Before we get to today’s guest I have some winners to announce.
First we have the bag ‘o swag and books from RT.
Elaina Watler
Next we have the copy of Colleen Gleason’s The Vampire Dimitri.
Joelle Walker
We have two sets of The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack and The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder.
Clothdragon
Riva Laughlin
Finally, we have four copies of Andrew Mayer’s The Falling Machine.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Legends of Fantasy
Richard
Heather Hiestand
Congrats on winning. Please email me at suzannelazear(@) hotmail to claim your prize.
Didn’t win? You can still win books by George Mann, Mike Resnick, Tim Akers, or Ren Cummins, or a prize pack of goodies including a copy of Blameless and a fan autographed by Gail Carriger.
Today we’re going to touch on a very important subject. A lot of people think “Steampunk” means Victorian. But that’s not true, Steampunk doesn’t need to feel or be Victorian at all. The great thing about Steampunk is that you can include people from all cultures and walks of life, Steampunk stories can be in any genre, any place.
But I’m not the best person to talk about this, so I’ve asked Jha Goh of the blog Silver Goggles to tell us more about race and Steampunk.
Steampunk Postcoloniality
by Jha Goh
Hello, I’m Jha, and I’m a steampunk postcolonialist.
I talk about race and steampunk a lot.
I’m asked to talk about multicultural steampunk a lot too.
I’ve written about my problems with the term multiculturalism before. Namely, that I don’t think I’ve really seen it exist without a single dominant culture that overwhelms the non-dominant ones. This is not to say nobody tries (and in fact, promoting it is fairly integral to my work, so here is a site you should read!)
So today, I don’t really want to talk about those things. I’m a steampunk postcolonialist, and I want to talk about steampunk postcoloniality.
Steampunk, from the outside, looks like it’s all about Empire, you know? Charles Stross, famous very important science fiction literary figure, had a rant about it, which I think really points to two things: the ignorance of someone who’s not involved deeply in steampunk, and the impression steampunk is giving outsiders.
The first is easily ignored, or would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that shit like Stross’ rant makes us look bad, no matter how into steampunk we are. Steampunks glorify Empire, and Stross has the clout to spread this impression far and wide. We should be concerned about this.
We should also be concerned about the fact that this impression is one of the first that strangers and newcomers to steampunk get. Ask any one steampunk to define the genre, what do we get? Very often, the following words are part of the phrase: “19th century,” “Victorian,” “England.”
And there are, of course, purists who genuinely believe this. Amal El-Mohtar, whose story To Follow the Waves appears in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, received the criticism that her story wasn’t steampunk. Why? Because it’s not Victorian. (It’s set in a technofantastic Syria.)
Terminology matters. As much as I believe in being able to pin down specific boundaries and awesome easy terms, I also believe that many steampunks do not have an inclusive language that acknowledges the breadth and depth of steampunk—unless we’re talking about how far back our influences go (and many will cheerfully admit 19th century science fiction to the term, despite the fact that steampunk is a particularly modern concept).
And the current popular terminology used—“19th century,” “Victorian,” “England,”—signifies a very particular kind of steampunk: the steampunk associated with the glorification of Empire, a time of ruthless colonization, great poverty, gender inequality and burgeoning industrialization. At least once a month I see a comment that points to the imperialism that steampunk seemingly celebrates—it matters that this is what people immediately see when they come to steampunk. I don’t blame them. I resisted participating in steampunk for a long time too, because I just didn’t see a place for myself in it.
The work of postcolonialism is to examine the effects of colonialism, even after dominant powers have supposedly seceded. Through this work, we bring to light how colonialism has been embedded in the psyche of colonized peoples, so ubiquitous we don’t notice. We don’t notice when a developing country lionizes a First World country, passing it off merely as natural that of course, one would idolize the higher standard of living present in a First World country, without questioning where these standards come from, and why we think it’s a good idea to pursue those ideals in the first place.
My work in steampunk is two-fold: examine the effects of colonialism as it appears in steampunk, particularly white Eurocentric steampunk, and find little rupture points for those of us who have cultural histories of colonization.
Because, make no mistake, colonialism is present everywhere in steampunk: it’s when you go costuming and you find mostly English fashions with corsets and bustles; it’s when you go to a convention and you find mostly white people; it’s when you find that non-Euro steampunk is being performed by white people. Colonialism is present in the fact that the majority of high-profile names are white, or present as white.
Colonialism is also present in the fact that, when a person of color wants to represent his/her/hir own culture, the representation is blithely, thoughtlessly thrown up in accordance to and reinforcing the stereotypes that have permeated our understandings of racialized groups for so long. Commodification of your own culture does not get any more special meaning just because you’re a minority doing it, if it’s done for white people’s consumption.
Colonialism is also present in the fact that, when another person of color tries to do something more original, more true to one’s own culture, a white person can say, “actually, you’re getting it wrong,” without an inkling that this is microaggressively racist, ignoring the pain that comes along with knowing that one’s own culture is so devalued, one cannot do anything original with it without a powerful outsider saying, “you got your own culture wrong”.
Colonialism is present in the minds of people who will think, while reading this post, “you have a chip on your shoulder, dwelling on the past like that.” It’s also present in the minds of people who genuinely believe colonialism was a good thing, because it brought civilization (because, after all, there is only one standard by which to measure civilization).
Colonialism is present in the fact that I didn’t use to think like this, and that I wrote predominantly white people in my fantasy and science fiction since it just never occurred to me to write people who look like me (except in wuxia settings).
Nobody escapes it just because they’ve decided to adopt a fictional persona of a past that never was. That some folks think that so is magical thinking. It’s self-serving and delusional. Also, it hurts us who don’t get to leave behind our skin colour and other such ubiquitous problems with our personas.
I don’t expect steampunks to constantly be thinking about this issue while going about their fun. I certainly don’t myself. This shit is depressing. But I do expect more thoughtfulness about this issue. I want to see fewer dichotomies about how “other cultures are so much more interesting than mine” (I know you’re trying to be positive, but Other-ing is still Other-ing) and less explorers of the uncharted wilds (because, really, whose uncharted wilds are we talking about?). I want to see more panels and talks about historical landmarks like the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Opium Wars and the Sepoy Mutiny and the genocide of indigenous peoples that highlight the conflicts that Empire imperialism to the world. I want to see more people whose lived realities are affected by such events invited to speak and listened to.
More than that, I do not want anyone to stop there.
Thanks, Suzanna Lazear, for letting me have this space.
~Jha Goh
This really is an excellent post. I wonder sometimes how much our perceptions of non-dominant cultures are colored by colonialism.
It seems to be such hubris to be able to summarily discount and entire cultural representation as incorrect — though it’s so often done in so called multi-cultural novels. It would be unthinkable to read a mainstream novel and say — you got American culture all wrong. Or even, Texans don’t act that way. We accept the dominant culture for being inclusive and multi-faceted, but pigeonhole lesser known cultures into widely known stereotypes, whether we want to or not. The stereotype thus becomes more real than the reality. And the stereotype has very much been colored by the era of colonialism.
Representations of Qing dynasty Chinese culture, for example, seem to be more widely accepted than those of earlier times. Is this because the most dominant Western consciousness of China came during this time? A time of colonialism and strife? A time where China and Japan for purposes of self-preservation became more closed off, thus creating the idea of “the exotic”? Does it feel more comfortable to look at Chinese culture and examine it in terms of pain and forbearance, even when not depicting Qing dynasty, because of those times, rather than in terms of empowerment and openness?
I don’t know. But these are questions I ask myself all the time. Does the stamp of colonialism reach that deep?
You mentioned having someone being told that they’re “doing [their] culture wrong,” and I completely agree with you on the issue that that is wholly idiotic. You can’t “do” your own culture wrong!
Part of it, I think, is people’s unwillingness to accept that things don’t just have to be one way. Victorian steampunk is cool and all, but it’s even cooler when someone tries to branch out- or in certain cases, come closer to home- with a steampunk story. The genre is open to a lot of things that people tend to overlook. It does focus too easily on colonialism and I think it’s time someone took a stand and flipped the whole genre on it’s backside.
Frankly, I think there are a number of problems with bandying about terms like “colonialism” and “postcolonialism” in relation to steampunk (or anything else for that matter), starting with the fact that there is no such thing as “precolonial” or “postcolonial”.
Colonialism and Imperialism STILL exist. Ask a Chechen; ask a Tibetan. Moreover they always HAVE existed; anyone who thinks this is something invented by Europeans of the last few centuries probably believes a lot of other things that are not true as well.
Strong peoples have been conquering and colonizing and enslaving weak peoples since the beginning of history and before. Conquerors have arisen from every race, on every continent, have practiced every religion, and have offered every excuse for what boils down to taking someone else’s land, cattle, and women,…
simply because you can.
All are guilty; no one’s ancestors’ hands are clean; and arguing over whose ancestors behaved worst is of questionable usefulness to anyone today. What’s more, choosing to believe questionable historical theories in order to boost your self esteem can lead to unexpected problems. Just for example the popular but questionable theory that Egyptian pharaohs were black Africans who carried the spark of civilization to Europe by military conquest means if true that black Africans were conquering and enslaving white Europeans centuries before the latter were able to return the favor.
As for Jeannie Lin’s comment, “I wonder sometimes how much our perceptions of non-dominant cultures are colored by colonialism,” I’d counter with I’m concerned by how much our perceptions of the dominant (Western) culture are colored by the anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism that seeks to blame it for all the world’s ills and deny it credit for any of the world’s blessings.
The dirty little secret is that Western culture came to dominate the world precisely because it IS objectively, measurably superior to all others in a number of important ways.
Let’s start with the crudest and most basic (but arguably the most important). The Western Way of War is the most efficiently lethal ever devised. Nobody in all of history has been better at killing and conquering in war, especially over the long haul. Occasionally, a non-Western military of peculiar lethality will burst upon the scene (see Mongals, Horde of) but only Western militaries have consistently proved capable of learning FROM annihilation how to inflict annihilation.
From what we can tell, the spark of individual inventive genius appears to be very widely spread, but the cultural ability to build upon and make use of such inventive genius is not. History is full of non-Western people, especially the Chinese, inventing things that were only put to productive (not to mention destructive) use by Westerners: gunpowder, etc.
It is a measure of how far gone down the path of anti-colonialism or anti-imperialism some people are that they can condemn the West for “imposing freedom” with a straight face. You can impose subject status in the Fill-In-The-Blank Empire, but you cannot “impose” freedom. It is the natural yearning of every person who ever lived, it is Western culture that first figured how to make it practical, and it is arguably the most important benefit bestowed (however unintentionally) upon former colonies by their Western former colonial masters.
No culture is quicker to learn from other cultures and no culture has been more welcoming (or at least less unwelcoming) to those of other cultures. And very fortunately given the long dominance of Western power, no culture has been more merciful (or at least less merciless) in its dealings with its conquered. Oh, there’s no denying the vast amount of blood spilled unjustly by Western empires over the centuries, but compared to what they COULD have done, compared to what NON-Western empires HAVE done, Western Imperialism was a good deal less bad than all other forms of imperialism, and American Imperialism, which primarily consists of liberating the ungrateful, is the astonishment of the World. After all “colonialism” as practiced by non-Western empires tended to mean putting everyone to the sword and everything to the torch, excepting only the attractive women and the stuff worth stealing, and while Western Imperialists occasionally stooped to this level, they usually didn’t.
If they had, there’d be a lot less people around to complain about the horrors of Western colonialism. Only Western culture produced the idea (and the power) to colonize the world, and only Western culture produced the idea that it should later DE-colonize. Name a NON-Western empire that even somewhat peacefully surrendered power over others.
Finally, it is not as if Westerners have no experience at being conquered, at being colonized, and at being enslaved. They just reacted a little better to it. Less chip on the shoulder whining and more learn how to beat the @#$%!
So what does all this mean for the would-be writer of postcolonialist steampunk? If you want your non-Western culture to be plausible, you must either emulate the West (at least the Good Parts)…
or eliminate it.
Oh dear.
That’s a lot of blather for something you have quite patently missed.
I am not even going to dignify the argument that “The West” is objectively superior. That is imperialism, period. That is the sense of superiority that works to push imperialism. Period. If you can’t see that, bully on you.
This idea that the postcolonial writer MUST eliminate the West, though? No. That would make us no better than the imperialists, mm?
Tying this in with the idea that we *have* to emulate the West. Here is where you miss the point: the colonized HAVE NO CHOICE. We must bow to assimilation into the agenda of the colonizer, or we do not survive. That you must have missed this very simple aspect of colonialism is just proof of how little you understand of the colonizing process, and what impact it has had on the colonized. Moreover, it is proof of the privilege you have that you could miss this.
All great empires have one thing in common: the pursuit of power. To think that it’s worthwhile, after seeing the harm it has committed to the world, just shows you haven’t been really thinking about what it is that has driven the world to the state it is now, or you have, and you are invested in keeping it that way.
Either way, you have my contempt.
Dirty little secret indeed. The dirty little secret of the world is that people like you are sniveling bullies who think conquest is the only way to gain respect. Have some dignity and pity for yourself and learn some other way of existing.
Believe it or not, I do believe that discussions of race and perception can be had without laying blame. As the topic was multiculturalism and colonialism/post-colonialism, I think I raised a fair question as to “I wonder sometimes how much our perceptions of non-dominant cultures are colored by colonialism.” In the use of the word “our”, I for the moment put myself in Western eyes. Because I do have one eye on the west and one eye on the east.
It goes without saying that Asian culture’s perception of Western culture is colored by that same era. There is both within Asian culture today a thread of wanting to break from Western domination as well as a current of believing that the West is superior in some ways. This is very much, I feel, a direct result of colonialism. At least I can speak to the colonialism of Vietnam and the many complex and conflicting ripples that have fanned out from it: the need to assimilate, the need to regain identity, the need to re-form an identity that can never be the same.
