Exploring solarpunk literature in order to craft queer and hopeful methodologies for the task of multispecies legal worlding.
Researchers
Research Background
We live in dystopian times where social and environmental injustices intersect. Being hopeful is becoming harder and, for some scholars, is now seen as radical and “punk”. Solarpunk is an emerging movement and literary genre (spanning science fiction and fantasy (SFF)) that uses hope to imagine better worlds. This experimental research project will examine solarpunk themes of hope, multispecies perspectives, and queerness to develop new methodologies that counteract dominant approaches built of despair. Examples of relevant prose include Becky Chambers’ robot Mosscap who is inspired by nature which it observes in slow-time like watching stalagmites form over decades, and Annalee Newitz’s Environmental Rescue ranger Destry who presses her fingers into soil to establish a ‘high-bandwidth connection with the local ecosystem’, recognising nature’s voice. This project builds on “law and literature” research by developing three types of solarpunk-inspired methodologies (explained below): narrative, storytelling (including creative writing), and “literary-ethical”. These methodologies will be developed to reimagine law through the act of “worlding” (Haraway 2016), explained below. The goal of this “worlding” is to make law more multispecies by catering to the interests of non-humans like factory farmed animals, species nearing extinction, and failing ecosystems.
Research Aims
This experimental project will answer the following question:
How can solarpunk literature inform and enhance law & literature methodologies for multispecies legal worlding done by socio-legal theorists?
This entails answering the following sub-questions:
- What productive tensions and synergies exist between queer, hopeful, and multispecies themes emerging in solarpunk and socio-legal theory?
- What narrative, storytelling, and “literary-ethical” methodologies can be developed for legal worlding that deeply integrate multispecies, queer, and hopeful priorities?
- How can these methodologies be improved through application and feedback (via research blog, solarpunk author interviews, and experimental workshop)?
The aims of this project are:
- Providing one of the first analyses of solarpunk’s queerness for legal worlding, and its interaction with multispecies and hopeful themes.
- Creating recommendations for novel law & literature methodologies for multispecies legal worlding drawing upon solarpunk literature.
- Testing, developing and finalising the methodologies in response to feedback from research blog, author interviews, and experimental workshop.
Research Methods
This research project is conducted through the use of six research methods.
- Review (literature and media review)
- Development (desk-based, socio-legal, theoretical research to develop methodologies)
- Application (methodology application through scholarly, speculative, and creative (blog) writing to test viability)
- Interview (semi-structured asynchronous email interviews with five solarpunk authors to deeply engage the project’s solarpunk-inspired methodologies to inform finalised methodologies)
- Blog (research blog creation/management to share methodology testing and collect feedback to inform finalised methodologies)
- Workshop (experimental workshop to test and finalise methodologies)
These research methods are used with the following methodological considerations embedded:
The project’s methodology will incorporate queer theory, theories of hope, and multispecies perspectives. This will be developed throughout the project’s course, gradually adopting its own methodological output in a meta-application.
Research Outcomes
The expected outcomes of this project are:
- Set of methodology recommendations for solarpunk-inspired multispecies worlding research, published in short monograph, summarised in blog posts, and conference paper.
- Methodology test applications in theoretical scholarship, creative writing, and interview transcripts published in 20+ research blog posts.
- Network and growing dialogue on solarpunk-inspired multispecies legal worlding built through blog engagement and consolidated in online experimental workshop and developing concept for a scaled-up research project funding bid.
This project is in its initial phase. If you would like to learn more about the project and its outcomes, please contact Dr Iyan Offor at: iyan.offor@bcu.ac.uk.