‘This Shining Confluence of Magic and Technology’: Solarpunk, Energy Imaginaries, and the Infrastructures of Solarity

Abstract

This article will engage in an extended analysis of solarpunk, a richly elaborated speculative solar energy imaginary. It will ask, firstly, what solarpunk suggests about the formal, semiotic, and aesthetic dimensions of existing solar technology, and the kinds of fantasies such technology facilitates. Secondly, it will analyse how imaginary infrastructures figure a variety of social and technological elements necessary to transition, and how fantastical technologies are deployed to facilitate even the most empirical of transition imaginaries. Thirdly, it will ask what solarpunk suggests about the relationship between alternative energy imaginaries, community-building, and agency in the present struggle over energy transition.