If someone with a Western perspective sees my comments and perceives them to be accusatory or one-sided, then that’s unfortunate. I’m not seeking reparations for the past at all in my examinations of colonialism or post-colonialism. And truly as FredTown mentioned — these forces still do exist today — which makes the reflection upon their effects from the 19th century to today — even more cogent.
As Jha very eloquently said — she doesn’t want us to stop there. Which means this is by no means a static history lesson or an assignation of who’s fault it is.
Steampunk provides a different lens to the conversation, and I’m beginning to see what a valuable one it is. The age of empire, in any culture, must almost naturally dictate that someone is exploited for the sake of the golden age. Whether it be the factory worker for the sake of industrialization or the Chinese for the sake of the wealth of the opium trade. Taking that “other side” into account provides a richness and complexity to the conversation — even if we want to take it from a purely storytelling perspective.
I never doubted I would have your contempt, Jha; it is the inevitable result of your sort of “thinking”. My point was not to defend Imperialism per se; at best it was theft, however mercifully done, whatever good accidentally resulted from it. Rather I was condemning the sort of chip on the shoulder attitude that must take these sorts of historical events that have happened to EVERYBODY (the British of all people were invaded and conquered THRICE!) and use them either as an excuse for present problems or as a club to beat up on people who had nothing to do with it. (Earth to Jha, while it IS possible to have some responsibility for what one’s immediate descendants do, it is NOT possible to have real responsibility for what one’s ancestors did, especially in what is more likely the case, for what people who merely LOOKED like one’s ancestors did.)
For anyone reading this with an OPEN mind, I would strongly recommend Dr. Thomas Sowell’s “Conquests and Cultures”, third volume in a series also containing “Race and Cultures” and “Migrations and Cultures”, which examines the FACTS about how different groups of people with similar behavior patterns (“cultures” in his usage) have responded to what most of us would consider negative events: racism, migration to places where one is a despised minority, and conquest and enslavement. Some declined; some thrived. ALL suffered, but some responded to suffering more constructively than others.
As for why Western culture is “superior”, at least in the Darwinian sense, I would recommend Victor Davis Hanson’s (deliberately similarly titled no doubt) “Carnage and Culture”, which examines nine landmark battles from Salamis to Tet and postulates that it is in fact Western culture and values–the tradition of dissent, the importance placed on inventiveness and adaptation, the concept of citizenship, etc.–which have consistently produced superior arms and soldiers.
The Formerly-Colonized-And-Still-Sore-About-It would be wise to KEEP emulating the West, even now when they have a choice in the matter, because history is clear–the West is doing SOMETHING right.
Hopefully, you will do a better job in resisting the temptation to take advantage of the resulting military superiority than we did.
As for my final comments, I apparently did not make myself clear. IMHO if you would write plausible alternate history in which the West does NOT dominate the Earth, as it did in our world, you must either make your NON-Western culture emulate the West in important ways as Mr. Hanson shows or you must eliminate the West (Persian victory at Salamis, much deadlier Black Plague, etc.). Otherwise, your work will come across as nothing more than post-colonialist wishful thinking.
This post was awesome.
To FredTownWard: arguing that the West is doing something “right” is a curious notion. By your own argument, taking a slice of any chunk of history & judging off it is…a bit silly. & claiming that Western success is a matter of Darwinian Superiority– rather than, say, having the luck to be based on a lateral landmass rather than a vertical, or being more virulent in diseases, or being able to squander resources faster for short term gain at the expense of long term stability, or…or, well, just the sheer dumb random chance of history– is helplessly naive.
No.
One cannot attach a positive morality or a productive ethics to such a thing as imperialism, which is the imposition of one entity upon another.
It is called oppression. The pain and suffering it causes is not worth it, not for those who wish to see a world which attempts justice, kindness and cooperation. As such, it is not worth emulating, not unless you want to repeat the painful histories of the past.
You may be able to ignore the pain of others because in the long run it appears worthwhile, being the beneficiary of the imperialism of the past.
I do not want MY children to inherit such sins and crimes against others that I can forestall. It is enough that I in my own subject position will force others to shed sweat and blood for the sins of those who came before. I will not have my own living off the sweat and blood of others if I can help it. That is why I must do my work. If I cannot have a perfect world, then I’ll fight for a kinder world.
Now, as to the writing of fiction, it may just be that military and industrial conquest will play out, depending on how one constructs the world. However, it should be kept in mind, that just as we can either simply repeat what we see in the real world in our fiction, so too can we find rupture points of DIFFERENCE. What could be done differently to forestall the bloodshed of imperialism? You don’t know, until you study hard and think about the subject. What are its costs? What are its benefits in the face of those costs? How do we come to such realizations? (This isn’t a question for you, Fred, since you’re so comfortable where you are.) Like Jeannie says, taking all this into account makes for a richer world. I think it goes one step further; I think it makes for a more transformative kind of literature.
Mordecai, I think the naive person is the one suggesting that several centuries of world dominance by the West is purely a matter of random chance, having nothing at all to do with choices made and behavior exhibited.
Do you also believe that the wealthy are just the winners of life’s lottery, that pure luck determines all? It sounds like it, and it’s hard to imagine a more destructive view of how the world works.
Jha, good luck trying to live up to this ideal: “I will not have my own living off the sweat and blood of others if I can help it.” You DO realize that any sincere attempt to live this way requires foregoing most of the benefits of Western Civilization as well as most of the benefits of CHINESE Civilization, don’t you? After all, what is the most historically long-lived national practitioner of Imperialism?
China, which was successfully Imperialistic back when Europeans really were a bunch of naked, hairy barbarians.
China is a giant country almost every inch of which was conquered by brute force followed up by as forced a cultural assimilation as anything ever recorded, a forced assimilation that is still going on in the border provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang.
Truth to tell there is nothing wrong with wishing mankind had chosen a different path, a more peaceful path, a more just way of interacting with each other.
However, to be of any use, you have to remove your cultural and political blinders in order to recognize the truth: imperialism wasn’t invented by the West nor was the West anything close to its cruelest practitioner. In fact Westerners ought to be deserving of a little credit for having turned their backs on and given up their Imperialism, in large (though by no means complete) measure voluntarily.
I say again, name a NON-Western Empire that has ever done so.
I’m not as ridiculous as you are to not be able to recognize the suffering my own has inflicted on others (and continues to. Whether or not you or I like it, we are all beneficiaries of privilege; in my subject position, that of class and light skin).
Moreover, competition between empires occurs one way or another. But this, THIS statement:
In fact Westerners ought to be deserving of a little credit for having turned their backs on and given up their Imperialism, in large (though by no means complete) measure voluntarily.
I’m going to leave this here for others to ruminate on. This is no longer my fight; this is something for you and your own to sort of for yourselves because you’re clearly not going to listen to me. I can only wish that it was a fight that me and mine wouldn’t suffer the collaterol damage of.
World history isn’t a game of Sid Meier’s Civilization, wherein everyone started off with resources carefully balanced to be equivalent in order to provide a level playing field on which to test one’s skills. Luck is by no means the sole factor here, whether we’re talking about a civilization or an individual, but you grossly underestimate it’s role. (One assumes, for example, that you aren’t bitterly regretting your poor decision not to be born to a billionaire.)
Could you be more specific about exactly what part of the various European Empires were voluntarily given up? I ask because from the American Revolution to the transition of South Africa away from Aparteid, I can’t think of a single example where an inch of empire was given up without the empire’s sustainability being mortally threatened by the exercise of power, be it military, economic, or social (as in the case of India’s ejecting the British.)
Oh, and by the way? There ARE alot less people around to complain about Western colonialism than there would be if Western colonialism didn’t involve a whole lot of genocide. Millions upon millions less, actually, no matter how earnestly you want to brush it off as only an “occasional” genocide. Being personally descended from survivors of some of those genocides, I must say your back-patting on this point is particularly disgusting.
As an aside, do you bring up China so prominently because you’re laboring under the misapprehension that Jha is Chinese?
Great discussion. ~puts on moderator hat~ For those of you new to Steamed (and a reminder to those of you who are not) we’re a PG blog so please keep it clean and respectful. This is a forum to give everyone a voice and blatant hate is not welcome here. Thank you. ~takes moderator hat off~
Thanks for the platform, Suzanne, but I feel compelled to say that this isn’t a “discussion” for me anymore. My blood pressure is rising, and I know I’m not the only one distressed by Fred’s words. I have other things to do besides argue with an unabashed privilege-denier and if he is going to continue to be allowed to run rampant with his oppressive words (which if I understand correctly falls under “respectful”), I refuse to stay.
Thank you for the tea.
Thank you for coming on, Jha. I really appreciate it.
Anyone who thinks the West conquered the world because it was culturally superior in some way, and not by accident of geography and climate, should read ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ by Jared Diamond. The book is not perfect, but I haven’t seen its core claims successfully challenged anywhere.
It’s also a mistake to think that any laudable human culture must inevitably ape the good parts of western culture. We’re capable of much better, as many non-western societies showed — and would have shown on a larger scale, if not for accidents of history, climate, and geography. I’m writing an alternate history myself that aims to demonstrate this.
I’ve never seen Steampunk as being about empire or colonialism, and I think anyone who does is seriously missing the point. Steampunk is not about any one nation or any one culture. Steampunk is about brass and iron, cogs and sprockets, boilers and pipe. It’s about technology, and the promise of technology, and our species’ first great leap out of the limitations set upon us by nature. It’s about our liberation from the vagaries of wind and water and our first glimpse at our own awesome potential.
The Victorians simply had the good fortune to be alive at the time. As did the Meiji, the Old West in America, and so on.
Yes, some nations did use the new power (political and literal) of the new technology, blinkered by their own, backwards looking, napoleonic (or feudal or even older) thinking to expand their control and dominance, for good or ill (mostly ill). But Steampunk is not about what nations actually did with the new technology. That is what we call History. No, Steampunk is about what we as a species and as individuals could have (and probably should have) done with it. It’s about celebrating our potential, then and now.
If Steampunk has any relevance to colonialism, it’s just as a reminder to us today not to squander and abuse our own potential for a brighter future the way the jumped up empires of the 19th century wasted theirs.
Thank you Suzanne – both for having us and for keeping the conversation going.
This is were Jeannie shows her unavoidable Buddhist roots and risks sounding annoyingly Yoda-like and trite. 🙂
I’ve had many a conversation with my husband, who in very German fashion, believes in a deterministic world and a “right” answer to many complex questions. This is hard for me to understand, coming from a place where contrasting, conflicting thoughts are supposed to co-exist together without a winner. I think it’s easy to slice Jha’s postcolonial discussion into black and white wedges of blaming or criticizing the West. And this seems to be how FredTown is reacting. The west didn’t invent colonialism, no. Heck, I’d be even comfortable with saying the Chinese invented it, being as old of a civilization as they are. Or maybe the Greeks and Chinese can take co-ownership. They were both masters at the Empire game.
But the argument that the West are not the only transgressors, doesn’t take away from the fact that in this slice of time, they were the colonizers. “They” in this respect of course covers a huge umbrella of which is most unfair, yet still appropriate for me to call the West. This point is still here. No one needs to apologize for it. No one’s asking for one.
I love this statement from Jha, because it’s a statement that gives me somewhere to go and somewhere to grow, creatively and reflectively. It’s not about right or wrong or superior ways of thought for me:
“However, it should be kept in mind, that just as we can either simply repeat what we see in the real world in our fiction, so too can we find rupture points of DIFFERENCE. ….You don’t know, until you study hard and think about the subject.”
Okay, I’ve been trying to stay out of this ever since I saw Fred’s first post last night, but it’s clear to me that there’s a large degree of talking to cross-purposes going on, here. I’m not a post-colonialist scholar, though, so unfortunately I don’t have as much information to draw on as some others may. Still…
Fred:
A number of your assertions aren’t wrong, per se, but are an unhelpful way of looking at the world. To use an example, what you’re trying to say is akin to a person beating someone else to within an inch of their life and then asking for credit for not killing them. While technically yes, beating someone isn’t as bad as killing them, they’re both really terrible things to do to a person.
Yes, there are quite a number of historical instances of non-Western brutality, oppression and slavery, but that in no way makes any of it okay, regardless to what degree it happens or who else has done it. Has the West provided some things that are beneficial to the world? Sure, plenty of amazing technologies and ideas have come out of the West, but that isn’t anything strange… Every dominant culture does the same thing, all the way back to Ancient Egypt, Rome and China, and I would argue that if any other culture were dominant right now, they would have done the same. Also, regarding any inherent Western “superiority”, I’d like to refer you to the Dark Ages.
What seemingly has gotten your goat on this topic is the idea that colonialism is a thing that has only happened recently, when pretty much everyone will agree with you that human history is full of waves of colonizers and oppressors. What you need to understand is that the terms “colonialism” and “post-colonialism” are academic constructions that are useful in scholarly discourse about very specific issues, and don’t make any judgments about whether colonialism was anything new or not. Because we live in a world dominated by the West, we’re often most concerned with the more recent history that lead to this point, not because the past before that isn’t important, but because the recent past is just more relevant to modern issues. The West receives the brunt of the scorn for its actions because we all live in its shadow; hardly anyone complains about the human sacrifices practiced by the Mayans, because they’re all gone. You follow me? And people who live in China probably don’t care as much about Western oppression because they’re too busy being oppressed by their own government, but we don’t get to hear about that too often since the information we receive is naturally biased toward where we live.
