Beyond Victoriana

“Going Native” in Steampunk: James H. Carrott and Brian David Johnson’s Vintage Tomorrows on Tor.com

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:22:47 +0000

Recently, everyone and their grandmother are trying to place steampunk in the grander scope of things. Most of pop culture has poked at it at this point. Many in the SF/F community gives the subculture a passing nod (or are slowly edging away, since, being early adapters by nature, quite a few in sci-fi are tired of it already).

Still, questions about steampunk have set people in pursuit of the deeper meanings behind the aesthetic movement. Two years ago, Intel’s futurist Brian David Johnson wanted to answer the biggest one about steampunk’s rise: “Why now?” He was joined by a cultural historian James Carrott and they filmed a documentary, which permutated into a book by the same name: Vintage Tomorrows (or two books, actually. Steampunking Our Future: An Embedded Historian’s Notebook is the free e-book companion you can get online).

I had the pleasure of meeting them at NYCC a couple of years ago to hear their idea first-hand: steampunk has the potential to be a counterculture. I’m actually on the fence about this (surprised, right?). Because, as much as I love the subculture, radical change isn’t a given to participate. Lo and behold, however, when a copy handed on my desk awhile back, I gave their research a gander.

[How to fall in love with a subculture in 10 easy steps -- Read the rest of Tor.com]

Filed under: Review Tagged: "steampunk communities", books, Steampunk, tor.com

Steamfunk & Rococoa: A Black Victorian Fantasy

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:33:03 +0000

Briaan L. Barron, artist and owner of Bri-Dimensional Images and recent graduate from Sarah Lawrence College, contacted me about her senior project: a film about steampunk, steamfunk, and the role of African Diaspora in these subcultures. The final result is her animated short “Steamfunk & Rococoa: A Black Victorian Fantasy” which I’m happy to share here. Also featuring the wonderful Balogun Ojetade speaking about steamfunk!

Film description:

The inspiration for Steamfunk and Rococoa: A Black Victorian Fantasy derived from an event inspiration board that I came across online. The board, which featured an intriguing medley of metals, vintage artifacts, and African jewelry, was entitled “Afro-Steampunk,” and its description read, “If Erykah Badu and Sherlock Holmes had a wedding.” The visual juxtaposition of these unexpected sources of inspiration led me to delve into more research on the concept of Afro-Steampunk to see if this striking aesthetic could be found elsewhere. My search exposed me not only to more fascinating representations of Black and African aesthetics coalescing with the steampunk genre, but also to a unique set of politics and critiques associated with them.

Closing Credits Music produced by Briaan L. Barron

Filed under: Beyond Victoriana Odds and Ends, Interviews Tagged: Ay-leen the Peacemaker, Balogun Ojetade, black victorians, Briaan L Barron, film, rococoa, steamfunk

Watch City Festival this Weekend

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:18:27 +0000

Convention alert! This weekend, I’ll be presenting at Watch City Festival as part of their Academic track. You can find me at the Author’s Den at the following times:

Saturday

11 – 11:45 AM : “Steam Around the World: Steampunk Beyond Victoriana” – My standard panel about multicultural steampunk, tweaked and upgraded.

12 – 12:45 PM: “Steaming into a Victorian Future” Panel with Prof. Catherine Siemann and Prof. Cynthia Miller

We’ll be discussing the recently published steampunk anthology Steaming into a Victorian Future, and all of the intellectual critique that goes on in the steampunk, and what trends we see in the current community.

3-5PM: Birthday Toast at Watch City Festival! at The Mad Raven.
Need a breather from Watch City? Going in for a late lunch? Need an excuse to booze it up? An informal get-together to celebrate an early birthday with those who are attending Watch City Festival. I’ll be there, chilling for a couple of hours after my panels and would certainly enjoy your company!

Sunday

11 – 12:45 PM: “Envisioning a Better Steam Society” My other standard panel to discuss the historic problems of the 19th century into today and what we can do about them.I’ll also be tweeting and tumblr-ing my adventures too, for those who can’t attend. Otherwise, I hope to see some familiar faces at a panel or for a pint.

Filed under: Announcement, Conventions Tagged: "steampunk communities"

Radical Dirigibles- Black Socialists, Anarchists, Reformers and Airships–Guest blog by P. Djeli Clark

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:00:34 +0000

[Note from Ay-leen: Cross-posting P. Djeli Clark's blog The Disgruntled Haradrim. Happy May Day everyone!]

Pictured above, members of an African-American acting troupe who journeyed to the Soviet Union to star in a film in the 1930s. The group was led by the young Louise Thompson Patterson and included amongst them the poet Langston Hughes

“Socialism is the preparation for that higher Anarchism; painfully, laboriously we mean to destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices.”–H.G. Wells

“Steampunk will never be afraid of politics,” declared writer and Steampunk Magazine editor Margaret Killjoy in a well-read 2011 article. In it, Killjoy pushed back against any notion that steampunk was merely about brass buttons and brassieres–though it’s that too. Tracing the long history of political thought, and political radicalism, in the genre, she pointed to the early works of Jules Vernes and H.G. Wells, and the more modern anarchist tendencies of Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore. Killjoy went on to declare steampunk as even inherently anticolonial; in its re-imaginings of our historical past steampunk was “antithetical” to colonialism, the latter being “a process that seeks to force homogeneity upon the world” while the former “is one of many, many movements and cultures that seeks to break that homogeneity.”

Indeed, steampunk (beyond even its literary creations) has sparked numerous discussions and debates on race, slavery, colonialism, gender, class and sexuality. More than any other genre of speculative fiction, it forces us to confront our more immediate past, and has an active cadre that launches criticism upon anything that appears to fantasize, apologizes or fails to acknowledge the disparities and inequities of these by-gone eras. It makes steampunk a fractured genre, where the donning of a simple article of clothing or a decision to write about some obscure bit of the past, can spark debates or whole blogs on racism, cultural appropriation, gender inequality and [insert-your-privilege-here]-splaining. And that’s a GOOD thing.

