Explainer: ‘solarpunk’, or how to be an optimistic radical

21.08.2023 - 11:55 / theunconventionalgardener.com / guest

Header image: Solarpunk imagines a sustainable future, and what it might be like to live in it. Image from www.shutterstock.com

Jennifer Hamilton, University of Sydney

Punks (of the 70s and 80s kind) were not known for their optimism. Quite the opposite in fact. Raging against the establishment in various ways, there was “no future” because, according to the Sex Pistols, punks are “the poison / In your human machine / We’re the future / Your future”. To be punk, was, by definition, to resist the future.

In contrast, the most basic definition of solarpunk — offered by musician and photographer Jay Springett — is that it is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism

that seeks to answer and embody the question ‘what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?’

At first pass, then, Solarpunk seems to turn the central tenet of punk on its head. Its business is imagining the future. Moreover, perform an online “image search” for the term “solarpunk” and you will find colourful, leafy metropolises, flowing neo-peasant fashions and, perhaps, a small child standing next to a solar panel in front of a yurt.

How, then, are the bright futures imagined by solarpunks, worthy of the “punk” suffix?

Solarpunk’s optimism towards the future is the first concept that needs complicating here. Along with the original punks, there is a wide body of scholarship that critiques positive thinking. Feminists like Barbara Ehrenreich and Sara Ahmed, for instance, trace links between the capitalist establishment and happiness. They suggest that future-centred optimism serves the very system raged against by most punks of old.

Although optimistic, Solarpunk’s future imaginings do not fit neatly with current