So, if there’s anything you can take away from this, try to remember that instead of saying, “Hey, well, at least we weren’t as awful as some of those other people,” (which, for the record, is an attitude that reeks of self-satisfaction) try asking, “What can I do to be even better?”
What interests me greatly about the whole question of Steampunk being popularly described in terms of “Victorian” and “19th Century” and “England,” is that no one appears to be talking about the women’s sufferage movement. In Victorian 19th Century England, women were property. Want a divorce? Not allowed. Want to vote? Not really possible. The “Rule of Thumb” meant your husband (or any male relative, technically) could legally beat you with anything with a smaller diameter than his thumb. Presumably this meant the object in question would break before it killed you, but ladies, know your place… Kitchen, Church and Children.
This, I suppose, could be considered a form of long-standing colonization of one gender over another. However, no one appears to take issue with this aspect of the genre.
Anon, actually, gender issues are frequently talked about, at least by me. I often run panels at conventions about both gender and race in Steampunk, and while it isn’t as pressing a concern for most as racial issues, it does tend to come up from time to time elsewhere.
Several of the really active Steampunk writers right now are women, so there’s no shortage of well-written female characters in the genre, and I’ve spoken at good length with most of them and they put a surprising amount of thought into the interplay between their female characters and the social issues surrounding them at the time.
An issue that people really tend to ignore is how poorly the working class was treated at the time. If you were poor, your life was pretty horrible. And, in fact, one of my friends is organizing an in-character Steampunk labor-movement strike at Steampunk World’s Fair. So, it just goes to show that regardless of the issue, there ARE people out there grappling with it and making it relevant! =)
Oh, also, the rule of thumb being about beating one’s wife is an urban myth, albeit a long-standing one, as it was never officially a policy either in England or America, at least so far as we know (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb).
I’ve always found it funny to see people claim that the west is superior. Well of course it is, when you use white scales to balance what is or is not superior. But, not all of us use those scales.
Regarding women & working class:
I’m assuming “no one is talking about” refers to the steampunk conversation in general versus the one here?
I thought those comments were rather interesting because as an outsider to the steampunk world, it seemed that one of the core tenets of steampunk was to subvert or at least highlight those power differentials between women/men and working class/upper class. As George said so nicely, “Better living through cogs and sprockets”. In a technology based society, the Morelocks have value. Steampunk ushers in a skilled class of tinkerers and engineers who can subvert the Victorian class structure and gender structure. Of course, my experience of steampunk is confined to two authors: Meljean Brook and Ciar Cullen. Oh, and HG Wells of course.
This is why I thought Jha’s post on postcolonial attitudes was a good one. If the technology of steampunk provides a cool device for examining and upturning power disparity — could that eye not be turned more effectively upon the issues of empire and colonialism? Is it a requirement of all steampunk? No. But it definitely points to a defining aspect of the 19th century. I think there’s a lot of story there.
Oh, I paraphrased George. Didn’t mean to make it look like a direct quote. He said it better if you read his post above.
I think if we really want to be true to ourselves as human beings doing time on planet earth than the terms “colonialism,” “multicultural,” “post colonial” and any term you want to use to argue against (or for) havbeto recognized now merely as fighting words used denigrate one culture over another. In academic circles (left AND right) I believe this has become nothing more than convenient double talk for argumentum ad hominum. The cold facts remain that any dominant culture uses its power to maintain its privilege and keep the status quo. If a dominant culture is thrown down by economic catastrophe, natural disaster, revolution, etc., the “new” culture that rises installs itself and then uses its dominance to maintain its status quo. When this dominance spills beyond a “traditional” border we call it many things from colonialism to empire building. Still the simple fact remains: one culture uses its power to dominate another. Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, America, Europe (just name a nation!) the Soviet Union, tribal Africa, EVERY WHERE on planet earth yesterday, today and tomorrow we will witness this constant cycle of those in power tying to stay in power, falling to others out of power, who try to stay in power using the same methods (to varying degrees) the ones they just deposed used to maintain their status quo. The abused becomes the abuser. What does this have to do with steampunk? Is it an advocate of colonialism? Of “the Empire?”
It’s a GENRE of SCIENCE FICTION. If I like Verne better than Wells am I choosing France over Great Britain? Steampunk may be guilty of romanticizing an era but no more than say, tales of Samurai ignore the misery of the lower castes in feudal Japan. If I admire the aesthetics of samurai armor, the clean lines of the castles that were their estates, am I buying into their feudal culture? If I like the art of Picasso do I have to embrace his politics and view of women as well or can I merely appreciate the skill of an artist? Moreover, if I find some of the communist party propaganda art striking, does that make me a communist? A Stalinist?
Victorian is a description. It can be used to describe a royal family, a type of dress, a style of architecture, and yes, a mindset. Within steampunk I would argue the term Victorian (or 19th century for that matter) sets the scene pointing to dress, technology, and mannerism. To say there was no other culture at the time is ignorant. To say Victorian culture was not a dominant culture (with all the baggage that goes with it,) is equally in error. If you want to see the colonial mindset of an expansionist monarchy deep into the arrogance of “white man’s burden” when you read any work of steampunk fiction than I’m sure that’s all you will see. The skill in reading is to let the author take you where she/he wants to go.
Gee. Here I thought Steampunk was dressing up in funny clothes and having fun. Maybe pretending to be someone else, if that’s what you wanted to do.
I didn’t realize it was yet another avenue for angst-exhaust.
Must everything be so dashed *serious*? Why does race or gender or colonialism or anything have to come up at all?
Steampunk is making rocket ships to the moon in 1873. Steampunk is making a facsimile of Starfleet, but with airships that ride the aether.
Steampunk is dressing up in clothes which look odd to the modern eye and hanging out with friends.
In other words, Steampunk is FANTASY. Let it be fantasy; leave the modern socio-political baggage at the door.
I recognize there are jerks. There are always jerks, even in a society or subculture of one. But to get all angsty when a white girl puts on a sari is full of sound and fury, saying everything and signifying nothing. If you’re not having fun because you find people dressing in English Victorian fashion offensive because it’s too evocative of imperialism to you, the intelligent thing is for you to go find something else to do which you might actually enjoy.
@Quaviq: I’m fairly certain you didn’t actually read Jha’s post, because the questions you ask and the objections you raise have absolutely nothing to do with it.
@Bob: It is only possible to dress up in the garb Victorians (or more broadly, Europeans) wore when they were actively colonizing (Pith Helmets, for example), if one sweeps that colonialism under the rug. Pretending that European colonialism didn’t happen is a privilege some people have and other people don’t.
This is nothing new. In the ’80s, many wargamers liked to dress in the uniforms of the miniature armies they were commanding when they attended conventions like GenCon. I imagine you are far less surprised at the uproar that resulted when people showed up in German WWII SS uniforms because that’s which models they had on the tabletop. They, like you, thought wargaming was about dressing up in funny clothes and pushing little bits of lead around a table with occasional rolls of a die or twelve. This is, by the way, the reason GenCon has a policy banning the wearing of uniforms for any military unit in existence after 1900 unless one is actually entitled to it.
It would not be reasonable to expect the those who are traumatized by the sight of people walking around in SS uniforms to stuff that in a box while we’re trying to have fun so that the SS-wannabes don’t have to think about the impact their actions have on others. Similarly, it is not reasonable to expect those who are traumatized by glamorizing colonialism and its attendant genocide to stuff that in a box so that the Victorian wannabes don’t have to think about the impact of their actions on others.
@Dan: Who said anything about pretending it never happened? I’m saying your dudgeon is misplaced.
If you think Steampunk isn’t supposed to be fun, or if you find it not fun, it’s time to find something else. In the latter, it’s just smart for you; one of the definitions of insanity is doing something you don’t like when you don’t need to do it in order to survive. In the former, you do not have the right to ruin other people’s fun. Period.
Look, one of the things most people like best about Steampunk is there’s really no such thing as “STEAMPUNK: UR DOIN IT RONG”. As it is entirely based on fiction, there is no “correct” way.
I fail to see relevance in your example about the guys in WW2 German uniforms. That’s not a symptom of anything other than at best insensitivity and at worst douchebaggery.
I agree it is not reasonable to expect those who were traumatized by the SS to stand idly by when an SS uniform walks by. I agree it is not reasonable to expect someone brutalized in the 1930s by British rule in India to suck that up.
I think it is UNreasonable to expect people whose ancestors aren’t British and/or never served in the Raj who wear pith helmets and red coats because they think it’s fun to play dressup to stop wearing them because someone who has never even been involved in the Raj except intellectually suffers sympathetic angst on behalf of the oppressed they’ve probably never even met.
Again I say if it gives you that much pain to go where such attire is popular, the most intelligent thing is to avoid that area. That’s why I think your GenCon example is flawed; an attendee of GenCon has a reasonable expectation of NOT being confronted with Hauptsturmfuhrer Klink on his way to play Axis & Allies. When you attend a Steampunk affair, the expectation is that people WILL be dressed according to the stereotype you’re deriding. That’s not the fault of people “glamorizing colonialism”; that’s entirely the fault of an individual’s screwed-up expectations.
When you boil all the bull off it, what you’re doing is deliberately going to a nude beach and then bitching about all the naked people.
wow, you had me fooled – i thought you were honestly being a massively sarcastic troll. imagine my shock when i realised you were being serious!
@Bob – What makes you think that there is no one present at steampunk cons who has suffered because of the British Raj? Why is this less likely than the presence of people who suffered because of the Nazi party? The Raj did not, as I am sure you know, end until after the end of World War II.
Again I say if it gives you that much pain to go where such attire is popular, the most intelligent thing is to avoid that area.
Ah. Perhaps this is why you haven’t noticed the aforementioned oppressed?
There is some contradiction to reasoning simultaneously that (a) no one who is present can possibly be injured by what’s going on and (b) anyone who is injured by what’s going on has only themselves to blame. That’s not even getting at dismissing acceptable anti-Semitism as “at best insensitivity and at worst douchebaggery.” Wearing a Nazi uniform not “insensitive” and “douchebaggish”; it is anti-Semitic. Reducing this to a personality flaw rather than an exercise of power and prejudice makes it impossible to see the actual harm of the situation. Rather like your reducing Jha’s argument to her own “insanity” for being involved in steampunk makes it impossible for you to grasp that your “fun” (ahistorical to you except when it’s so far history it might as well be dead) takes place in history, not in a vacuum.
What makes you think that there is no one present at steampunk cons who has suffered because of the British Raj?
Because the next time I see a South Asian of an appropriate age to have suffered directly under the Raj at a Steampunk affair, it’ll be the first time. While I have seen South Asians at SP shindigs, it’s sub-30s.
It’s one thing for a Jew who survived WW2 to be offended by someone in a German uniform. It’s another for someone, like me, who isn’t connected with the Raj in any way other than books to be offended by someone in the uniform of the 39th Garhwal Rifles.*
Everyone should be sensitive to the former, and recognize that even the appearance of a German uniform can bring on all manner of badness. In the latter case, if I am offended someone should tell me to put on my Big Boy Pants and lighten up.
Let me give you an example. I am a direct descendant of 19th-century Irish immigrants. In the American Civil War, during a siege Federal troops were digging a mine under a Rebel earthworks. Confederate commanders were undermanned, so they asked the local landowners for slaves to dig a countermine, a very dangerous proposition. The landowners refused, saying “Use some Irish. Negros are expensive.”
Here’s another: In southeastern PA in the 1830s, rather than pay Irish railroad workers their wage, they were rounded up, killed, and dumped in a ditch to rot.
Let’s not even talk about what the English did to Ireland over the course of centuries.
My point is I have plenty of reason to be just as incensed by oppression as anyone else here. Yet I’m not. I have the ability to put it aside in order to enjoy my life, probably brought on by my privileged background.**
Wearing a Nazi uniform not “insensitive” and “douchebaggish”; it is anti-Semitic.
That’s where we disagree. There are many reasons for my opinion on this, reasons which we should discuss in person or privately via email instead of hijacking this discussion.
Yes, I reduced her argument. Because it’s a rather silly thing to keep on doing something you don’t like when you know it’s not going to change, when it’s incapable of changing without changing the entire flavor of the endeavor, changing the look and feel of it so that it is no longer recognizably the endeavor with which you began. That is insane. It’s killing the patient to excise the tumor; that’s preposterous.
Moreover, it is ethically inconsistent, as I pointed out to Daniel below. In order to make SP more inclusive, you suggest making it exclusive. I recognize the good intentions here, but you know the axiom. 😉
* That regiment has a fascinating history of valor, including the first Victoria Cross awarded to an Indian.
** Undoubtedly due to to my blue-collar parents, who barely kept body and soul together during the Carter recession, not being able to send me to college – indeed, wondering why I’d want to do anything other than work at the steel mill – causing me to put on a uniform to earn the money. [rolls eyes] Yeah. Privilege.
@Bob: When you write, “Why does race or gender or colonialism or anything have to come up at all?” you are the one saying anything about pretending it never happened.
I do find Steampunk fun, as it’s supposed to be. Not only do I think Steampunk is supposed to be fun, I think Steampunk is supposed to be fun for everyone, including people for whom getting nostalgic for days of empire in fundamentally incompatible with fun. I think that doing Steampunk in a way that is hurtful to other people doing Steampunk, particularly once those people start saying “Hey, that hurts!” is indeed doing Steampunk wrong.
If you think Jha writes what she does because of some sort of “intellectual sympathy” and not because she is in fact directly oppressed by colonialism in the present day, you’re willfully blind and we have nothing further to discuss. (And for the record, I have met her.)
I’m sure you’d love us to cede Steampunk to those who wish to do no more than wax nostalgic about colonialism, but it’s not going to happen. Rather, we’re going to go right on pointing out that there is a whole vibrant and growing community of Steampunk that takes these things head-on, names them for what they are, and goes from there.