Throughout the interwebs this has created entire forums expressly designed to discuss, celebrate, unpack and bring to light these more “radical” expressions–”radical” if only in their break with the normative. Steampunk Emma Goldman names itself as “a blog about inspiring activist figures from the 19th century” dedicated “to occasionally talk about past and future political actions inside and outside the steampunk community.” Miss Kagashi’s Multiculturalism for Steampunk seeks to create a source book of culture for steampunk, featuring “a collection of costumery, tutorials, history, whimsy, and recipes,” in the hopes of putting “a little global flair” into an overly Eurocentric and Victorian vision of steampunk. The aptly named Beyond Victoriana headed by Ay-leen the Peacemaker, “focuses on non-Western cultures, underrepresented minorities in Western histories (Asian / Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, First Nation, Hispanic, black / African & other marginalized identities), and the cultural intersection between the West and the non-West” within the steampunk genre. Balogun Ojetade’s Chronicles of Harriet places a strong emphasis on what it deems “Steamfunk,” an African-American perspective and history of the steampunk phenomenon.

Steampunk is political because our past, especially our recent past, is steeped in the political. Our very “rememberings”–or silences–on that past is political. And there’s no escaping that. Steampunk forces us to think of our past in inherently political ways, and to have some understanding of that past if we wish to recreate and re-imagine it. Naturally, this brings me to Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Yes, I said naturally.

Last week, Sen. Paul made an ill-fated trip to the historically black Howard University, part of a larger “outreach” program to minorities by a GOP desperate to find a path to diversity. During a speech that drew more grumblings and gasps than applause, Sen. Paul quizzed Howard students on just how much they knew of black history. In what the Chicago Tribune writer Clarence Page calls a clear act of “whitesplaining,” the GOP senator asked smugly if students knew that the founders of the NAACP were Republicans.

Of course, what Sen. Paul tried to pull is an old-hat trick of modern conservatives–tying themselves to the era of Abraham Lincoln and Radical Republicans, and the Democrats to the party’s shameful past of racial demagoguery, Jim Crow and anti-black terrorist violence. In this exploitable past, black people (who today vote majority Democrat) are dim-witted dupes who don’t even know who our true allies are.

Silly Negroes!

What’s left out in this tidy revisionist story is the part where that hyper-racist strain infecting the Democratic Party re-branded themselves Dixiecrats by the late 1940s and, in the wake of Democratic overtures to the Civil Rights Movement by the 1960s, left that party and double re-branded themselves as Republicans–utilizing peculiar “Southern strategies” and helping to spark that whole GOP Conservative movement. Turns out we silly Negroes (the majority anyway) were well aware of who our enemies were, whatever they decided to call themselves.

Sen. Paul should hop on the interwebs and read more steampunk.

Still, that was only a minor part of the senator’s blunder. In his evoking of the NAACP, he clearly seems to state with some sense of pride that its founders were Republicans–hoping this will strike a chord with the young black audience. But the founders of the NAACP can’t be placed into neat partisan categories. In fact, many were much more radical than either major party of the day. A good number were even strongly affiliated with radical thoughts and ideologies, including the one Sen. Rand Paul and the modern GOP hurl as an epithet. It lurks behind the unhinged fears of old white guys like Chuck Norris and Ted Nugent. The rabid wide-eyed fanaticism about the government, “coming to take our guns!” The terror that causes heads at FOX News to explode when anyone talks about something as innocuous as wealth inequality or healthcare. It’s what makes Glenn Beck cry. It is the dreaded “S” word. Yep, you guessed it. Some of the founders of the NAACP weren’t just Republicans. They were *gasp* SOCIALISTS!

Ruh roh!

The NAACP was founded in 1909 in the wake of the heinous Springfield Race Riot of 1908. Its precursor was the Niagara Movement begun four years previous, a multiracial gathering of reformers who came together to protest Booker T. Washington’s more conciliatory “Tuskegee Machine.” Like the Niagara Movement (which was forced to meet on the Canadian side of the border due to the hostile racial American climate), the men and women who gathered to form the NAACP were considered the “militants” and radicals of their day.

Many of the NAACP’s white co-founders were involved with socialism, such as Mary White Ovington, a suffragette and life-long socialist. William English Walling, descended from a slave-owning family, was both a Republican and socialist. Lillian Wald not only endorsed socialist candidates to run for office, but associated with noted anarchists like Emma Goldman. Charles Edward Russell would run for political office in New York, both the governorship and for the US Senate, as a socialist. Florence Kelley was a follower of Karl Marx and a friend of Friedrich Engels; she would translate his influential work The Condition of the Working Class in England, to English.

The most famous black NAACP founder, W.E.B. Du Bois, moved in and out of socialism–and would only strengthen his ties to socialist doctrines in later life, eventually renouncing his US citizenship. And while other black co-founders, Ida B. Wells and Archibald Grimké, were not declared socialists, their writings appeared frequently in socialist and radical newspapers, and they moved in similar circles. Suffice it to say, the modern GOP (including the Libertarian leaning Sen. Paul) would run screaming for the hills were they to meet some of these early NAACP founders–and their brand of “Republicanism.”

While this may be a bit puzzling to Sen. Paul, anyone trying to write steampunk, or dieselpunk for that matter, has to be versed and well aware of the political radicalism that was part of the American landscape of the late 19th through early 20th centuries. It’s everywhere: in the major figures of the day, in the struggles and everyday lives of activists, reformers, thinkers and workers. It’s part of what makes steampunk so damn exciting! If there isn’t some form of political or social radicalism alongside your dirigibles, your re-imagined world of steam is (pardon the pun) just a lot of hot air.

This intermingling of radical thought and African-American social reform in the late 19th and early 20th centuries should not be a surprise to anyone–unless like Sen. Paul you just cram the “crib notes” to black history before the big test. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass had indeed warned black America, “the Republican party is the ship, and all else the sea.” But that was during the hopeful days of Reconstruction, before the GOP traded away its new black voters in the Compromise of 1877–which formally ended the era of Radical Republicanism, pulled federal troops out of the defeated Confederacy and left former slaves to the whims of a vengeful South. By the time of the founding of the NAACP, the United States had entered what African-American historian Rayford Logan referred to as the “nadir” of race relations and politics–an era where Jim Crow held sway, segregation had spread throughout the country and lynching and anti-black violence reached fever pitch.

Finding few allies in neither party, many African-Americans turned inward–relying on black civic organizations and self-created politics like black nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Others however sought refuge in the more radical political movements of the day, from anarchism to socialism.

The American Socialist Party was founded in 1901, during a moment of working class labor politics brought on as a reaction to the excesses of the Industrial Age. It found adherents from the immigrant slums of New York to factory and farm workers in the Midwest. It also gained some traction among African-Americans. Prominent figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Chandler Owens, A. Philip Randolph and W.A. Domingo all claimed membership in the party at some point. And some white socialist leaders like Eugene Debs spoke out against racism and urged black involvement.

