Response 2: Finding Joy in the Work: Looking Beyond the Garden

Alexa Weik von Mossner provides an overview of the emerging genre of solarpunk through her discussion of desire and community action as a response to the climate crisis. This thoughtful engagement is ideal for those new to the genre or looking for analysis of the most contemporary work. As a scholar and writer of solarpunk, I find much to admire and hope this article inspires more critical engagement. I focus my additions to this conversation around two points: the “demand” made of solarpunk storytellers and the overlap in analyzing two stories focused on gardens. While Weik von Mossner’s article has other fruitful areas of examination, I explore solarpunk as a genre that looks beyond dominant narrative traditions in order to imagine more sustainable and socially just futures, while the profusion of gardening stories suggests the struggle for such a vision.Solarpunk separates from climate fiction and environmental literature more broadly by eschewing the warning often foregrounded in these genres. Instead, solarpunk imagines alternatives in the midst of the climate crisis and its entangled social injustice issues. Importantly, solarpunk offers an alternative to the grief and fear found in climate fiction by hope through action and even joy.1 This idea builds on the theories of Black activists such as June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and adrienne maree brown in making revolution pleasurable as part of activist work.2 This joy or fun associated with solarpunk aligns with Weik von Mossner’s theorizing on desire but also adds another layer to the difficulty of writing solarpunk.To engage with imagining sustainable and socially just worlds in the midst of climate crisis while also striving for joy and hope-through-action is a difficult process for any writer. Weik von Mossner points out the demand made in Almanac for the Anthropocene (2022), and a similar call to action from Grist’s Tory Stephens.3 Weik von Mossner writes: “It is culturally productive, but it is also a heavy weight to lay down on the shoulders of writers.”4 This demand is what sets solarpunk apart as a genre from climate fiction and environmental literature more generally. As a creator, writing a solarpunk story should be a difficult artistic pursuit.5 As Darko Suvin points out in his recent article on antiutopianism: “We live in capitalist imperialism: we inherit 400 years of bloody wars and untold oppression.”6 Those four hundred years are accompanied by a dominant narrative tradition that solarpunk seeks to undermine. Certainly, solarpunk is not alone in this project as Indigenous literatures and writers of the Global South have also been pushing back against this hegemony.7 This demand, and indeed, it is a demand, stems from the belief stories shape culture. In The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative, Thomas King contrasts the Genesis creation story with “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky.” King offers two origins: “So here are our choices: a world in which creation is a solitary, individual act or a world in which creation is a shared activity; [. . .] a world marked by competition or a world determined by co-operation.”8 King emphasizes the power of story to shape a national mythology and, thus, a national literature. The national canon of U.S. literature has assisted in the creation of the self-made man, of the American Dream, of toxic individualism, of race, of indigeneity, of environmental domination, and so on.9 For any storyteller to undermine the dominant imperial narrative—particularly for writers who are settlers—it requires the writer to not only see beyond the narrative strategies they’ve been trained to uphold but to then also imagine a more sustainable and equitable response. If a writer believes in the power of story to shape culture, whether writing solarpunk or not, this task is monumental but necessary.This demand is not meant to be a burden to the creator. Rather, these are the genre’s possibilities. Even so, it is a challenge, and Weik von Mossner points out the scale: “To imagine an ecologically sustainable, equitable, and just future and make it so enticing, appealing, and attainable that readers will feel encouraged to act to bring it about.”10 Writing solarpunk is a transformative act. The story should change the writer just as the writer hopes the story will encourage hope through action for the reader. This energy is part of what makes solarpunk a punk genre. At its best, punk is a rapid burst of energy that motivates movement, whether in the mosh pit or fixing a pothole outside the venue. Indeed, Weik von Mossner poses the question: “How exactly do we get from the hopeful imagining to the courage and determination to act, and what role does desire play in this process as the motivating force that makes us strive for the things we are hoping for?”11 I have always defended the “punk” aspect of solarpunk because it provides one answer to this question. Punk music and culture—with all its problems—has also created an ethic of community care.12 Punk balances the idea-driven manifestos of the music with community action, whereas solarpunk struggles to find this balance.One reason for this imbalance could be the emphasis placed on idea over character in the imagining of new worlds. If a compelling world is not populated by equally interesting people, then it’s easy for the goal to become creating a solarpunk aesthetic instead of a solarpunk community. Michael J. DeLuca asks a similar question as Weik von Mossner in his essay “Solarpunk Is a Hothouse Tomato”:DeLuca’s answer is character-driven stories as opposed to the more common technology-based or solution-based stories of the science fiction Golden Age.14 I’d expand DeLuca’s idea beyond a single character to a community. The individualist narrative—the hero’s journey—cannot tell the story of the climate crisis or the story of environmental justice issues. That individualism prevalent in the US literary canon contributes to the propaganda around climate change: that individual actions like lowering one’s carbon footprint will stop climate change.15 It’s the solarpunk community that should be just as imaginatively invigorating as the sustainable and socially just world portrayed on the page.While an emerging genre, solarpunk already has its tropes: mainly domes and gardens. Indeed, Weik von Mossner’s two examples focus on gardening. This agricultural aspect of solarpunk is certainly a draw of the genre, as emphasized by Sarena Ulibarri’s two Glass and Gardens anthologies and the infamous Chobani advertisement that depicts an idealized family farm in solarpunk style.16 One of the most direct forms of viable action portrayed in solarpunk stories is gardening. Community gardening aligns with many values of solarpunk—multispecies spaces and engagement, anti-capitalism, local food production, community resilience—but the garden can also be a signifier of civilization