When you boil all the bull off it, what you’re doing is getting huffy and defensive that someone dared tell you that your actions impact those around you because you’ve had the privilege of not having to listen to such people and the expectation that no one would challenge that privilege.
Oh, gee. I guess I’m not ‘privileged’ enough to be sufficiently enlightened. Is that it? Way to hide behind an ad hominem attack thinly veiled with a popular epithet. Because there’s no way I can argue out of privilege once I’m painted thus.
I’m huffy because you presume I don’t care about what I do/say/wear impacts those around me. I do care. But it’s not because I give any credence to this nonsensical notion of rampant glorification of neocolonialism. It’s much more simple than that. It’s because I try not to be a jerk. It’s funny how many of these social problems can be overcome by just not being a prat.
How many Steampunk affairs have you attended? I’ll wager it’s not too many, or if you have attended many you’re paying too much attention to your pet concerns instead of people (I mean, really; if you go looking for the glorification of colonialist exploitation, you’ll find it. Hell, you’ll find it at Wal-Mart on any given day). I’ll also wager with sublime confidence that the overwhelming majority of those attending Steampunk affairs wouldn’t recognize your inherent rampant evil colonialism bogeyman if you handed it to them on a plate surrounded by watercress. They’re there to have a party and have fun. If they have any real idea about the 19th century at all, it is the vaguest idea, dimly recalled from high-school history textbooks.
There are a few who have a Clue about that era of history, yes. But to accuse even that precious few of glorifying colonialism is preposterous. Unless you think it’s glorifying colonialism just by showing up in the clothing and accoutrements of 19th century Britain.
I think you’re wistfully Quixotic wanting your fun hobby to be fun for everyone. There are two problems with that. First, in any given avocation there are some people who don’t fit, some people who aren’t suited for it. Second, what you and others are suggesting is changing the entire flavor of Steampunk in order that some people who were never oppressed themselves anyway feel better in some way; this has the unfortunate side effect of ruining the fun of another person who just wants to wear his 24th of Foot uniform. Practically speaking, in the process of making Steampunk more inclusive you’ve made it more exclusive.
I’m sure that’s all right, though; you don’t like the fellow in the 24th of Foot uniform, and he’s probably a white male (with all his inherent privilege), so his feelings don’t matter.
You’re right. We need to drop this now, I think. 😉 If ever we meet at a Steampunk thingy, I’ll buy you a bevvie of your choice and we’ll discuss it in person. Because this Internet thing is getting in the way of us actually discussing without fire shooting out of our eyes.
Since I last checked in, I see that a couple more of you are able to grasp where I’m coming from, but since most of you still are not, perhaps it will help if I explain why I had such a strong reaction to this topic in the first place. I didn’t really explain it, and those of you who presumed to guess didn’t come close, so here goes.
Essentially, I was gobsmacked, flabbergasted, and utterly astonished to learn this far into the 21st Century that (apparently) some charlatans and con-people (there are no other words for them) have figured out how to get paid to study the effects of Western Colonialism on those citizens of former colonies who are TOO YOUNG TO HAVE EXPERIENCED THEM.
Stop and think about that. Let the implications of that sink in for a moment. We are NOT talking about people who can legitimately claim to have been the victims of colonialism, whatever we believe that means, because, you know, they like, LIVED under it; rather, we are talking about people who have issues with how they feel…
either about what their grandparents told them their lives under it were like…
or (IMHO far worse and as Bob put better than I can,) people who have never even been involved in Colonialism except intellectually, suffering sympathetic angst on behalf of the oppressed they’ve probably never even met.
This would be like studying the effects of legal discrimination on people who were born after it was abolished. Or like studying the effects of rape on women who weren’t actually raped, mind you, but who were traumatized by news reports about rapes.
This isn’t being respectful to the victims of Imperialism; it is being DISrespectful in the extreme!
Let us understand this for what it is: a cry for help from people whose lives are so good that they need to invent their own problems. Well, it’s still a free country so if you want to live that way, be my guest, but don’t insist that I take you seriously.
I’m just not that good an actor.
Now as Jeannie Lin reminds us this was supposed to have something to do with WRITING Steampunk, and in that light she is absolutely correct that if you are going to write stories based in the Victorian Era or some pseudo Victorian Era of your own creation, you are going to have to decide how to deal with Imperialism.
I’m not going to tell you how to deal with it; this will be your story, and it is up to you to decide. But I will give you some advice that a published author like Ms. Lin has no need of, but you might.
Nobody who picks up your story is going to be looking for a lecture or will welcome one if found therein, whether they agree with it or not.
While putting forth only the arguments you agree with is a good way to debate (it’s your opponents job to marshal his arguments), it is a lousy way to tell a story.
Finally, if you are going to bring together lovers or friends on opposite sides of this (or any other issue), you’d better not make one the side of the angels and the other side evil incarnate because it just won’t work.
Re: Colonialism and how it’s -so totally over- for everyone in this thread (and in steampunk at large), apparently – if I’m too young to have any experiences with being colonized, who are all these white people on my lawn?
Because I’m Seaconke Wampanoag.
And you might notice that I’m typing at you in English. I don’t, in fact, speak my native tongue. Only a select handful of people on earth do anymore, and all of them are at least bilingual. Nobody speaks the specific dialect that my ancestors spoke.
There are state lines arbitrarily drawn (by white folks) through the ancestral homeland of my folks, and state laws and recognitions that follow suit.
I live in a world wherein my homeland has been so thoroughly colonized, and for so long, that there is a large contingent of people who are totally convinced that I and folks like me -do not exist- and -are extinct-
So yeah. I’m totally involved in colonialism. Right. Now.
“This would be like studying the effects of legal discrimination on people who were born after it was abolished.”
You do realize that these ‘absurd hyperbolic examples’ are in fact real things that real people study because they are real vectors in the world today, right?
How many neighborhoods are still segregated due to once-legal black-lining in home sales? Are you familiar with the METCO program? Have you read the book The Color of Wealth ( http://www.amazon.com/Color-Wealth-Behind-Racial-Divide/dp/1595580042 ) or do you have a basic understanding of its principles?
“Or like studying the effects of rape on women who weren’t actually raped, mind you, but who were traumatized by news reports about rapes.”
How many times were you told as a child and young adult which behaviors you could exhibit that would get you raped and that if you were raped after exhibiting them, it would be your fault? How many violent crimes that are disproportionately committed against people like you are treated like jokes?Are you familiar with the concept of Rape Culture? ( http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html )
the effects of Western Colonialism on those citizens of former colonies who are TOO YOUNG TO HAVE EXPERIENCED THEM.
How dare you make the assumption of lack of damage or effect and dismiss the lived experiences of myself and millions of other people like me — people who were not alive at the time that our countries were under colonial rule but who bear imprinted on our bodies and on our tongues and seared into our brains the scars and the ashes, the undeniably damaging effects, of our colonial history. Because (apparently you seem to have missed it) the past shapes the present, and thus I am a product not only of a present life in a country casually dismissed as a Third World Source of Cheap Labor, but also of an inherited legacy and an all-too-significant collective past wherein my ancestors were taught to at once bow to our white colonizers and to idolize their ways, to submit and to obey, to act in accordance with what they believed befit the stations in life of those who were born in their colonies.
Do you want to play a game of cause and effect? Let me show you my pieces. Here is a tongue twisted out of shape into learning English as its primary tongue, because English was and still is the language of the educated and fluency in my native tongue is given only passing weight. Here is a body wrapped in skin that I have hated for decades because I have been taught so well that White is Beautiful and Brown is Less. Here is a spine coiled so well into patterns of subservience that I still find myself automatically deferring just a little bit more to USAmericans solely because of their nationalities, even on matters where I am not supposed to defer; I find myself needing to show that I am a Good Member of My Nationality, that I too know English, that I am just as worthy of respect as they. Here are the social skills and responses of one who was brought up in a society carefully manipulated by USAmericans to aid their colonial rule — the hierarchy they supported and reinforced, of elites and masses, of “more” and “less”, is in my blood, do you understand? Can you understand? Here are hands and eyes shaped by hours of imbibing Western values and Western ideologies because clearly they are so much more sophisticated and superior; here is a self living in a territory that has time and again worked against its own interests simply because imperialistic ideologies pervade it so thoroughly that our officials and our workers and the vast majority of our people think it a greater wrong to say ‘no’ to the West than to say ‘yes’ to our own survival. I say to you now: in our economy and in our arts and in our labor and in our philosophy, in our daily speech and in the way we regard ourselves, we are caged by so many unseen barriers we are still in the process of identifying them, and these traps are neither invention nor figment of the imagination.
Can you really tell me that I am not a victim of colonialism? Because I will have to strenuously object, and I should think I know better than you what I live with everyday and what I do not. It is not self-pity. It is not delusion. Colonialism is there, sunk into our laws and into our psyches, into our everyday interactions with media and pop culture, into the tongues of market vendors and negotiators in the upper echelons of power. How can you say that there are no victims when time and again those who live with the debris of the past every day, those who struggle with the way it presses up, over and over, against our skin, decry it for all the ruin it has wrought on our societies and our souls and our nations? Will you pile grievous erasure upon grievous erasure? Will you erase our grief along with the memory of our dead? Do you think once the bodies sink out of sight they are forgotten?
Finally, do you really think colonialism is dead? Please. I live in a country where policy considerations, both domestic and foreign, are still governed largely by what our supposedly former colonial master wishes for us. The drive for empire is alive and well. It has just taken on different forms.
@Fred & Bob:
By the bye, I’ve noticed a fascinating coincidence: you both use the phrase “sympathetic angst on behalf of the oppressed they’ve probably never even met” in your writings here, a phrase so statistically improbable that it appears nowhere in Google. Remarkable coincidence, that.
You seem to want to believe that only the direct victims of an oppressor are harmed by that oppressor, even when the oppression in question is systematic and multi-generational. You sing a different song when we’re discussing the effects of Hitler’s genocide from Leopold’s, but I don’t believe you think there are very many Shoah survivors at Steampunk events, given that an infant born at Auschwitz on the day it was liberated would be 66 today, and a youth of 18 on that day would now be 84. Your position is at best internally inconsistent.
You also seem to want to believe that colonialism is something that can be referred to in the past tense, as if it is finished and not an ongoing system of oppression in operation to the present day. The news daily features details of the latest ongoing global mess the roots of which lie in the power imbalances established through colonialism and ongoing efforts to perpetuate same.
You also seem to want to believe that discrimination has no effect on the discriminated after it is abolished, or that rape has no effect on women who have not themselves been raped. Do you seriously suggest that someone whose parents were systematically locked out of building wealth and power over generations have no disadvantage compared to those who have benefitted precisely because their ancestors locked them out? Do you seriously suggest that our society’s attitudes regarding rape don’t directly impact every single woman? I appreciate your raising these examples, because I could not come up with better examples to discredit your position if I tried!
You ask how many Steampunk events I’ve attended, and I’m uncertain how to answer: Do you want a count only of the events I’ve attended, or should I include the events at which I’ve performed? How about the one my wife and I organize? I am similarly curious, though, how many Steampunk events you attend if you have such a low opinion of the education and commitment to justice of your fellow attendees. Of course, this may be a geographic difference.
You seem to think I am attacking you by observing that you occupy a position of privilege in modern American society. That you do is a simple fact, and it attacks you no more than I attack myself to acknowledge that I occupy a privileged position in modern American society. The reason you cannot argue that you do not occupy a privileged position with respect to sex and race is that you cannot argue against the truth. That you may have been oppressed along class lines does not negate this, but if you’re not prepared to acknowledge how privilege operates on one axis, there’s no way you’re ready to grapple with anything as complicated as intersectionality.
You are free to stop trying to defend untenable positions at any time. However, I don’t think you’ll be buying me a “bevvie” at the Steampunk World’s Faire or any other event that we might both attend. You have libeled friends of mine by calling them “charlatans” and “con-people,” and this makes it impossible for me to regard you as fit company until such time as you have tendered your apology to them.
I’m not holding my breath.
By the bye, I’ve noticed a fascinating coincidence: you both use the phrase “sympathetic angst on behalf of the oppressed they’ve probably never even met” in your writings here, a phrase so statistically improbable that it appears nowhere in Google. Remarkable coincidence, that.
Either one of us is a sock puppet – and I’m not his, nor he mine – or we actually think similarly. Amazing that people can actually think similarly. 😉
Your position is at best internally inconsistent.
It is not. If my attire offends someone, I will sincerely apologize. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day any more than I want someone to ruin mine. That doesn’t mean I’m going to go and change, however; if the she is free to be offended, our culture is also free enough for me to do as I like. It’s not as though I am oppressing anyone. I can’t stop you from doing what you want, nor do I wish to. You are guaranteed that right with my wholehearted approval. I risked my life in combat to guarantee that (should you be an American).
Why can’t you do the same? Speaking of internally inconsistent…
Of course, this may be a geographic difference.
I think it very well is. For all the SP affairs I’ve attended, I can count on one hand the number of people who have the slightest clue about historicity or even the fiction “canon” underlying the movement. They want to dress up in funny clothes and attend awesome parties. It’s like Goth, ‘cept different.
I do not speak about a ‘commitment to justice’ on the part of attendees. In the first place, ‘justice’ is relative. In the second, it assumes a level of awareness (or enthusiasm) I suspect most SP enthusiasts lack.