Still, socialists didn’t drop from the sky. Like the rest of white society many remained ambivalent to black causes, unsympathetic or openly hostile. Even well-meaning white radicals like Debs downplayed the role of race in black oppression, claiming “the class struggle” to be “colorless.” Du Bois complained of what he saw as a paternalistic streak among white socialists, whose lack of sustained outreach likely accounted for its small showing among the black masses. The West Indian born Harlem radical Hubert Harrison, who withdrew from the Socialist party by 1914, put it bluntly in a 1920 article: socialists put the white “race first, and class after.”

Still, there were some luminaries of color in these more radical movements, among them Lucy Parsons. Born Lucy Gonzalez in Texas, a slave of African, Native American and Mexican background, she married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate soldier, in 1871. And this most unlikely couple set upon a life of unlikely political changes. Beginning as Radical Republicans, by the 1880s the Parsons had moved to Chicago and become associated with socialism–writing for The Socialist and The Alarm, journals of the International Working People’s Association, an organization they in part co-founded. In 1886, both become involved with the growing anarchist labor movements in Chicago, and in the wake of the Haymarket Riots, Albert Parsons was arrested as part of the alleged conspiracy; he was executed by the state in 1887.

Parsons however, did not stop her radical activism, writing for Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly by the 1890s and continuing with other radical movements till her death in 1942. Though Parsons would come into conflict with the likes of Emma Goldman on her (Parson’s) insistence on labor over gender politics, and she only gave passing commentary on black causes (Parsons never actually self-identified as black), her role as a woman of color placed her in the midst of a history of political radicalism.

There was nothing so ambiguous however about the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB). Founded in 1919 by the Afro-Caribbean (Nevis) born Cyril Briggs, the group (made up primarily of Afro-Caribbeans) advocated socialist causes with a black agenda as its central focus. Briggs, who by then was a journalist in New York City, created the organization out of dissatisfaction with both capitalism and the limitations of the larger mainstream socialist parties. The ABB was born in part out of a growing interest among African-Americans with communism, which itself was gaining strength in the United States following the 1919 Russian Revolution.

This was also the year of a record-breaking amount of anti-black race riots, that left scores of African-Americans dead, culminating in the infamous “Red Summer” of 1919. All of this was fed in part by the return of black soldiers from WWI, who showed open dissatisfaction with racism and Jim Crow. Briggs founded the ABB as a self-defense organization for blacks to face these threats, and imbued it with his growing socialist radicalism.

By the 1920s, Briggs had made contacts with blacks who joined the larger Communist Party USA (CP), which had begun to openly recruit African-Americans as well in the wake of the 1919 riots. Among these was the Jamaican born poet Claude McKay and the Suriname activist Otto Huiswoud, who persuaded the Comintern to set up a Negro Commission to unite blacks across national boundaries to fight colonialism in Africa and the West Indies.

Both the ABB and figures like McKay worked prominently within fellow radical Marcus Garvey’s UNIA, which saw mass African-American and Afro-Caribbean involvement. This relationship remained strained but workable; on the other hand, the ABB and other black socialist-communist members/groups distanced themselves from the NAACP and A. Philip Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters–who by the 1920s they deemed more accommodationist than militant. The ABB in fact would merge with the CP in 1922, in part due to a split with Garvey’s UNIA following the latter’s failed Black Star Line and infamous ill-advised meeting with the Ku Klux Klan.

From the mid 1920s through the Great Depression, the CP in the United States continued its attempts to recruit African-Americans, creating groups like the American Negro Labor Congress and pushing into the Southern “black belt.” The CP also found heavy recruitment of African-American women, who saw within the party a forum for their political activism. Women like Maude White, Esther Jackson, Louise Thompson Patterson, Audley Moore and Eula Gray all found a voice in the CP, and used it as a platform to create alternative strategies to meet the challenges of the black community. The Trinidadian born journalist Claudia Cumberbatch Jones joined the CP and managed to marry black nationalism and Marxism in the 1930s, using it to advocate for issues of race and gender. The most high-profile involvement of socialists and communists in black causes of the era was likely the International Labor Defense (an associated legal grouping) who came to the aid of the nine Scottsboro Boys in 1931.

In the 1930s black CP member Louise Thompson Patterson encouraged her troupe of black would-be actors (a mix of students, social workers and others) to travel to the Soviet Union to create a film about “Negro” life and racism in America. Her good friend and colleague the poet Langston Hughes journeyed with them. Though not a member of the CP, Hughes expressed admiration for the Soviet style of government, and his writings certainly reflected socialist causes and influence. For many others who made the journey, the utopian vision of race-relations offered by the CP and the USSR was alluring. And indeed, at least early on, troupe members marveled on their treatment in the Soviet Union–so seemingly different from the hostility of Jim Crow America. Though the trip was not all they had hoped, many returned to the United States with a more radical vision–becoming instrumental in protesting segregation and working within the National Urban League, NAACP and other organizations. One member of the troupe, Ted Poston, even became part of FDR’s unofficial “Black Cabinet.”

Of course, radicalism came with its risks–namely political repression. Add in race, and it was a volatile mix. The African-American community was as influenced by Red Scare tactics as anyone else, and there was a deep black anticommunist strain that surfaced in the 1920s and 30s, reappearing strongly in the 1950s. In 1931 NAACP leader Walter White denounced African-American women in the CP as “ignorant and uncouth victims who were being led to the slaughter by dangerously bold radicals.” Even former sympathetic socialists like A. Philip Randolph voiced concerns over the communists role in the black movements. The ABB and black CP members found themselves under increased scrutiny by the FBI, much as Garvey’s UNIA. Some, like Claudia Jones, would be arrested, held in prison and eventually deported from the country.

Recruiting in the deep South was deadly dangerous. Local Alabama farmers Ralph Gray and Clifford James who organized for the Communist Party were murdered. Others, like the tenant farmer and activist Ned Cobb, were imprisoned for over thirteen years. All too common for the day, many blacks simply disappeared, as unidentified bodies were found floating in rivers. Still, African-Americans joined these more radical parties, and pushed for equity in some of the most unlikely places; the Share Croppers’ Union of Alabama, claiming some 8,000 members, won a strike in 1934 for higher wages.

