One might get the impression that for many of the characters in solarpunk stories, this has been their first run in with man-made, life obliterating disaster. Not so with Afrofuturists. Here’s a working definition for Afrofuturists: We are Black creatives who render our own science futures and past, because white people did not, and draw from our own critical pedagogy. As Alondra Nelson, founder of the first Afrofuturist internet community, has said, “The distillation of African diasporic experience [is] rooted in the past, but not weighed down by it.” Therefore, we are quite familiar with the boom and bust cycle of calamity, existing simultaneously in various dimensions of dystopia. The concept of the usable past is the third relevant tenet of solarpunk, and a touchstone between it and works that classify as Afrofuturist. ... You + your Android Galaxy smartphone = Cyborg. The metaphor of computer and software is not meant to emphasize any kind of Cartesian separation between body and spirit. Instead, it speaks to their interdependence and intersubjectivity, the networked nature of community, of us. Like software and hardware, One is nothing without the Other. We are not Vulcans. It is only through the manifold aspects of the computer software interface — the connected narratives, symbols, metaphors, categories, and systems of conceptual associations we live by and that live in us — that we can temporally arrest and process existence, which is large beyond complete description, constantly in flux, and inherently unknowable: In essence, divine. The software that is culture is the only way to express our humanness, fulfil our psychological and physical needs, and connect with others.
Promised Land: Religious Ideology and Solarpunk Science Fiction
Another absolutely fantastic essay from Rob Cameron. Building on his previous 2 part essay ‘In Search of Afro-Solarpunk’ for tor.com. (Which we thought was ‘the single most important essay about solarpunk that has been written this year (2019)’). Cameron casts his eye over the forrest stories and imaginaries that make up solarpunk as a whole and lays out its tenets in the most concise manner we’ve seen to date. Cameron then goes on to critique and gesture towards some of the genre’s elements that remain ‘under construction’. Namely coherent and vibrant inner lives.
“Imagining ways to create new from old, inducing change and being changed, interacting more mindfully with the environment and other people — this is the solarpunk mission. But to transform others, it would help if solarpunk becomes more open to self-transformation from unexpected places like spiritual traditions, which it has traditionally rejected. “
We know that there are witches, buddhists, occultists, traditional practitioners, and people of all faiths involved in solarpunk. Both as a movement and speculative fiction genre. But as Cameron notes this fundamental element of what it means to be human has yet to prominently make its way into its many worlds.
If solarpunk is to fully realise its potential as a collective ‘Memetic Engine’ - A cultural construct, or tool that powers and provides the ‘re-futuring’ of our collective imaginations. Then mechanisms for accepting and amplifying individuals inner worlds must activated, aligned and developed. This blog has been around since 2012, before solarpunk was really even ‘a thing’. We wondered allowed back then what were the “ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and more importantly for the generations that follow us”. Solarpunk is (we think), at a point where the community is established enough to engage with both individual and collective reckonings of ‘the spirt’ in its worlds. With the nuance, understanding and generosity of thought and heart that such a subject deserves (and requires).
These conversations have been already happening slowly and discretely. Indeed, one of the the first solarpunk zines we acquired was on the ‘Sacred’. But it is perhaps time to to create and imagine stories of the sacred under the brilliant light of the sun. Whilst recognising that one cannot speak for other solarpunks. One can only ever be in dialogue and occasional chorus them. 🙏
As Cemeron concludes in his essay:
“People are less likely to take risks on new ideas when hope is precarious. Anything new may be automatically categorized as dangerous and invasive. But if it’s coming from within their own narrative, a solarpunk rewiring would not be so scary. Indeed, it might be a revelation of the Promised Land.”
-- This really is a fantastic and timely essay. If you are writing, working in a utopian mode or participating in solarpunk in any of its myriad forms we highly recommend reading it in full.