Please forgive me for being defensive about the broad brush of “privilege”. I admit to being quite defensive about it. An unfortunate side effect of that word in modern internet debate is the implication that I, as a white male, cannot possibly understand anything because I’m a white male, that my ‘privilege’ prevents me from having a clue. That’s bull-puckey for two reasons: First, it is as heinously racist/sexist/whateverist as that which the users of the term stridently deride. (See “internally inconsistent”.) Second it’s patently absurd in the face of my background as an individual. I have never – not once – received any privilege due to the accident of my birth. I ought to know; I’ve lived it. I fail to see that how continued oppression of my people somehow doesn’t count, how I still enjoy privilege based on my sex and race even when I don’t and never have. It’s one thing to sit behind your keyboard and judge me guilty of privilege when all you know about me is what I say (admittedly white male); it’s another thing to have experienced my life. Had you done so, you’d see why the idea of me being privileged deserves nothing more than a bitter laugh.
Moreover, I find it insulting that you think your perception of the circumstance of my birth prevents me from understanding anything complicated as intersectionality. If we’re not supposed to judge people by the color of their skin, there’s some epic fail going on here, and it’s not coming from the guy behind this keyboard.
I think you’re confusing me with someone else in your last paragraph. If you read closely, I’ve never called anyone either a charlatan or con-anything.
The offer still stands, by the by. I have more than a couple of acquaintances/friends with whom I have knock-down, drag-out fights online but maintain an excellent face-to-face relationship. If you think me unfit company, that’s your human right.
Bob,
I wasn’t struck by the similarity in thought — indeed similarity understates the case, but the uniformity of thought and identical syntax.
You ask why I can’t “do the same,” though I’m not sure exactly what it is you’re asking me to do. I have not suggested your freedom to dress or behave offensively be curtailed in any way shape or form. You do realize the freedom you risked your life to defend includes the right to criticize the free choices people freely make, yes? If you see some internal inconsistency there, I’ll need you to explain it more clearly.
I stand in awe of your ability to have never once received any privilege whatsoever due to the accident of your birth as a white man. No, really, I do. It’s an accomplishment I’ve not managed. For example, every single time I get in my car, I receive the privilege of not having to worry I’ll get stopped for Driving While Black. Taxicabs stop for me when I flag them, even when I see them pass by men of color better dressed than I. No one assumes I’ve received the opportunities I have because of affirmative action rather than my own qualifications. Random strangers do not feel entitled to police my clothes, eating habits, or facial expression. How have you gotten around all this?
I greatly doubt anyone has suggested that your privilege makes you incapable of understanding anything. Rather, I suspect they have suggested that because you do occupy a position of privilege along some axes, there are things you don’t yet understand because one of the privileges privileged people have is the privilege of not having to think about how privilege operates.
“Guilty of privilege” is a nonsense phrase. Having privilege is not a crime, it is the way the society in which we live is constructed. There are very few people in the world who do not have some degree of privilege along at least one axis and who are not oppressed along at least one axis.
Nor have I suggested that the circumstance of your birth — whatever those are — prevents you from understanding anything as complicated as intersectionality. I have suggested — indeed stated outright — that your failure to grasp the operation of a single line of privilege precludes your grasping the simultaneous operation of multiple lines of privilege when some of those lines act to one’s benefit and others act to one’s detriment. It’s rather like how one needs to understand calculus before one can understand differential equations. There is absolutely nothing about the circumstance of one’s birth that precludes such understanding — and a good thing!
Bob:
I have never – not once – received any privilege due to the accident of my birth.
This sentence alone pretty much invalidates any argument you can make, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have no idea what you’re talking about. I recommend that you do some reading into exactly what privilege is before you continue this discussion.
Jha, excellent post.
A lot of these comments, though, exemplify why I cant be bothered with steampunk and most genre. Clearly, some folks have never encountered Fanon…
I’m white, and I enjoy many aspects of steampunk, especially brave souls like Jha who’re willing to have tough discussions like these despite all the clueless folks who “just want to have fun” without thinking about the consequences of their actions, or how their lack of understanding might impact others who also just want to enjoy themselves without being reminded of past horrors that still impact millions on a daily basis. A costume chosen “just to have fun” often speaks volumes about the person putting it on, ignorance included. If the “overwhelming majority of those attending Steampunk affairs wouldn’t recognize your inherent rampant evil colonialism bogeyman if you handed it to them on a plate surrounded by watercress,” then their ignorance is their responsibility.
Thanks, Jha, for the great article, and please keep up the good work at Silver Goggles. Looking forward to hearing you speak at WisCon.
Being a mixed-race mongrel product encompassing 16 different nationalities in the past five generations of my ancestors (what of me is not “multi-” is “trans-“), I admit never having given these matters much thought within the context of Steampunk. To me, Steampunk is blatant fantasy, similar to the “heritage” movement of the lower-middle classes as they visit National Trust estates on a Sunday while nostalgically reminiscing about the good ol’ days that never were, with the notable distinction that Steampunk at least honestly admits that it IS fantasy.
Steampunk is not historical re-enactment; it is a state of mind: of a sense of wonder about the world, and adventure and science and discovery, which happens to be captured particularly well in some of the products and phenomena of the Victorian age.
Because some people have a sense of humor it is also an affectionate spoof of some of these Victorian products and phenomena. Just like Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Ali G.” persona does not mock Black people, but White people trying to emulate their idea of young Black culture, the stereotyping that takes place in Steampunk is of the Victorians and how they saw themselves.
Steampunk, for me, is just good fun. So you can imagine my surprise and irritation when all of a sudden it is pulled into the political(ly correct?) sphere and accusations of neo-colonialism and latent (or not so latent) racism start to fly.
Chill out already. It’s just fantasy, OK? You’re starting to sound like Star Trek fans arguing whether Capt. Kirk is an Imperialist or whether Capt. Pickard is sufficiently respectful of alien cultures or just a paternalistic Old White Guy. It’s not real. It’s fantasy. It’s meant to be fun.
Nexxo, I disagree with your statement that it’s “just fantasy.”
When our fantasies include perpetuating old stereotypes of imperialism — even “just for fun” — it does active harm, especially to the naive perpetuators, specifically because it allows them to keep thinking that these issues don’t matter. No fantasy exists in a vacuum: a pith helmet, even if used as part of a fantastic costume, is still a loaded metaphor, inextricable from its past. Could someone wear a pith helmet as part of a subversive costume? Yes. But when someone uses an item, replete with unpleasant history, “just for fun” without thinking about its connotations, that’s not subversion. That’s repetition of stereotype, devaluation of painful history.
I’m going to quote from Ay-Leen the Peacemaker, from her Beyond Victoriana blog, because she says it so very well:
“Sure, here I go ranting about how much of steampunk portrays Asian culture inaccurately and possibly offensively, if it is portrayed at all, but what about how steampunk portrays the entire Victorian era in general? It isn’t all accurate; sometimes, it isn’t even meant to be accurate. Essentially, steampunk is artistic expression, rooted in fantasy-escapism and based on a cross between Victorian pulp fiction and a wave of New Romanticism. It’s freaking running around in top hats and waistcoats firing souped-up Nerf guns at each other. If taken as simply a fashion concept and entertainment trend, why should people be concerned? Why should it matter? Should white fans suddenly have to worry about Bigger Implications, and thus, spoiling the fun they’ve having?
“And then I realize oh YES it matters, and YES other white steampunkers should take note (and Steampunkers of color should consider, if they haven’t already). Because every time someone says it doesn’t matter, they’re further promoting that outdated attitude that a diverse and complex portrayal of Asia does not matter. That it can be packaged into chopsticks, jade dragons, and kimonos for general consumption, to conform to any fashion trend, to mold to any entertainment purpose. And I’m not comfortable with being part of a packaged deal.
“Steampunk bucks a lot of the norms concerning actual Victorian culture, such as their attitudes toward gender roles, sexuality, and class. If steampunk can have women wear trousers and become sky pirates, endorse the public mingling of street urchins and aristocrats, then steampunk can – and should – treat ethnicity with the same modern respect and understanding towards diversity.
…
“…if I’m going to create a character, I’m going to help broaden the steampunk culture while doing it. Ay-leen, I hope, will help knock some down some misconceptions about Asia, and Asian culture. And, at the same time, be an outrageous, ironical character to boot – became damn, I want to have fun too. ”
Grappling with these issues doesn’t have kill the fun; in fact, I’ve found stories that do tend to be a lot smarter and much more fulfilling fantasies to read. Jha has an excellent reading list, if you’d like some examples.
Steampunk is a cool term and is used by many people to mean many (endless) things. The most common definition I’ve read in forums is that steampunk is “everything”. Whatever.
I have to go by the numbers. If 90% of the steampunk community says it’s X, it’s X. A dude here and there can say it’s this or that…doesn’t make it so.
For me there is no question a large number of the steampunks out of England, and many whites from other places, emulate the Victorian, in dress and political views. They consider neo-Victorian and steampunk to be synonyms, as stated on their web sites. Maybe it’s just the icing on the cake that they just happen to be emulating a time when their team ran the world. Heady times. They go out of their way to say this isn’t so, but coming from the lips of an Imperial Over Lord lacks the smell of truth. The impression I get is if an Imperial England once again ran the world they would all think it a be a better place. I don’t think they act toward that end, but if it just happened to happen, they be supporters.
They say they have liberal views but I’ve never seen any evidence. They also state often they are more intelligent than the average serf. Any serious discussion ends in a flame war pretty fast. Most “steampunk” forums don’t even allow views on race or really anything of import. It’s about as empirey as it gets.
There is a bottom line here. If I were called a bigot on a regular basis I could tell people they’re confused, misinformed and what I’m doing is “just for fun”. But a thinking person might consider the obvious.
If a person doesn’t like the imperialist label you might reconsider using the steampunk term. Is it so hip it’s worth the baggage that comes with being “everything”?
@Waterbug: You simultaneously assert that if Steampunk has a sufficient majority that is nostalgic for Victorian imperialism, that’s what Steampunk is; and that if people don’t like it they should be something else. Do you see where this quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I don’t know what the prophecy is and I don’t see what would be self-fulfilling.
Do you mean if all anti-Victorian steampunks started calling themselves Nemos that they define “Nemos”?
Or if a majority of steampunks converted to using the term Nemos that they could have kept steampunk and been able to redefine it to mean anti-Victorian? Of course. But this isn’t the current case.
If steampunks dressed as workers, called themselves Cab Nashers, Cobblers, Mao, etc., and denounced anyone arrogant enough to give themselves elevated titles I don’t think there would be this continuous “misunderstanding” of steampunk.
Sorry if I missed your point completely.
Jha, wonderful post.
Mia, thank you a hundred times for what you have written.
So… as a descendant of Dr. David Livingston, should I be ashamed that his exploration of Africa opened the continent up for colonization or proud of his efforts to abolish the slave trade?
Either way, it appears that I should not wear a pith helmet to the next convention.
And stop grinding my teeth whenever the Amish refer to me as “English.”
There is a fine line between knowing your cultural heritage and taking up your ancestors’ burdens.
If you dress as Dr Livingston, call yourself Dr Livingston, go on pretend trips into “darkest Africa” to convert the native people, I’d say you have picked up your ancestors’ burdens with gusto. No question.
As a white male American I may not directly contribute to oppression of women and other races. So I can protest the stereotype. But I can’t dismiss the implication either. Whether I like it or not I benefit from the oppression of others. When I go for a job I don’t request 25% less pay. I do very little actually to change the system. I think that makes me part of the problem whether I’d like to admit it or not. I can certainly understand why I get lumped in with all white male Americans.
I am not keen on this post. Every other post you have had is great. This woman you have who did this post feels like she has a huge crazy chip on her shoulder.
I love this blog for anything that has to do with steampunk and culture:
http://thesteamerstrunk.blogspot.com/
Unlike the person who you had write this post, the woman who runs that blog educates people about culture but does not try to make them feel guilty about it.
Could you have her http://www.blogger.com/profile/08200497303589735468 blog for you when you do the next week of steampunk guest bloggers? She does a wonderful job and I have loved the blog since it started up.
Jha doesn’t “make” anyone feel guilty about anything, nor is she attempting to. If you feel guilty after reading her words, that’s entirely yours. Own it, deal with it, and move on.
@Waterbug
The prophecy is “90% of the community says Steampunk X.” The thing that makes it self fulfilling is if everyone who says it’s something else cedes the term “Steampunk” to those who say it’s X, rather than making the cast that Steampunk is Y, which may or may not contain X.
@Anon:
“So… as a descendant of Dr. David Livingston, should I be ashamed that his exploration of Africa opened the continent up for colonization or proud of his efforts to abolish the slave trade?”
The two are hardly mutually exclusive, just as than any American can be proud that George Washington fought off British colonialism and ashamed that the founder of our country was a slaver. People are complex.
Still had a hard time parsing it. But people in the community don’t get to define steampunk by telling outsiders, or other steampunks, their definition unless of course they have access to mass media. They define it by their actions. If 90% of people act a certain way then people on the outside will define them based on those actions.
Lot’s of people in steampunk call it a community, a life style, a culture. But from the outside it just a bunch of people dressing up and wishing the Victorian age came back. It looks like fun, but there is a disturbing aspect. Steampunks can say all they like they don’t want the Victorian back and people should look past the military titles and guns but it’s pretty obvious what it being portrayed and glorified.
@ Jane Irwin: I disagree (sorry). Just like Sacha Baron Cohen does not perpetuate sereotypes of young Black people but spoofs the stereotyping (and stereotypers), Steampunk does not perpetuate old stereotypes of Imperialism: it spoofs them. Steampunk is not supposed to be a forum for authentic cultural portrayal. It’s FANTASY.
One half of my ancestors has conquered, colonised, enslaved (and occasionally brought to the brink of extinction) the other half of my ancestors. Some even took it in turns. Should I be burdened by ethnic guilt or carry a chip on my shoulder, or just alternate between the two in bi-polar fashion (this is where a week having an odd number of days gets really awkward)? Should I feel upset that people do not understand the complex diversity of my very complex and diverse ethnic origins? Sorry, but that sounds a bit self-indulgent. It’s a bit like saying “it’s a Black thing honey, you don’t understand” –there is nothing so self-stereotyping as pulling out THAT line.