This radical moment in black politics remained through the 1930s, appearing in the form of Salaria Kea and Harry Haywood, both of who went off to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 black CP member Oliver Law became leader of the anti-fascist volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, making him the first African-American to command white troops; he would die in the famous battle of Mosquito Hill. The radical spirit appeared in the form of Alabama born James W. “Jim” Ford, who ran as the Vice-Presidential candidate candidate for the Communist Party USA in 1932, 1936, and 1940. (You can see a video of his 1940 speech here.) It showed up in anti-colonial writers in the Caribbean, from the Trinidadian activist C.L.R. James to the Martinician poet Frantz Fanon, all of whom found radical “comrades” in the United States. It continued on in famous figures like Paul Robeson, whose strong support of the USSR would put him at odds with both anti-Stalinist socialists and Cold War America.

Oliver Law (far left) and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain

The history of black radical political involvement in the US is directly tied to issues of racism, inequity and marginality. In socialism, anarchism, communism and other radical movements, African-Americans found ideologies whose visions sought to deconstruct the rigid hierarchical structures that dominated Victorian and popular Western thought. From the founding of the NAACP to the African Blood Brotherhood, these radicals attacked racism, class-ism, limited gender constructions and sought to overturn the entire global colonialist venture. Even if such political strategies inevitably fell short of their many lofty goals, they remain nevertheless embedded in the political history of black struggle. And our collective political re-imagined past of monocles, gears and airships is all the richer for it.

Further reading for Senator Rand Paul and anyone else:

Carole Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Duke University Press, 2008)

Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-century America (Verso, 1998)

Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011)

Erik S. McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Duke University Press, 2011)

Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (University of Illinois Press, 2004)

Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936(University Press of Mississippi, 1998)

Theman Ray Taylor, Cyril Briggs and the African Blood Brotherhood: Another Radical View of Race and Class During the 1920s (University of California, 1981)

***

P. Djeli Clark, aka The Disgruntled Haradrim, is a writer, blogger and fan of speculative fiction. You can find his ramblings at his blog. A few of his literary works are scattered among the e-zines of the virtual world; most are sitting in someone’s slush pile. You can also follow him on Twitter at @pdjeliclark.

Filed under: Essays, History Tagged: African-American, politics, race, radical

Yes, I Did Stick a Gear on It: The Illusion of Steampunk Performance — Guest Post on Steampunk Canada

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:55:51 +0000

Note: Thanks to Countessa Lenora for the opportunity to write this guest post for her blog!

The actual “Peacemaker,” my signature steampunk weapon

My Peacemaker was originally a chalking gun. I admit it. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who looks at it for more than ten seconds. Sometimes, people think it was a cookie gun, and I don’t mind that either. I like cookies.

There has been an unusual attitude, I’ve noticed, about the creation of steampunk props and the role of functional art. I’ve seen dismissive railing against “stick a gear on it” for physical artistic creations, the trumpeting of modded computers and iPods over spray-painted Nerf guns. I have no issue with beautiful functional art or people to have creative ambitions (and yes, that song based on the concept is pretty cute). But, as a performer with cosplayer roots, I never fully understood the ridicule. Because, a prop is a prop is a prop and as long as it helps you perform, whether the steampunk prop shoots real lightning or falls apart after being out in a rainstorm, as long as it enhances your artistic performance, it is a good steampunk prop.

What is, then, “steampunk performance?” A better way of phrasing would be that “steampunk performs.”

[Read the rest on Steampunk Canada]

Filed under: Essays Tagged: "guest blogger", "steampunk communities", art, Ay-leen the Peacemaker, cosplay

Steampunk Empire Symposium this weekend!

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 01:46:42 +0000

Already have my bags packed for my early morning flight to Cincinnati for the Steampunk Empire Symposium. My schedule is under the cut — hope to see some of you guys there!

I’ll also be on tumblr and twitter throughout the event, so you can follow me there!

SATURDAY

12 PM — Salon B

Steam Around the World: Steampunk Beyond Victoriana
Ay-leen the Peacemaker
Beyond Victoriana, what steampunk possibilities exist? Come join us as we take you on a trip around the world to see how steampunk manifests in the minds of those who don’t think within an Eurocentric context, whether they blend Western influences, or use recognizably steampunk elements within a distinct flavor outside of Europe. We will also approach the ethical challenges that come up when engaging in multicultural steampunk and discuss matters of race, privilege, and cultural appropriation.

4 PM — Salon C & D

Steampunk Reader’s Choice Awards
I’ll be making an appearance there and be representing several others who could not make it to the ceremony. Plus, I have a sekrit video up my sleeve from Lucretia Dearfour herself — if you have been following her antics impersonating other steampunks during the past few weeks, you’ll be in for a treat!

5PM – Salon B

Envisioning a Better Steam Society: Social Issues & Steampunk
Ay-leen the Peacemaker
A discussion panel where panel participants discuss their thoughts about finding aesthetic inspiration in a historical era rife with sexism, racism and classist thinking. Can the steampunk subculture come to terms with its problematic past, or are we just repeating history, except with ray guns? Together with the audience, we hope to engage in an open dialogue about whether steampunk confronts or condones the historical ideas behind its inspiration, how nineteenth century thinking is re-interpreted in the present day, and what makes steampunk actually “punk.”

7PM — Salon B

Minority Groups and Alternative Cultures
Ay-leen the Peacemaker
This panel is aimed at encouraging honest and open discussion of ethnic tensions, cultural differences, and incidents of racism in alternative subculture spaces. With the audience, we will talk about why minority groups may shy away from alternative-culture groups and events, any relevant examples of causes that you might wish to share, either in observation or as a minority, and about how these differences can be resolved in order to create a safe space for ALL people present in these types of groups or events.

SUNDAY

1PM — Salon B

LGBTQ in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Ay-leen the Peacemaker
In recent years, queer characters are becoming more prevalent in science fiction and fantasy, but we still have a long way to go. This panel will take a brief look at the history of LGBTQ characters in science fiction & fantasy, and what we can do to further promote fair and diverse representation of queer folk in SF/F.

Filed under: Announcement, Conventions Tagged: conventions

Beyond French Steampunk: Multiculturalism with Maurice Grunbaum

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:00:57 +0000

Maurice Grunbaum, left, with a fellow steampunk. Photo courtesy of Bernard Rousseau.

Striking. Powerful. Imposing. These are some of the words that come to mind when viewing a costume piece by Maurice Grunbaum. Maurice, an artist based in Paris, is well-known in the French alt and cosplay community for his amazing detailed costume and prop work, and images of his outfits have circulated throughout the steampunk aethernetz. I first noticed him in group shots with other steampunks of color (he’s the masked gentleman on the right).