and domination of the land. Solarpunk is a global genre and the two examples Weik von Mossner analyzes are not from US writers, but I struggle with the garden’s general role as a symbol of civilization as opposed to the food forest or the foraged commons. What has attracted solarpunks to the garden as opposed to reclaiming the commons?17In terms of expressing desire, the garden has become a focus for solarpunk, and, indeed, it is easy for many to imagine and enact.18 In parts of the US, it is common to see community garden spaces, rooftop gardens, porch gardens, and backyard gardens with chickens. Free advice abounds online or at the library. Seeds are cheap. Gardening can also be an individual act or community-based. Weik von Mossner writes: “And yet I wonder, when we are hoping for positive change, whether it would not help to also develop a strong desire to make it happen.”19 This desire currently seems rooted in the garden, but for solarpunk to become a response to the climate crisis, members of this movement must have more than a pack of seeds in their toolbox.20 Weik von Mossner points out that the two stories “Untamed” and “The Strength of the Willow” “cue the desire in readers to live in buildings and neighborhoods filled with gardens and thriving multi-species communities.”21 Indeed, the spaces depicted in these stories, and in other anthologies like the Glass and Gardens duology or Multispecies Cities, are inspiring in their diversity and beautiful imaginings. The garden can be a radical space,22 but if gardens are the easiest action to take away from a solarpunk story off the page, then we need to reconsider what blueprints we are unfurling. There has to be more than gardens. We must move beyond the common story of man versus nature or the recreating of Eden so easily contained in the garden.As much as early solarpunk pushed back against the utopian tradition, as Weik von Mossner points out, the critical utopian tradition has clearly influenced solarpunk as suggested by the abundance of gardens.23 While the rhetoric has somewhat lessened as solarpunk becomes a more popular genre,24 I question the critical utopia because many solarpunk stories are far from utopic, such as the first story in Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-speculation, “The Boston Hearth Project” by T. X. Watson. This short story centers near-future activism to provide housing for people during an intense winter storm.25 One reason solarpunk pushes back against utopia is because solarpunk stories focus on the path, not just the end goal of a more sustainable and just world. The path is where there is struggle, story, character development, and transformed community. The longer tradition of the critical utopia has provided places to strive for, but solarpunk is about the striving.Stories will not save us, but at this point, very little of the current normality can be saved. Adapting to the impacts of climate change will mean dismantling much of the “normal” in the US and other countries of the Global North. There is no saving our reliance on fossil fuels and continual GDP growth. Alexis Pauline Gumbs puts it this way: “It can be dangerous to investigate what our lives depend on, to recognize that freedom requires a species-scale betrayal of our founding mythologies.”26 Solarpunk can be complicit in this betrayal by aiding in shifting the narrative paradigm. Continued emphasis on gardens does not shift us far enough or create enough dissonance with the current narrative of toxic individualism. Gardens are controllable, protectable, repeatable. They allow for connection with the land without necessarily wrestling with colonialism. They can be totally individual or a community outlet. They allow us to feel content—we have engaged with the climate crisis, we have performed anti-capitalism and food sovereignty, we have given back to our community (both human and the more-than-human). If gardens are the most attractive aspect of solarpunk—whether the community garden or the impossibly green city with hanging gardens—then we are not going far enough. We must push beyond these mythologies.In his essay “Climate Fiction Won’t Save Us,” Jeff VanderMeer ends on the issue of hope: “The search for hope is hopeless or beside the point. Fiction can’t save us in this particular way, although it can pretend to, but if in a book a heroine survives climate crisis, this has no corresponding nexus or loci in the real world, no matter how strong the will of the reader that it be otherwise.”27 Certainly at an individual level, there is no direct correspondence between hero(ine) and reader, but solarpunk proposes that missing nexus comes from action. In the US, the universality of New Criticism, and the general influence of modernism, isolated stories for close analysis.28 In other words, we have been taught to read as if there is no praxis from a literary text (and, conversely, writers have also been taught their work will not be approached this way). Speculative texts have inspired action, such as protestors carrying shields of book covers in Portland (including of Le Guin’s ambiguous anarchist utopia The Dispossessed).29 The Earthseed Land Collective cites Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents as inspiration.30 On social media, creators like HydroponicTrash and Phil the Fixer post their latest DIY solarpunk projects such as constructing solar ovens or off-grid building developments.31 Certainly, fiction won’t save us, but what if we read solarpunk with the expectation of learning something to help our community? With the expectation that the vision presented on the page offers an actionable alternative to our current situation? If the solarpunk story included praxis as well as hope, then storytelling becomes a tool for community adaptation.In my solarpunk writing, I repeat the phrase: hope through action. Solarpunk may be hopeful but that’s not the end of the story. To end on a brief glimpse of hope aligns more closely with the endings of a climate fiction novel, where grief is subsumed by that glimmer of change. To shape the genre in this direction of praxis is a heavy burden for creators. This storytelling cannot be casual, cannot rely on the tools a writer might have learned in college or from a writing handbook. To that end, solarpunk cannot and should not fit neatly into publishing, criticism, or the academy. The only way to write this work is to be engaged in it off the page. Weik von Mossner’s point about the missing formulation of desire could be a key to achieving this praxis. As both Weik von Mossner and DeLuca suggest, character desires are a powerful craft tool to create a compelling story. If solarpunk characters and communities can depict resonating desires with actionable ideas for change, then the story becomes not only entertainment but also possibility. A solarpunk story turns hope into action for community adaptation. A tall order for storytellers, yes, but there is joy found in setting out for such vital work.