Steampunk can hardly be accused of giving an authentic, complex and diverse portrayal of British Victorian culture –as Ay-Leen says: it totally bucks those norms– so why should it be more respectful of the authentic portrayal of other cultures?
My eyes got tired around the April 22nd posting… You folks might want to consider editing your posts a little bitt.
Just last year my husband and I found steampunk and have been reading some fiction and exploring the steampunk culture. The main thing I’ve noticed in the fiction I’ve read, including Charles Stross’s books, is that the protagonists are rebels and act subversively in trying to bring down the imperialists. I would think that a rebel can be from any culture that is impacted by these imperial forces.
I really don’t understand why another culture couldn’t be of steampunk. As long as there is a steam element…
Please forgive me if I’m missing the main point. This discussion went deeper than my little brain can travel. But I felt I had a valid point to make.
What books deal with this post colonialism? I’d be interested to read one, if it’s not too dry.
Jah, epic and awesome post (as par usual for you).
@anyone and everyone saying ‘lighten up’ and ‘just have fun’:
Has it occurred to you that social justice IS what’s fun for us? Because that seems to be a puzzle piece missing in your rhetoric: The idea that we deeply and truly ENJOY expanding others’ understanding of social justice matters, of history, of context. That that’s what makes things fun for us.
@FredTownWard
FYI: “there is no such thing as “precolonial” or “postcolonial””
Precolonial = the time in which a geographic location has been inhabited only by its indigenous population; In the modern-day US, for example, the pre-colonial period would be recognized as prior to the Jamestown colony (and extending significantly beyond that as one moves up the East Coast and Westward across the continent). Aotearoa was pre-colonial until 1642. Rapa Nui was pre-colonial until 1722.
Post-colonial: Any time after colonial contact, including the present.
Hope that cleared up for you what those words mean.
Promoting social justice may be fun for you, but that does not necessarily make it fun for others –those who do it for a living, for instance, and go to Steampunk events for a bit of escapist fantasy. Some people want to be able to take a break from it all on occasion and not get their understanding of social justice ‘expanded’ at an event that was supposed to be fun. They may even feel that they had a fairly decent take on social justice before someone came along to critique and lecture them about their lack of understanding apparently evident in their choice of cosplay.
Ay-Leen the Peacemaker is on a mission to enhance cultural understanding, but at least she proposes to do it in a way that is engaging and fun, not critical. Meanwhile if the sight of pith helmets offends you, you’re at the wrong gig.
I think that FredTownWard alludes to the fact that there rarely is such a thing as an “indigenous” population. Possibly only the Australian Aboriginals deserve that title. The rest of us (even the Carribean Indians) are all the mongrel product of human tribes having roamed all over the globe taking turns at displacing each other from the top perch of the pecking order. Imperialism goes back further than the Akkadian Empire in 3000 BC.
I have a really hard time wrapping my head around the possibility that anyone who promotes social justice for a living, or even someone who’s just an activist in their spare time in addition to their day job, could ever find ‘escapist fun’ in something they know to be hurtful to someone else.
Logically, if such a justice-promoting person was informed of unknowingly committing an hurtful action, they’d make every effort to stop doing that. Even if they thought i fun originally. Because to those actually committed to justice, hurting others isn’t fun. Leeches the right RIGHT OUT of things, really.
I’d imagine it would take a lot of skill at doublethink to both define oneself as a social justice activist, and to work in a field that promotes social justice, and yet still find hurtful, unjust things fun an escapist… kind of like working for Greenpeace and then whaling on the weekends to relax.
Another blanket response to a whole bunch of the commenters up there (you should probably be able to figure out if this applies to you):
Dear White People At Large:
I know this will come as a shock to you, but it’s trufax –
POC don’t want you to feel ashamed.
POC don’t want you to feel guilty.
White guilt and white shame help no one, ever. You feeling really really bad doesn’t move anything forward, and it is not a sought goal.
The following applies to a lot of different conditions of privilege, not just race:
Know what we (marginalized folks) want you (non-marginalized folks) to do?
CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE*.
STOP DOING THINGS THAT ARE HURTFUL.
Stop reacting as if you as if our hurt is a personal affront, or as if you have the right and privilege to decide whether our hurt is acceptable to you. If I’m telling you that something is hurtful to me, and your reaction is anything other than making an effort to stop doing that hurtful action, you’re being an asshat.
Even if you didn’t know.
Even if it was an accident.
I really don’t care about these preconditions.
I don’t really want your sudden empty freak-out apology in an attempt to deflect my judgment. I don’t need to be told how you didn’t mean it and how you are a truly good person and how OMG you’re not a racist and how could I ever think that you are (because we all know that there’s nothing more horrible than being called a racist. Actual racist actions wither in comparison to being called a racist). I don’t need an explaination about how No But This Thing I’m Doing Isn’t Actually Hurtful Because X.
I just want the action to stop, because it’s hurtful.
To paraphrase J Smooth over at Ill Doctrine: If someone has stolen my wallet, I’m not chasing them down to find out if they really truly feel like a thief in their heart of hearts – I’m chasing them down to get my wallet back.
( you can go check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc )
This also doesn’t require you to immediately understand why the thing you’re doing is hurtful. If you honestly don’t understand why it is and would like to become better educated so as to avoid doing it again to someone else, there are probably resources aplenty to help you do that – and often, if you approach with honest curiosity a whole lot of POC will happily point you at them (this is not the same thing as demanding that the POC who is being hurt education you right then as to why the action on your part is hurtful)
You do not have the authority to say ‘X is hurtful but Y is not’. The party being hurt is the one who decides if an action is hurtful, not you.
Check. Yourself.
Listen.
Don’t be an asshat.
Guilt and shame need not apply.
* Here’s a nice place to start: http://www.metafilter.com/74157/An-Anthology-of-Privilege-Checklists
Groups of folks who get unearned privilege include folks who are: White, Male , Cisgendered, Adult, American, Neurotypical, Thin, Non-poor, Christian, Able-bodied…and a whole lot more. Tip. Of. The. Iceberg. You can also totally have some and lack others. Pretty much everyone does.
Just because you take offence doesn’t mean offence was given. Stop thinking that you feeling hurt means that others have to change what they are doing immediately. Sometimes it is just your hurt and you have to deal with it.
I could argue that I find it hurtful that you accuse what I think of as harmless fun as insensitive asshattery On my part. Stop doing that right now. Doesn’t work, does it? It’s that whole freedom of expression thing. You have your opinion; I disagree. Tolerance is about being able to tolerate such differences, not forcing people to eradicate them.
“Just because you take offense doesn’t mean offense was given.”
Repeat: You do not have the authority to say ‘X is hurtful but Y is not’. The party being hurt is the one who decides if an action is hurtful, not you.
Intent is not magical, and good intentions don’t make hurtful actions less hurtful.
And you’re right. I can’t police your actions. I can’t -make- you stop doing them. All I can do is call you out on them and hope that I A: Change your actions or B: Change the actions of other, more considerate people who are able to learn from your example.
This has been a very informative discussion on the perceptions of different people and how they articulate their opinions. While I disagree with much of what I’ve read for various reasons, I certainly think it is important for people in the world to understand how “the others” think. Perhaps it will improve us as a species and make the concerns being discussed non-entities in the future. One can only hope. As I’m desperately trying to find distractions from my term papers, however, I thought I’d break my usual rules about staying out of internet arguments and add a couple large cents.
As articles intentionally written to incite emotional responses in people immediately turns on my critical thinking mechanisms, there was much that I am refraining on commenting on. This response is long enough as it is. There was a particular portion of your argument, however, which I found dangerously flawed (so flawed, in fact that I’m a little alarmed that no one has brought it up before now). Near the end of the article you write:
“Colonialism is also present in the fact that, when a person of color wants to represent his/her/hir own culture, the representation is blithely, thoughtlessly thrown up in accordance to and reinforcing the stereotypes that have permeated our understandings of racialized groups for so long. Commodification of your own culture does not get any more special meaning just because you’re a minority doing it, if it’s done for white people’s consumption.”
I’ll assume that, though this reads like a blanket statement accusing the vast majority of people of ethnic minority in Steampunk being careless in their representation of their culture, the intention was not to do so. I do agree that this may be the case in some circumstances, and that, for various reasons, one might perpetuate stereotypes of their culture in a clumsy attempt to bring their heritage into their personal idea of Steampunk. I’ve always viewed this as a lack of finesse and that, in time, the Steampunker would either learn subtle ways in which to cleverly use their heritage proudly or abandon the genre for the next edgy fad. I’m sure that I will get flamed for what follows, but I would disagree with the assumption that the individual is “pandering to the white folks,” and is instead attempting to make the genre richer and to move it beyond the stereotypes of top hats, goggles and cogs. I recognize another issue, which is a whole can of worms I’d rather not to open, involving people who perpetuate stereotypes of a culture because they feel as though they sufficiently identify to it and can claim it and use it as they will. For example, I have a friend who calls Native Americans “Injuns,” imitates “war whoops,” and makes all number of other jokes at the expense of Native American culture, maintaining, “It’s okay, I’m .00008% Indian!” Personally, I disagree with this attitude and it makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps this is the attitude to which you are referring, Jha, but I’m just going to leave my opinion on that over there to fester. If someone else wants to pick it up and run with it, you’re welcome to it.
Still, I do maintain a particular bias that, in general, Steampunks are some of the more well-educated consumers. It may be that it’s only because I haven’t spoken to and encountered every Steampunk’s approach to the genre, and am basing my ideas off of the people that I have spoken to about the multiculturality of their choices (in addition to the preponderance of history buffs hanging about) but I have yet to interact with people who are –not- approaching Steampunk as an aesthetic and a culture, and instead slapdashing something together without thought. Indeed, the people attempting to move away from the “goths who discovered brown” stereotype of the genre that I have spoken to and read postings by are intensely concerned with how they are using the different realities of the nineteenth century. Call it naïveté, but I truly believe that the “I’ll wear whatever because it’s just fantasy and fun” comments that I have read attached to this post are made by people either in the minority, or lashing back in a cumbersome manner because they feel as though they are being personally attacked. In summary, my main issue with the point above is that it reads like an unfair generalization about people who are proud of their heritage and wish to incorporate elements of it into their Steampunk wardrobe or persona. It seems like a lot of text for a point that makes me only go “hmmm,” but I feel it’s an important preclusion to the next paragraph, which truly made me irritated. It reads:
“Colonialism is also present in the fact that, when another person of color tries to do something more original, more true to one’s own culture, a white person can say, “actually, you’re getting it wrong,” without an inkling that this is microaggressively racist, ignoring the pain that comes along with knowing that one’s own culture is so devalued, one cannot do anything original with it without a powerful outsider saying, ‘you got your own culture wrong’.”
Fundamentally, I agree with this statement. It is cruel, racist, and backwards to try and tell –anyone- that the way in which they are portraying their culture is incorrect… But then I read the above paragraph and get a little steamed (if you’ll pardon the pun). The basic message of this second paragraph directly contradicts the former as you have just spent 70 words telling people of ethnic minority that to use their culture in a particular way is “doing it wrong.” I have read each paragraph in context, I have read the two together, and I have read them individually, and cannot shake the impression of absolute elitist bullshit that they contain. The singling out of “white people” as the perpetrators of this cultural crime does not absolve you, Jha, of doing exactly the same. I don’t care if you’re Asian American, White, Green, Purple, or Neon Pink, you are a human and thereby capable of being just as guilty of passing judgment on an ethnic minority’s cultural choices as any dominant “race.” Your own personal suffering at the hands of people in ethnic power does not give you a free pass allowing you to hand out judgment on how your fellow sufferers choose to use their culture. If I have grossly misunderstood the meaning of these two paragraphs, I strongly recommend you clarify and correct your writing. I’ll look forward to reading your clarifications, as I find it difficult to believe that someone with enough authority in a subject to be a guest author would be so hypocritically racist herself.