On his Facebook, you can find detailed cosplays from Bioshock, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and other steampunk-inspired sources. On the rise nationally in France, his art was included in the exhibition “Future Perfect: Retrofuturism/ Steampunk/ Archeomodernism” («Futur Antérieur: Rétrofuturisme/ Steampunk/ Archéomodernisme») at the Agnes B. Galerie in Paris (watch the museum trailer below for a clip of Maurice talking about steampunk).

When I read his interview included in the exhibit’s catalog, I was blown away by his articulate passion for everything steampunk and his need to broaden the definition of steampunk to include influences outside the Victorian and the French «La Belle Époque». So with a little help from a French friend-of-the-blog, I was able to get an interview with Maurice.

Hello Maurice, and welcome to Beyond Victoriana! To start off, let’s talk about your definition of steampunk.

The word Steampunk is used to describe a new genre of science-fiction literature set in the end of the 19th century and mostly at the time of steam machine and industrial revolution. So, the origins of steampunk as a literary genre are authors like Jules Verne and HG Well, who through their books gave the aesthetic characteristics of that movement. The background of Victorian England before First World War, inspired by the design of the 1900′s with a touch of Belle Epoque set the founding stones on which steampunk fiction will take place, on which man and machine work together. No petrol or electricity, technology is stuck in the coal and puddled steel era, constructions are gigantic and levers and keyboards goes alongside the most complex pipping. And contrary to the usual science-fiction stories, steampunk characters are more genius mechanics than super-heroes.

Besides, the “steamer” is above all a tinkerer with a mind that leads him to create, experiment and build objects and art by himself. The motto of steampunk sums it all up quite well that ethics: Love the Machine, Hate the Industry. DIY is one of its most important fundamental element.

Photo taken at Japan Expo 2012 of Maurice in a steampunk’d cosplay from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Image courtesy of Gilles Michel.

To me, steampunk has to be international and multicultural! I’m fighting for my own personal vision of steampunk! To me there shouldn’t be a sole steampunk clothing style but many! Everybody can have their own vision of steampunk!

But when one think about steampunk, one visualizes some kind of aesthetic form based on the British Victorian era. Steampunk evokes the image of moustached gentlemen, aristocrats with fitted coats, pale-skinned dandies lacing their explorer’s goggles on their top-hats and driving their revolutionary zeppelins. It’s a very reductive and even cliché image to sum up steampunk!

Alas, many are consciously stuck with this description and do not go further. Yet multiculturalism does exist in steampunk. The Victorian heritage is only one of the many sides of the steampunk culture. Someone said that one enriches himself in contact with other cultures.

To me, steampunk is multicultural!

To me what makes the richness of the steampunk culture is its cultural diversity which goes far beyond the politics and ideologies of the historical and imperialist (and real) 19th century. Even though racism existed at the time and still exists today.

It then all depends on each and everyone vision and imagination! Without any limit… To me, the world is not Occident alone, to confine steampunk to the only Victorian style is giving a very narrow vision of the movement. The world doesn’t only wear top-hats and fitted coats! Kimonos, sarouels and saris can easily illustrate and enrich the steampunk movement as well as developping it! Please do no get stuck with European fashion!

I have to admit that I feel disappointed when I see people drastically reducing the application field or steampunk! Steampunk aesthetics are not the victorian aesthetics alone! It’s bigger than that!

Let’s imagine all the other cultures having the technical prerequisite to launch their own industrial revolution! No more clichés and domination of the developed countries over the rest of the world. That’s why I work on multiculturalism.

The richness of steampunk is also due to its capacity to renew itself all the time! All the steamers won’t stuck to the Victorian code but will delve into their own cultural roots (Oriental, African…); And by giving to the steampunk culture their own vision,they will help steampunk grow.

We have to keep that cultural and ethnic richness to go beyond the simplistic image of the top hat Victorian. This is what I would love to see more often in steampunk fashion, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to promote steampunk and brake the clichés of the genre.

My approach is to go away from the historical aspect to explore the imaginary aspects. To me steampunk has nothing to do with history. It is Science-fiction, Alternate History, or Dystopian!

You also have international influences in your prop-making and costuming. What cultures interest you most?

Yes, there are a lot of international influences in my creations and props. I’m really interested in other cultures and ethnicities because I was born Eurasian myself thus bi-racial. Above all, I consider myself a citizen of the world so I like to take inspiration from every culture to create my costume whether Occidental or Oriental. So I give another vision of steampunk and bring it to an international even interplanetary level. For example, my Tuareg for Mars costume or my Atlantis people outfit.

I [also] take inspiration from my Vietnamese heritage for my Oriental creations. The impact of my family background is important in my creative work, because I give another image of steampunk via my origins. I tend to give a more multicultural vision.

Image courtesy of Bernard Rousseau

That’s right, there is a strong nautical influence in my creations and props because I was born and I lived in New Caledonia. I wanted to create my own steampunk style, a tribute to the South Pacific islands, to the Maori and Tahitian cultures. But it’s also a tribute to Atlantis, to Captain Nemo and his Nautilus and the Bioshock video game. I’ve always been attracted to the sea and its mysteries.

Do you think there are cultures which are more difficult to steampunk than other?

Yes, I have to admit, there are cultures more difficult to steampunk than others. Industrial Revolution happened in Europe (England, France…) so there’s an obvious domination of Western style on clothing and fashion! It is more difficult to make a steam African Zulu outfit or an Arabian steam costume. But why not! These are interesting challenges to take!

What is your artistic background? Have you had any formal training in the arts?

I’m a self-taught person, I’ve learned a lot by observing. Observation is to me important. It helps me to improve myself everyday, year after year. I started with drawing, then sculpture, model-making and then I started to work on costumes and cyberpunk inventions at first then steampunk.

How did you first become involved in the steampunk community?

I started to create before but I was first acquainted with steampunk in 2009 when I found videos of American steampunk and its conventions on Youtube. I think I always liked that aesthetic and that it has always been part of me somehow. But when I watched these videos, I could put a name on that aesthetic.

As for the communities, I’m not a member of the French steampunk community anymore! I do not share its restricted vision of steampunk (neo-victorian and Belle Epoque). I’d rather work by myself with people who share a larger vision of steampunk with. We have created our own dissident group to lead French steampunk on a new path ( a more free and multicultural vision) …far from the top hats…

Why did you feel the need to leave the French steampunk community? Were there any experiences specifically where you had felt excluded?

