted on Youtube without the branding that was present in the original. This anonymous act of cultural guerilla, erasing the stigmatas of corporate greed from the face of our collective dreams point towards an interesting similarity between punk and solarpunk: both manifest over all the struggle for retaining one’s autonomy and voice in the context of vastly disadvantageous social configurations.

Works Cited:

Blade Runner, 1982.

Chabria, Priya Sarukkai, Taiyo Fujii, et Shweta Taneja. *Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures*. World Weaver Press, 2021.

Dear Alice, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4.

« Dear Alice » Decommodified Edition | Solarpunk anime ambience with no ads, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJJktxCY9U.

Dick, Philip K. *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?* Doubleday, 1968.

Flynn, Adam. « Solarpunk: Notes towards a manifesto ». *Project Hieroglyph* (blog), 4 septembre 2014.

Gibson, William. *Neuromancer*. Ace, 1984.

Republic of the Bees. « From Steampunk to Solarpunk », 27 mai 2008.

Rivero-Vadillo, Alejandro. « Challenging Solarpunk s Technophilia through Degrowth Imaginaries in Julia K. Patt s “Caught Root” and Linda Jordan s “Reclaiming” ».
*Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities*, Cappadocia University 3, n° 1 (20 juin 2022): 41-55. https://doi.org/10.46863/ecocene.64.

*The Sex Pistols*. « God Save the Queen ». In *Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols*. Virgin Records, 1977.

Ulibarri, Sarena, éd. *Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers*. Albuquerque: World Weaver Press, 2018.

———, éd. *Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters*. World Weaver Press, 2020.