Lest you believed I had worn myself out with the above tirade, I wish to further address the bandying about of the assumption that those of us who pass as white (questionably so in my case as I’m generally identified by others as Latina due to my last name, coloring, and other morphological features) don’t put any thought into the colonial implications of dressing like Victorian, European people. The problem comes from a fundamental one that I daily grapple with as an archaeologist*: identity is not a one-way street. Attempting to get at the identity of an individual anthropologically is hard enough because we, as social humans, don’t rely on only one identity, nor do we give them all equal valuation. My ethnic identity is dominated by several cultures, but a great deal of it is also such a murky miasma that I usually don’t feel a strong ethnic tie to any of them. I’ll pick woman, student, archaeologist, Oregonian, young adult, Tango dancer, or whatever else I identify with for my operational identity depending on the situation. The point I’m attempting to make is that viewing someone in a particular mode of dress and dismissing them as unthinkingly depicting a colonial power, is not a useful approach. It ignores the hundreds of choices the person has made in creating their character and their outfit. Because I’m an egotist, I’ll go ahead and use my own character as an example:
Because I do not identify as being of a particular ethnicity, I am uncomfortable with the idea of adopting another culture’s mode of dress (I do believe it can be done respectfully, I’m just too paranoid to go there). Therefore, in setting out to develop my character as a newcomer, I decided to play it safe and go with one fraction of my heritage which, I am unashamed to say, is English. I wanted to try and incorporate my chosen professional field because it was something I was comfortable with and I felt it would make my character more natural and three dimensional if I didn’t have to pretend I knew what I was talking about. The problem was that I knew I would either have to perpetuate the “Indiana Jones” myth of archaeology for people to “get it,” or bore people away from talking to me by my single-minded attempt to convey that archaeologists don’t dig dinosaurs and it’s not just excavations or ancient Egypt. I chose, therefore to go the route of my B.A. and make some sort of anthropologist. Also, I was acutely conscious that the development of Archaeology and Anthropology had, essentially, grown out of colonialism and imperialism, and I did not want to be an Amelia Peabody character. It was something that I grappled with for quite a bit of time, and continue to grapple with every time I read a critique of the average Steampunk representing colonists. The approach that I embraced, however, was of a more Dickensian bent. I made my character a time-traveling Anthropologist of sorts who works for an underfunded branch of the British Government and mostly makes her living prostituting her talent to rich old widows who want to know if their relative really fought with Arthur at the battle of Baden Hill. Because I was watching too much Little Dorrit to be healthy at the time, I created her as a paper-pushing peon trapped in a government bureaucracy that took something as cool as time-traveling and wrapped it up in so much red tape and so many regulations that it was impossible to push anything through (“You didn’t fill out the proper forms, I need this in triplicate and from department X, start over, etc. etc.” Think the Circumlocution Office, with time machines). She fights the norm by throwing off the expected standard of the Sister/Wife/Mother domestic life. She’s educated, political, and independent… even if that means living in a leaky flat down by the waterfront, and waiting for her moment to reform the department she works for and make it relevant. Is she a representative of a Colonial system? Absolutely, and I recognize this, but the decisions that I have made were not taken lightly or made flippantly. I have given her room to grow as a character because I intend to hold onto her for some time. To assume because she is British, and dressed rather like an explorer, that she does not support the opposition of local peoples to colonial oppression, doesn’t give me very much credit for the hours of development that I brought to her and her story.
Of course, not everyone goes at their character quite in depth like this (I was sewing every night for 3 months – that’s an awful lot of time to think), and I’m not suggesting that everyone should be walking up to people and grilling them for the name of their character’s mother, but it is also not useful to –assume- that people are wearing stuff just because they’re enacting a vapid fantasy and having fun. My favorite part of creating my character’s look was trying to blend her attempts to emulate a proper lady while still wearing something utilitarian and subtly depicting her trade in a realistic manner. The appeals of the European, Victorian look to me are the textures and lines that were created out of fabric. Love it, hate it, love them, hate them, there is a certain sculptural artistry of Victorian fashion that I would love to be able to master. Were other, contemporaneous cultures also creating amazing things out of the materials available to them? Of course! But as I stated above, I am not interested in being accused of cultural appropriation
My hope is that (if anyone actually read this post all the way through) people realize that “race” is, unfortunately, too often equated with culture, and that it inspires recognition that it is not the only way people make decisions, make judgements, and form their identities. I’ll continue to be an optimist.
*If you intend to release a tirade on the colonial practice of Archaeology, please save it. I recently completed a course on Ethics in archaeology, and am well versed in the history of archaeology, how far it’s come towards post-colonialism, and how far it still has yet to go. When you too have read over 2000 pages on the subject, then we’ll talk. Until then, I highly recommend starting with Joe Watkins. He’s a Native American archaeologist writing extensively on the repatriation debate, and my hero.
@Jade:
Given all the research and effort you put into your English archaeologist/bureaucrat…and given that you morphologically pass as Latina…perhaps it would have made some sense to create a Latina archaeologist/bureaucrat? I suspect the answer is, “that was exponentially more difficult because there are so many readily available source materials on how to do English steam, but next to nothing for non-English steam”. (Aftereffects of colonization, in a nutshell.)
And please don’t use the “..green or purple or [other colors]” trope. It’s belittling to PoC, whose ethnic identity goes beyond a superficial *skin tone* and into other physical features and cultural markers. (I realize this may be the first time anyone’s ever told you this. Please take note. http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/03/invoke-strangely-colored-people.html)
@Nexxo:
What makes it okay to be a social justice activist *outside*, and to be a (willfully blind?) bigot in one’s “escapism” ? If one is a civil rights crusader, is it okay to have lawn jockeys and mammy dolls at home? “Ironically”, of course. Or to hang out at a Daughters of Confederacy event – for charity, quietly, because it wouldn’t be *polite* to make waves?
[Ironic racism link: http://www.racialicious.com/2009/02/12/stuff-white-people-do-think-that-racism-is-ok-if-youre-being-ironic-about-it/%5D
Just how do you think that institutional prejudice is constructed? It’s built up of all the self-justified actions of otherwise decent people.
How do you think it’s dismantled? By the active effort of people to take down the entrenched structures.
And perhaps you’ve noticed you’ve come upon a conclave of Steampunks of Color and people who support that *actively*. Either you are supporting keeping Steam a white activity, or rejecting that. Which side are you on?
@Moniquill:
“Repeat: You do not have the authority to say ‘X is hurtful but Y is not’. The party being hurt is the one who decides if an action is hurtful, not you.”
No, they can only decide that an action is _experienced as hurtful by them_. There is a difference.
You are right that you pointing out your feelings of hurt about what I thought was a harmless fun activity sucks the fun right out of it for me. I could now decide to feel hurt by your action. By your arguing, I can decide that your action is hurtful because I feel hurt by it (even if your intent was just to ‘have fun enhancing other people’s understanding of social justice’). So I want you to stop. Doing anything else makes you inconsiderate of my feelings and, frankly, an asshat.
See how that logic works?
On the other hand we can voice our opinion but also keep in mind that other people may have very different opinions that they experience as equally valid and emotionally significant. Perhaps, although our parents possibly told us that we are their special little flower, we have to accept that we live in a world where everybody wants to feel that they have some importance and wants to actualise themselves in some way that may not necessarily agree with how you feel. As long as we don’t infringe on each others’ basic freedoms and human rights it’s all good.
@ Jade: great post.
You do realize that I am in no way attempting to stop you from thinking that I’m an asshat, right? Or from saying it? Expounding it unto others?
Because I’m not.
I’m not policing your reaction to my words.
I’m not telling you that your emotional reactions are inappropriate or invalid.
I’m not telling you that you don’t belong in the community.
I’m not telling you what to do.
I’m telling you precisely what I’ll think of you in the event that you do certain things. I’m also telling you that a great number of other people might also think that.
You’re entirely free to do the same.
No, they can only decide that an action is _experienced as hurtful by them_.
Claiming that racism and colonial attitutes only hurt because we choose to let it hurt is like claiming that being stabbed in the back only hurts because you choose to feel the knife’s sharp edge.
@Tinker: Why would I represent a culture that I am not a member of just because people regularly mistake me for a person belonging to that culture? It seems a little exploitative, does it not? There are hundreds of faaaaaabulous, full color sources of Latin American dress in the Age of Steam. There are other blogs on Multiculturalism and Steampunk that regularly discuss them. Do you know why they exist? Because the colonizers were intensely interested in knowing everything about the people they were colonizing so that they could do it more effectively. That’s why Anthropology emerged as a field. I am, in however small portion, culturally English though. As I research my geneology further (which isn’t a quick, easy matter, whatever the Ancestry.com ads would have you believe – I’ve been working for months on one paternal line of one paternal great-grandfather, and have hit a dead end in 1820. The next step is emails to geneological societies all over the world. Hooray summer projects!), I fully intend to attempt to respectfully incorporate it into my Steampunk look (research into Azorean folk costume has already turned up this: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4139/4865234011_14ae33d3c0.jpg, a Capote Cloak, which has set my creative cogs a-turning).
And I apologize if you’ve taken offense by my invocation of weird skin tones. I have always felt that the term Person of Color was a little rediculous, however. I, personally, have never seen anyone colorless (even biologially albino people have the slightest hue). I may identify -myself- as white on that silly question that seems to make it on all the forms, but I maintain a pretty consistent shade of olivey tan that fluctuates slightly depending on the season. The title of the question may have changed from “race” to “ethnicity” now that the scientific community has officially released the shocking news that race is arbitrarily constructed (American Anthropological Association’s statement on race http://aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/AAA-Statement-on-Race.cfm – btw, please don’t bring Kennewick man in as an example of the untruth in the above link. That whole affair was handled very badly. Shame on you Chatters. Shame on you Owsley), but I honestly believe that continuing to classify people based on skin color alone doesn’t forward us as a social species. If, as you say, people of color are classifying us all based on other morphological features, why is my “race” still catagorized as white? These days, I don’t think anyone with an iota of sense would refer to an Asian American person as “yellow,” one who isn’t of African descent would certainly be taking a very serious chance in offending someone by refferring to a person of African ancestry,, “black,” an indigenous American person “red” (the exception being sport teams – but that’s a whole other irritating ball of wax), or a person of Latin American descent “brown.” Speaking as a member of the “racial majority,” the term Person of Color when read or heard, immediately draws the attention to skin color. Generalizing the ancestry of people doesn’t seem terribly useful in the long run, but is admittedly still rampant in our culture, most likely because it’s convenient. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not condoning taking the convenient route, I’m just telling it as I interpret it. I know I’m always extremely careful when writing about these colonially defined groups without drawing attention to a particular trait, like skin color (my papers are littered with “Euro-American” or “European American,” since that’s what people mean when they say white).
I do realize that the logical argument to this approach is one of “but that’s how people think and classify people,” however pandering too it, doesn’t seem to make sense. Educating people, preferrably without going out of your way to incite protest against what you are saying in order to draw out the racists and bolster your sample size, has always proven the most effective method against ignorance. Those of your who were born in the 80’s need only to compare the conceptions about race of your grandparents (who grew up during the big wars), your parents (who grew up in the civil rights movement), and your own ideas about race and how you think about and interact with people of other cultural ancestries. What’s the universal difference? Most likely the education that you each received. Personally, I’ve never been to a protest, I did not start reading blogs about race until I got into college mostly because (despite the numerous posts above telling me that I am not allowed to feel this way) I felt alienated. I am not guilty of most of the things that they accused the “ethnic majority” of, I correct my friends and other members of the “ethnic majority” when I found what they said or did to be offensive, however the generalization of statements -did- make me feel guilty and agonize over my own morals and ethics. My true understanding of cultural differences, attitudes towards cultural differences, what has changed, what has stayed the same, etc., came from having the good fortune of growing up in the care of open-minded parents, a few very stellar teachers (After 9/11, my social studies teacher completely reworked his Curriculum to discuss the Middle East so that we would have a clear understanding of Islam, the history of conflict in that part of the world, and the different political groups that were vying for power at that time. He wanted to make sure that we would not fall into the trap, still affecting much of this country, of assuming everyone from the region is a terrorist – I still remember all the pillars of Islam), and have worked hard to provide myself with the highest education that I can.
I am certainly far from faultless in my approach, I’m just trying to offer a more balanced and educational perspective from the “ethnic majority” angle – I’ll admit, the balance became a little skewed by my Ire at much of what Jha wrote in the original article.
Oh dear, I’ve written another novel. Apologies
Jade: Your research seems to be lacking in some areas. Please show your work supporting the following statements:
“These days, I don’t think anyone with an iota of sense would refer to an Asian American person as ‘yellow,’ one who isn’t of African descent would certainly be taking a very serious chance in offending someone by refferring to a person of African ancestry, ‘black,’ an indigenous American person ‘red’ (the exception being sport teams – but that’s a whole other irritating ball of wax), or a person of Latin American descent ‘brown.'”
Please take some time to investigate how and why people are doing these things right now. Also, please justify your decision to exclude national-level U.S. sports teams from importance.
“Educating people, preferrably without going out of your way to incite protest against what you are saying in order to draw out the racists and bolster your sample size, has always proven the most effective method against ignorance.”
Please list the times in which this has proven the most effective method. Also, in establishing that this is “always” so, account for social movements that did go out of their way to incite protest, such as those led by Gandhi, King, Mandela, etc.
“Those of your who were born in the 80’s need only to compare the conceptions about race of your grandparents (who grew up during the big wars), your parents (who grew up in the civil rights movement), and your own ideas about race and how you think about and interact with people of other cultural ancestries. What’s the universal difference? Most likely the education that you each received.”
Please explain why this is the most likely reason. In your response, please explain why the massive changes brought about in the world as a result of the Civil Rights and Anti-Colonial movements at the end of the last century and the resulting restructuring of social interactions is not a more likely reason. Also, please account for the intermediate generation, whose values changed drastically before the accompanying change in educational curricula.
“I am certainly far from faultless in my approach, I’m just trying to offer a more balanced and educational perspective from the ‘ethnic majority’ angle”
Finally, in light of these two statements:
“If you intend to release a tirade on the colonial practice of Archaeology, please save it. I recently completed a course on Ethics in archaeology, and am well versed in the history of archaeology, how far it’s come towards post-colonialism, and how far it still has yet to go. When you too have read over 2000 pages on the subject, then we’ll talk.”
“I am certainly far from faultless in my approach, I’m just trying to offer a more balanced and educational perspective from the ‘ethnic majority’ angle”
Please indicate how many pages you have read on all of the subjects you’ve touched on in your post including but not limited to psychology, sociology, pedagogy, race relations in the United States, race relations in Latin America, and globalized racial structures. After doing so, explain how your responses are “more balanced” indicating especially what perspective you are using as a supposed counterbalance, and with what authority you measure the two against each other.
@ Tinker: Here’s one for you. I am keeping Steampunk neither a white activity nor rejecting it. I am holding onto it as a Me activity. Why? Because I do not care.
Oh dear god I said it. I said it and it feels GOOOOOD!