Yes that’s true! The so-called “French exception” that some vaporistes like to follow does not help them appreciate my offbeat vision of steampunk. By my creations and god knows I create a lot, some felt out-shined! Thus, follow some kind of jealousy and ostracism from them and a will to separate me from the Paris steampunk community. My vision can somehow puzzle the purists! XD

Why do you think vaporistes feel that way? Do you think French steampunks romanticize its imperialist past ? If they do, how do you feel about the attitude of glorifying this historical period?

The problem is that there are so few non-Caucasian people in the French steampunk community. There is a white domination with a Victorian and Belle Epoque style put forward which is perfectly natural! But it not natural not to accept that there are other influences (and that’s where I come up with my multiculturalism). I wrote an article about that on the French forum that caused quite a stir and contempt from the purists.

To some, there is some kind of nostalgia for the French colonial past and they don’t bother to put it forward in the way they think or dress. To them, steampunk should European. They forget alternate realities and try to stick to the historical period that suits them. But to me, it is not an objective vision of steampunk.

With Maurice Grunbaum, center, and members of DARKSTEAM. Photo courtesy of Quang Guang.

Now that you have broke off on your own, I would love to hear more about your dissident group! Is there any other information about your group that readers can check out online? What kind of styles does the individuals in your group like to do?

The DARKSTEAM was born as a concept in 2009. Its goal is to show the work of independent artists whether steampunk or not. At its beginnings, there were only 2 members in the DARKSTEAM, [but] little by little it grew, we welcomed more people to join in and proudly exhibit our personal creations during conventions.

Above all, we are a group of artists from every background and free from any associations. We want to maintain the punk side and our freedom to create! Force is good but the Dark Side is better.

So I create that group to distance ourselves from the classical Victorian style with its top-hats and frock coats, now a stereotype! I also wanted to gather people who were disappointed by forums where they were criticized and laughed at because they had a much too original approach that shocked the purists for they had a more exotic, sometime even offbeat, vision of steampunk! Since then we do not consider ourselves steamers (I hate the word «vaporiste») but retrofuturists! As tinkerers and creators, we are into everything as far as Sci-Fi is concerned and not limited to the top hat and steam image of steampunk. We are inspired by dieselpunk, cyberpunk and post apocalypse to destroy the boundaries of our creativity.

To confine ourselves to steampunk it to confine ourselves to only one aesthetic! We do not not agree with that. We promote Do It Yourself… not the Buy It Yourself!

We enforce the fundamentals of steampunk! In the DARKSTEAM, everybody has to do DIY and create things! We help and motivate each other. We do not look for socialization or friendship, but to build original projects together but above all have fun.

You can’t find us on the internet because we only have a private group on Facebook but you can find our creations on my Facebook profile. We are rather discreet. We work all year long on our costumes and we see each other from time to time in Paris. Some of us live outside Paris, others even outside of France but we stay in touch via Facebook and we gather for the annual conventions.

The Darksteamers are above all tinkerers that comes from various background: cosplay, larps, sf-fans, goths and artists like tribal dancers or fire-eaters. We like Asian, Middle-Eastern, tribal, and multicultural styles. We bet on original creations far from clichés.

Can you talk about your creative process for a piece, from start to finish? Are there any particular challenges that you like to work on when creating a piece?

A sketch of one of his cosplays. Image courtesy of Maurice.

First of all, I visualize my ideas with sketches, roughs and basic drawings. Then I look for the raw and recycled materials I will be needing (flea and secondhand markets). After that, I start the mounting, the painting, the fixing and the trying on.

I’m a tinkerer, I like to create, experiment, and build props and objects myself.

When I work, I create around three axis:

The DIY
The Recycling
The Multiculturalism

If I’m stuck in a project, I put it away for a while and I work on something else until the former evolves a little bit in my mind. I work on several projects at a time, it prevents me from getting bored when I a project goes on too slowly for me.

Do you have any plans to build upon your career as an artist in steampunk?

A career as an artist? Not so much. I live up to steampunk in my everyday life. To me it’s a philosophy of life. It is also a hobby and a very time-consuming passion!

Do you think steampunk as an artform encourages people from different racial and cultural backgrounds to participate?

I do think so. When I look at my friends network [on Facebook], I see steamers from all over the world. I see steamers from Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines. So yes, steampunk as an artform encourages people from different racial background to participate.

What piece of advice would you give to a young artist?

The most important piece of advice I could give is to observe, and then to start with sketches before the creation itself. Observing helps you to visualize and plan in a better way. Always start with small pieces to gain confidence little by little before going for bigger projects which generates more stress and expense. As for the very big ideas, keep them in mind until the day you can go for them.

Thanks again for your time and your energy, Maurice! I look forward to seeing your future creations! Readers can follow Maurice on Facebook. His work is also included in the recently-published International Steampunk Fashion.

Filed under: Interviews Tagged: "steampunk communities", art, Arthur Morgan, Ay-leen the Peacemaker, cosplay, Maurice Grunbaum

Beyond Victoriana supports Boston

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:25:10 +0000

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Menino have announced the formation of The One Fund Boston, Inc. to help the people most affected by the tragic events that occurred in Boston on April 15, 2013. Click to donate.

I don’t talk about current events much on this blog. On Monday, the events at the Boston Marathon really hit home, though.

You see, I grew up near Boston. I have friends and family who live there. My fiancee’s cousin is an Olympic runner and does marathons like the Boston Marathon on a regular basis. Monday afternoon was spent checking in on my relatives and friends, following livefeeds, staying informed. As the news broke the last couple of days, and more names I knew and people from my hometown kept cropping in the headlines, it had been emotionally difficult to cope. So I stayed away from public announcements, but I am undoubtedly grateful for the outpouring of support I’ve seen from people who were on the ground and from elsewhere.

Thank you to the first-responders who rushed to the scene. Thank you to the marathon volunteers who stayed for 14 hours straight to assist runners and the injured. Thank you to the runners who went the two extra miles to donate blood at Mass General. Thank you to the hundreds who have donated already to family charities and organizations for the victims. Thank you to Occupy for the lovely light display that night, and to Stephen Colbert and John Stewart, for their speeches on yesterday’s broadcast, and to the messages of support that have been traveling online.

There are other tragedies happening throughout the world (as they always are). An 7.8 earthquake rocked the Iran/Pakistan border yesterday. A bombing happened this morning in Bangalore. Now is not the time, however, for comparing and contrasting tragedies. Quantifying suffering does not minimize their affects. The best that a single person can do in a situation is act, the best they can do wherever they are, to stop the suffering that they see. People do this in a political context as well as a humanitarian one and I respect both ways. But conversations that further provoke needless pain are not productive. Not right now.

