Bodies Available to Purchase

Chapter 4, “Bodies,” focuses on the corporeality of solar work, offering a blueprint for practically transforming the relations that constitute racial capitalism. As a corrective to late liberal visualizations of blue-collar solar workers, Lennon argues that solar infrastructure necessitates we see, touch, sense, consider, and work on our surroundings with a certain care that is absent in many forms of fossil fuel energy production. This care is not simply an ideological concern for the environment but also a corporeal feel for the spaces we inhabit. As such, Lennon argues that the work of transforming the landscape vis-à-vis solar can cultivate a bodily attunement to the built environment. Through a closing discussion of two Black and brown worker-owned, solar-powered businesses, he theorizes the political power of this corporeality, arguing that the everyday labor of energy transitions can better align care for ecosystems with an intersectional pro-worker politics.