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The real history of Solarpunk
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this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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While I think the article has the time-line and focus correct, it kind of glances over the fact that Solarpunk is one if not the only -punk suffix genres that can claim some legacy in the actual (anarchistic) punk movement, albeight or maybe especially because it does not really attempt to mimic the astethics of it.
Steampunk doesn't even pretend this, and Cyberpunk was rather modeled on the astethics of 1980ties street-punks as seen by non-involved middle class sci-fi authors. I think only cypherpunks can somewhat claim an similar legacy of thought as Solarpunk can.
Agreed about the other genres. I think The Difference Engine might be steampunk's only real claim to the suffix.
I've also seen an argument that the cyberpunk genre itself was punk because it pushed back on mainstream sci-fi of the time that had a theme of technology fixing everything, or better living through science. That cyberpunk made the argument that technology could change what we are, but it wouldn't fix who we are, and it would be mostly used to consolidate power and exploit. There's so much science fiction written that I really don't have a sense of overarching themes at that scale, but if you buy that, then you could argue that the mainstream sci-fi was kind of doing the corporations' work for them and that cyberpunk flipped the script.
Is there somewhere I can read more about the anarchist history of the term? Also how is punk actually defined in this context? I have been confused about that for a while.
@LibertyLizard @poVoq - Here you go:
"What is Solarpunk?" by Andrewism including
"A Brief History of Solarpunk" and "The Politics & Art of Solarpunk"
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/saint-andrew-what-is-solarpunk
#solarpunk
Interesting but it barely touches on anarchism. Not sure this answers my question—unless the answer is that anarchists later gravitated towards this idea and were not involved at the start?
I don't think there is a definite answer on this as I think the anarchists involved in the early phase of solarpunk intentionally avoided the term to not over-politizise it. But if you are aware of the concepts and jargon it is hard to not see it shine through here and there in most of the influential solarpunk texts.
@LibertyLizard - I think it was a bit the other way round. Solarpunk started as an idea. Just the "I'm tired of dystopian scifi. I want utopias that address pragmatic concerns and show us a way out of this current situation."
Then folks started to collate ideas on how to make that work and found that various anarchic philosophies already addressed it.
https://wiki.f-hub.org/books/slrpnknet/page/solarpunk-as-anarchist-infrapolitics
Gives some background on it and how it fits into the often called "lifestylist" anarchists that overlap strongly with the punk movement of the 1980ties and later.