The One Fund is open for donations. Please send what you can.

Filed under: Announcement

The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai: 1938-1949–Guest blog by Historicity (Was Already Taken)

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:00:42 +0000

Shanghai, China, Jewish refugees in one of the “homes” established in Shanghai to house those who succeeded in escaping from Europe via East Asia in the 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Yad Vashem photo archive. Click for source.

German Jews did not immediately begin to put their emigration papers in order after Hitler came into power, or after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws, because as far as they were concerned they were fully assimilated Goethe reading, WWI fighting German citizens. They could not believe, and would not believe, that the country they loved would turn against them.

Hitler introduced his anti-Jewish legislation slowly over the course of the 1930’s, giving German Jewry time to rationalize each new piece; this especially held true for Jewish men, as they tended to work in traditionally Jewish occupations. Jewish women, however, through the regular contact with gentiles allowed to them by their place in the home sphere, became aware of the “social death” being imposed on them by Nazi legislation long before their husbands took notice.

In the wake of the mass arrests of Jewish men during Kristallnacht, it fell to these women to free their husbands—typically from Dachau. Nazi officials would not release men until their families provided proof that they would depart from Germany immediately upon their release. Thus, not only did women have to rescue their husbands, but they also had to navigate the emigration process by themselves. Due to the complex legal frameworks enacted by possible destination countries to keep Jewish refugees out, it was immensely difficult for Jews to secure visas out of Germany, and it became even more difficult when they were confronted with the massive exit tax Jews were forced to pay before leaving.

There was, however, one destination which had not put up legal roadblocks to fleeing Jews: Shanghai—this had more to do with the decentralized and highly colonized nature of Shanghai than it had to do with any sort of altruistic sentiment. While the Chinese government had the right to demand to see emigration papers before new arrivals would be allowed to enter Shanghai, this was seldom enforced. Thus, to get to Shanghai, all fleeing families needed were boat tickets. For this reason—in accordance with the necessity to present proof of emigration to Nazi officials before male family members would be released—Shanghai became the only option available to some of the families of incarcerated men.

The journey to Shanghai began by train to the Italian ports of Naples and Genoa. From those ports, refugees aboard luxury liners serviced by German crews sailed across the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal, into the Indian Ocean, and around to the east coast of China. Their ship then made its way down the Whangpoo River until it docked at the Bund (Shanghai’s harbor-side financial district). This route functioned from 1938 until Italy’s entrance into the war on June 10, 1940—although a few ships full of refugees were able to depart from Portugal and Marseilles before the Mediterranean was fully closed to passenger traffic. After the Mediterranean route closed, Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai via the trans-Siberian Railroad. This overland route took them across Russia, through Siberia, and into North China, at which point they boarded a ship for Shanghai. The overland route was in use until December 7, 1941. After that date, all escape routes to Shanghai were closed to the Jews.

Though I’ve focused on German and Austrian Jews, about 1800 Polish-Lithuanian Jewish refugees—including a large population of yeshiva students—too found refuge in Shanghai. This population of yeshiva students and their families first fled to Vilna, and then to Kovno, Lithuania after the invasion of Poland. The Dutch and Japanese consuls in Kovno collaborated to grant the refugees visas to the Dutch Caribbean holding of Curacao; the trip to Curacao involved a stopover in Kobe, Japan. Both consuls were aware of the fact that it was not possible to cross the Atlantic during a time of open warfare, meaning that they were illegally granting the refugees admittance into Japan.

This group of refugees remained in Kobe until 1941, at which point the Japanese government sent them to Shanghai. The Dutch consul, Jan Zwartendijk, was later fired in disgrace, while the Japanese consul, Chiune Sugihara was merely asked to step down, and continued to live a very prosperous life. Sugihara, who saved 10,000 Jews total and is listed by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, is typically perceived as the Oskar Schindler of the East. However, it is probable that his actions were merely in line with general Japanese policy towards the Jews, which will be expounded upon below.

Map of Shanghai during this period from “Japanese, Nazis, and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai 1938-1945″ by David Kranzler

The first wave of refugees to arrive at the Bund in 1938 disembarked with little more to their names than the clothes on their backs, a suitcase or two, and the equivalent of about fifteen American dollars; Nazi policy forbade them to take much else out of the country. This poverty could be seen in each subsequent boat full of refugees. The visible poverty of these Jews embarrassed the established Russian and Sephardic Jewish communities of Shanghai; the Sephardic Jewish community was Baghdadi in origin, and had traveled to Shanghai as businessmen under the auspices of the British Empire, while the Russian Jewish community arrived in Shanghai in two waves: first fleeing from the pogroms of 1905, and then from the violently anti-Semitic White Russian forces during the Russian Civil War.

One year before the refugees began to arrive, hostilities of the Sino-Japanese War were waged in the streets of the Hongkew district of Shanghai, leading to its partial destruction. Because land and property in Hongkew were thus so inexpensive, and because of the destitution of the new arrivals, Jewish relief organizations in Allied and neutral countries along with the Sephardic and Russian communities in Shanghai—the Hardoon and Kadoorie families in particular—collaborated to set up refugee homes based in Hongkew for the refugees. These homes (Heime), though obviously better than nothing, were crowded, unsanitary, and the time spent there was extremely distressing for the formerly upper middle class refugees.

While some refugees received money from relations in Allied or neutral countries, had smuggled money and/or valuables out of Germany, or had been able to quickly find gainful employment and relocate to the French or International Districts of Shanghai, many were never able to accumulate the funds needed to secure housing outside of Hongkew. Some, so traumatized by Kristallnacht, leaving Germany, and arriving with nothing to the Heime, so traumatized by their loss of identity, became depressed and never left their Heim; this was especially true for those who had held high status professions in Germany—such as professorships—which could not be adapted to the Shanghai setting.

Shanghai, China, 1944, An alley in the Jewish ghetto. Courtesy of the Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Click for source.

Some refugees were able to establish a fairly normal life in Shanghai, complete with jobs, refugee schools founded by Horace Kadoorie, and synagogue attendance. However, in February 1943, the Japanese rulers of Shanghai announced that all “Stateless Persons” who had arrived in Shanghai after 1937 had to relocate to Hongkew—an area of about one half mile in length already populated by impoverished Chinese refugees—by May 1943. This proclamation was directed at Jewish refugees as an attempt on the part of the Japanese to appease their German allies. The “designated area” to which the refugees were relegated has become colloquially known as the “Shanghai Ghetto.”

Conditions within Hongkew were deplorable, with the available housing insufficient to shield the residents from the extreme temperatures reached in the summer and winter months, lack of access to adequate health care, a contaminated water supply, a barely sufficient sewage system, trash-lined streets, and targeted Allied bombing raids. The refugees also had to contend with poverty, malnutrition, and health problems associated with a contaminated water supply. This said, refugee children were still able to attend school, adults could secure passes out of Hongkew to go to work, and the refugees were so vigorous in shaping their surroundings that by 1944, the main thoroughfare of Hongkew looked more like a street in Vienna than a bombed out section of Shanghai. In fact, the refugees created such a rich cultural life in Hongkew that, when some groups of refugees began to stage theatrical productions, other refugees penned editorials in refugee run periodicals complaining about the quality of said productions.

Shanghai, China, A sports class at the Jewish Youth Association school.
Courtesy of the Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Click for source.

Shanghai, China, Jewish refugees in a Viennese restaurant that was established by a Jewish refugee in the 40′s. Courtesy of the Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Click for source.

Shanghai, China, A group photograph of men and women at a bar. Courtesy of the Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Click for source.

Despite having forced the Jewish refugee population to relocate to Hongkew, the Japanese took no directly aggressive or violent steps against this population despite the urgings of their German allies. There are two reasons for this, both based in Jewish and Japanese isolation from each other throughout most of their respective histories. The first reason is that the Japanese formed a positive view of the Jewish people after private Jewish American financier Jacob Schiff funded their efforts in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Though positive, this view characterized the Jews as a wealthy, powerful people. Not long after, Japan fought alongside the White Russians in the Russian Civil War. The White Russians circulated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion amongst the Japanese troops, and when this document reached the Japanese government, that body saw it as a confirmation of their prior characterization of the Jews. The Japanese then enacted a policy of appeasing these people with such control over the Western governments. They thus refrained from abusing the Jewish refugees in their care.

American troops occupied Shanghai in the immediate aftermath of Japan’s 1945 surrender. After a year or so of peace, the refugees once again found themselves in a precarious political position. The economy was failing under the rule of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, and every day they received news of the progress made by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces. By 1949, the year in which Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China, most of the Jewish residents of Shanghai—Polish, German, Austrian, Russian, and Baghdadi alike—had fled to the United States, Australia, or Israel. By 1956, 171 Jews were left in Shanghai.

A total of about 20,000 Jews (estimates vary) sought refuge in Shanghai. Others—though very few—made it to safety in such locales as the United States, Argentina, and Palestine. Many of the Jews who had fled Germany in the early 1930’s for other European nations ended up trapped in the late 1930’s, early 1940’s as those nations were invaded and occupied by the Nazis. Of the German Jews who escaped from Germany before 1941, only half of them survived the Holocaust.

Additional Reading:

Kranzler, David. Japanese, Nazis and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938-1945. New York: YeshivaUniversity Press, 1976.

Ristaino, Marcia Reynders. Port of Last Resort: the Diaspora Communities of Shanghai. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2001.

Eber, Irene. Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe: Survival, Co-Existence, and Identity in a Multi-Ethnic City. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2012.

***

Historicity (Was Already Taken) is a young historian who is attending graduate school for History and Library Science with a focus in Archives and Records Management. Her Tumblr is where she talks about history, a lot (and occasionally mentions shoes).

Filed under: Essays, History Tagged: "guest blogger", china, Historicity Was Already Taken, jewish, transnational, WWII

Politics in Steampunk – A Sampling (aka “Why it Matters”)

Ay-leen the Peacemaker — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 14:00:18 +0000

Interrupting this blog for a special bulletin — or, rather, a bit of an intellectual endeavor. I’ve been talking with Dr. Roger Whitson of Washington State University about steampunk — and he is currently working on an MLA Special Session proposal on the subject — and what came up in our discussion was the role of the social media and how it fosters and records the process of cultural change. Steampunk, which has been both upheld as a ideological movement and downplayed as an apolitical fashion trend, is only as politically substantial as people make it to be. But the use of the aethernetz, however, democratizes the power of social opinions and magnifies the power of these conversations. More importantly, however, all of these conversations create a more transparent picture of what cultural politics are actually happening on the ground, and opens up more possibilities of challenging “entrenched institutions”, as Roger explained to me, “…it is a politics that is removed from the exclusive analysis of the academic, the editor, and the expert, and placed into the hands of everyday people using social media.”

How can we gauge the political potential of our imaginations in the steampunk community?

Thus, Roger asked me to submit a brief response — at most 250 words — in reply to his questions: “What role do feminism and queer politics have in steampunk? What role should they have?” in order to assist his article on steampunk fandom and the digital archive.

And of course, being a steampunk, I rebelled, and, instead, unleashed this question to my fellow readers. To show a sampling of what political awareness the community has (and the application of that awareness to steampunk) I posted the above blog to Beyond Victoriana’s tumblr and another one to its Facebook page. After the jump, I do give my response, but it cannot be one made separate from the responses of many, many others.

My response:

Yes, feminism and queer politics do have a role and should have a role in steampunk.

Because politics are about people and who has power. And why. And how.

And steampunk is about people too—how we relate to technology, how we try to deal with shifting systems of power that our current technology has granted us. Specifically, how people can come to grips with the fear and awe of our age by referring to past patterns in history.

Steampunk is a verb and it is happening now: it is doing, engaging, living, exploring, and fashioning new ethical relationships with technology and art and ourselves.

Feminism and queerness are both part of who I am, and, although these influences are not always visible or relevant to whatever I’m doing, it is impossible to say that they are never there. Both color how I understand the world, and my place in it. It is inevitable that these politics should have a place in steampunk, because I am in steampunk too and I cannot leave parts of myself behind in every space I go to.

The role of these politics is for other people to recognize that in order for us to envision a better world, we have to be able to challenge the flaws of our current one and not repeat the ones of the past.

Facebook had a wide range of dialogue, from the politically adamant to the adamantly disengaged.

Granted, tumblr is better known for intensive discussions and the infamous SJ crowd….I’ve made a record of likes & re-blogs, since I consider them a more passive, but still significant form of interaction as well as individual responses too.

rhazade-waterbender

mvessick

melodicsiren

kiskidee

holzmantweed

greenwoodcreations

doesntafriad

brsis

alexanderdsoso

shwetanarayan

thejeniverse

thetoweratcharm

unsettlingideologies

Filed under: Beyond Victoriana Odds and Ends, Essays Tagged: academia, Ay-leen the Peacemaker, politics, steampunk community