And I mean it. I do not care. I don’t care if your great grandaddy was colonized by another person’s. I don’t care if your great grandaddy WAS a colonizer and you feel guilty about it. I don’t care if you’re the color of the rainbow or whiter than white plastic. I don’t care if you have nothing between the legs, or a wiggly bit of skin. I don’t care about so many things! And you know what? SURPRISE! There are a million of people like me who actively don’t care. You want equality? Well that’s my way of giving it to those of you who want it. Anything other than that? Sorry, I don’t do special treatment.
So let me clarify a bit. Do I feel bad that such horrible things in the past have happened? Of course I do. Do I wish that everyone was able to be happy? Sure. Am I going to change something I am doing in the effort to appease a person who tells me that it hurts them because of the past? Heck No! Not unless they can give me a viable reasonable explanation, aside from the fact that “It makes me feel bad and oppressed”. Because if that is the case then I, despite my whiteness and being a man, should reasonably be able to expect the same darn kind of treatment. These things are a two way street not a one way Rail-Road. I don’t expect to be educated by ANYONE on the subject of prejudice and racism. I can self-educate just fine. But I do expect there to be a better reason than “It hurts my soul.” Now, granted I don’t get out much to social events, and have yet to attend a Steampunk gathering, so there is always the possibility that a person who EARNESTLY looks as if what I’m wearing is a metaphysical attack on their very being, then I might just take it off there and then. Of course then they’re stuck with a near naked white person, so take your pick as to which hurts more. There’s also the possibility I will stick to my guns and ask them to do their best to explain why what I’ve got on is hurting/offending them first.
But to some it up: Do Not Care.
Onto the rest of my lengthy rant.
On the subject of White Privilege.
I have white male privilege, and I am aware of this fact. I don’t have vast amounts of money, or power, and believe me when I say my gender and my skin tone have gotten me nowhere in life that anyone else could not go. But I’m aware that theoretically, I have white privilege. But the existence of that privilege is no reason to tell me that I’ve got it better than someone else. I already Know I have it better than some folks. I also know I’ve had it worse than some folks. It’s that whole “balance” thing. There will always be people who are better off and worse off than others. The point is not to get into a contest of “Who has it better and Who has it worse” After all the clamor is for equality- the recognition and acknowledgment of one’s differences while conceding that said differences don’t make a person more or less than oneself and deserving of treatment in the same manor. It is something I find some people forget frequently. Because once again… it is a two-way street.
Do I seem irritable? Well normally I strive to be the soul of niceness but for today one would be correct in surmising that I am not “rainbows and lollipops”.
Meanwhile.
Many of you ARE NOT LISTENING with your good ears. There are people saying they recognize the fact that YES the clothing, costumes, and outfits they put on might be bothersome to many of the people on this site, but that overall they have not yet found anyone in a face to face meeting who has said any such thing, and that the rest of you while quite rightly bringing up certain facts are overlooking the fact that many people put on these clothes with quite a bit of forethought and a desire to simply enjoy the activity of getting together with like minded people and – OH HORROR- having a good time.
I know this may come a shock to some reading this, but sometimes it is important to remember that a person wearing one of the silly looking Pith Helmets is still A PERSON. Who just happens to be wearing one of those silly looking Pith Helmets. Do you truly wish to ban a Helmet? It’s about as ridiculous as banning turbans based on the fact that some raiders in the Middle East wore them.
This is not to say that specific uniforms can’t be hurtful ( see WW2 argument and bickering waaay above). More importantly from what I understand, it is already a common practice for many Steampunks to AVOID actual regimental insignias where possible, as they often prefer to come up with their own. So beating a dying horse… about as effective as beating a dead one. You do not change minds by yelling ” NO YOU’RE WRONG!” Thankfully I don’t expect to change minds. (though methinks I should expect some angry comments to this rambling rant.)
Now then to the core of this matter that’s gotten my dander up.
Those of you saying that “White” people shouldn’t be getting upset over what is being said after making various generalizations are usually the same people who get upset when somebody makes a generalization about “Black” or “Brown” or “Red” people and then say not to get upset. Just because I’m white doesn’t make me any less of an individual. More importantly some of you seem surprised when there are people of multiple ethnic backgrounds taking umbridge at your statements. That’s because those of us with many backgrounds often find ourselves attached to NONE. There is no one definable ancestry many can point to and say “See that. That’s where I come from.” Some have to do our best with the backgrounds that we can reliably track or what our families choose or are able to share with us. It gets even harder when one is missing the link to some of those cultures.
I don’t have enough First Nation in me to be even recognized as an eighth. But I still hold onto it because it’s my heritage. And being told that my heritage doesn’t count because it’s not enough and that I don’t sufficiently resemble a “Native American” by another “Native American” has occurred. What does all this have to do with Steampunk? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Aside from this. When I find something I enjoy, I really enjoy it. But surprise, I tend to get pissed when people shove into my face that I am DOING IT WRONG on something that many people proclaim is IMPOSSIBLE to do wrong. Because it is part of my identity. I MAKE it part of my identity and I’m sure others do too.
That’s not to say I’m not all for multiculturalism in Steampunk. I am VASTLY in favor of it. Just don’t be surprised when I don’t agree with your stance or you don’t agree with mine. Because that’s what life is all about.
@Joshua –
Despite the misspelled name, I assume you are directing this all at me, and not someone else. I am not impressed by your level of reading comprehension, as evidenced by your hitting most of the spurious counter-arguments offer in every other discussion of [race, culture, imperialism, colonialism] + steampunk, ever.
I’m not interested in being a straw-“Tinker” for your soapboxing about things that have little to do with anything but apologism for exclusionary attitudes. Whatever your intent.
Trinker. T – R – I – N – K – E -R
@ Trinker- Actually I merely directed the first part of that lengthy rambling rant towards you. The bit that said @Tinker Up to the explanation of I. DO. Not. Care.
And… oh no! You are unimpressed! Horrors. Look, Trinker, I’ll apologize for misspelling your name. But I don’t apologize for anything else. As you clearly did not gather, I simply do not care. You can call me an exclusionist all you want, that is after all your given right. Just as it is my given right to point out that 1) You are wrong and 2) I still don’t care. Believe it or not I have little to nothing against you as a Steampunk or as a person, other than the fact that you feel compelled to try and break Steampunk views down into an “US vs THEM” argument (as one of your prior comments seems to indicate that there are only those who perpetuate Steampunk as a white only activity and those who reject it as such). Well that and anyone who tries to denigrate me based on mistaking their name one time and thereafter immediately views me as the enemy, is something of an annoyance (however it is not one I did not anticipate.)
If you like we can continue this with more name calling, and you eventually boiling it down to you think I’m a racist and me boiling it down to a so are you. Or you can try and be a bit more civil, give a person a bit of space before assuming that all he wants is to soapbox, and possibly we can understand one another as fellow human beings, instead of you trying to shoehorn me into a designation of your liking on the first get go. I do understand of course. First post, you read it and it is all OVER the place, and seems to be wholey directed solely you ( I once again assure you it was not). ‘Who is this strange mutt of a man who has besmirched my good name by misspelling it and having the gall to disagree with various other comments made by other people in this chat’ etc, etc. As I said. I’m all for multiculturalism. But I’m for it for EVERYONE. That includes people who decide to wear a Pith Helmet and want to have “explorer” type characters.
Oh, dear that does come off as a bit rude and possibly unworthy, even of me – exclusionist that I am.
I’ll go on Excluding everyone who happens to be made of pure entropy, ok? Meanwhile, yours truly. Still Not Caring.
(And this lengthy spiel WAS solely for you Trinker. Hurray)
@Joshua:
1) People who do not care? Do not devote over 100 lines of text to telling people over and over and over that they do not care. You care very much that people are calling you out on your white privilege, you don’t like it one bit, and so you’re clinging to it like a lamprey.
2) If all you do is soapbox, people will not assume all you want is to soapbox, rather they will observe it.
3) Don’t make a tone argument.
4) Bingo.
@Joshua:
Perhaps the words of a Dead White Man will convince you better:
«La loi, dans un grand souci d’égalité, interdit aux riches comme aux pauvres de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.»
…or if you need the English translation:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” (Le Lys Rouge) – Anatole France
This “not caring” you’re doing is strangely partial to the status quo, and being welcoming to further displays of white supremacy, so long as it’s wrapped in pretty paper.
@ Mr Holzman-Tweed
1) Oh I care very much about steampunk. Once again, I have merely made the mistake of keeping my statement to it’s minimum requirement. Please reread the very first (albeit lengthy) ramble I made. I simply do not care very much about people. Any people. As I prefer to make judgments on an individual basis. As to White Privilege. I admit to it’s existence but as I did try (poorly perhaps) to state, it has little bearing on my life at it’s present moment. Any idea that I am important in the world has been fairly scraped away from me. Besides, I invite you to step down a darkened ally known for muggings, and then tell me that White Privilege will do anyone any good.
2)Perhaps I am mistaking the term Soapbox here, so perhaps you would be so kind as to present your definition of it. In my view though if I am soapboxing then so are you and a fair number of other commentators on this particular chat. Though I freely admit to the decently large possibility that I am wrong.
3) How about not make an argument period? If you are referring to tone as in skin tone, might I point out that a vast majority of those here have been using it as a basis for their own argument. If you are referring to it as in the tone of voice or tone of the words said, well I can agree that I have been quite confrontational. Normally I am not quite that way but, I do feel strongly on this issue, though it may be that I have mistaken a few statements made by others as inflammatory when they were not meant to be.
4)I don’t quite grasp this one (chalk it up to me missing something somewhere.). I’ll take it to mean that you have your opinions, I have mine, and we can both agree to disagree without resorting to violence and thinking that each other is a twerp.
@ Trinker-
Sadly I can’t say I’ve ever heard that quote by that particular man. Glad to see we are keeping this civil though. Frankly, however I feel that you are deeply mischaracterizing me based solely on what you perceive to be my love of the Status Quo. Fair enough, I can’t particularly dissuade you from that view, as as far as I am concerned the status quo is I work in fast food, receive minimal payment, and do my best to rent a place to live, while also buying groceries and paying bills and car insurance. If it’s in reference to my view on steampunk – that even the people who wear certain clothes without thinking of the ramifications of the past deserve to be able to go on doing that without people telling them how horrible they are for it- once again that is your right. Let me restate though. I am all for multiculturalism, and I would hardly think of whites as supreme. But then again, no one is supreme. None are better than others.
@ Joshua –
If you expended half as much energy toward trying to learn something here as you do spouting off without any real knowledge, you might come out of this better informed, and looking less idiotic.
Glorification of past racial injustice is often the refuge of the white-but-economically-disprivileged. It’s not any more excusable nor commendable for its commonness.
Would you have the same attitude about people choosing to cosplay in white sheets and pillowcases as you do about straight-up admiration of pith-helmet colonialism?
Your failure to do anything but dismiss the Anatole France quote speaks volumes.
Talk to me again when you’ve gained some clue. Or perhaps I should say “clew” in honor of the period.
@Joshua:
1) It’s good to hear you care about Steampunk. You assert there is something about which you do not care — this time you say it’s “people.” My point is simply that you spend enough time and energy claiming not to care about it that it is perfectly clear you do.
2) I’m perfectly happy to accept the idea that I’m soapboxing. You’re the one who objected to being characterized as soapboxing.
3) Google “tone argument.”
4) Google “White privilege bingo.”
@ Mr- Holzman-Tweed
1) Could be. I’m aware that trying to argue against, and with enough effort, can often be examples of such things. I personally feel however that I don’t care about people in such a way, despite of course rationally realizing that further arguing on the subject only furthers the proof. Then again I could just be trying to hammer the point home. I’m not exactly known for the ability to be subtle.
2)Ok, so then we are both soapboxing? I truly do need to recheck that word in the dicitionary. But if you are certain of it well, that is One person more certain of than I am at this point.
3) Googled. Unfortunately, while I do see your point, I am not saying that if they said it nicer I would agree with them. I simply personally do not care for the loud angry kinds of arguments. That’s not to say they are pointless. They just cause me to become erratic, fall to pieces even. Even on the internet. That is just me. Re: ” I’m something of a shut in”
4)Also Goggled. And yes I do see what you are getting at there. I can’t say I’ve ever wound up using more than two as far as I can tell. However, in my experience people pulling the White Privilege card out, rarely want an actual discussion so much as a “I am Right and anything you say is Wrong unless it agrees with me.” So I hope you won’t get offended if I say I’ll take most of it with a grain of salt.
And I still disagree with a lot of what has been posted. Don’t particularly hate anyone or think they are stupid or anything like that. I simply disagree on this particular subject.
I agree with the position on steampunk and time periods…
I see steampunk as more a 19th century global ideal rather than the typical Victorian Steampunk as presented mostly to the public.
I see steampunk as more of a frame of mind or guideline.. I see the concept of Indian Steampunk as just as valid as my German Steam punk or someone doing an American Indian Steampunk… they are all valid and can actually enhance the Steampunk genre.. to think that Steampunk is strictly victorian
ideal is rather short sighted and limiting.. Victorian time was a time of exploration and new cultures… We should bring that into the hobby..
Christoph
I have read the point many times…”I think steampunk is X and therefore some how it is indeed X”. Or “I’m steampunk and I’m not X so therefore steampunk can’t be X.” Zero logic. The original post had something to do with how outsiders see steampunk. I know steampunks see themselves in only the best possible light, there is endlessly self-glorification to that end. It doesn’t make it true or sway outsiders. It only reinforces the view of self indulgent, self centered white imperialists. True or not.
If steampunks wish to change how outsiders see them I don’t think telling us all we’re short sighted, dumb, mean, etc., really helps beyond making themselves feel better.
Wow, I googled steampunk and this is where I landed. You all have valid points, good luck with them. Still don’t know what steampunk is – not sure I want to anymore. We can’t change history, but by understanding it hopefully we can avoid repeating it. I was raised with the saying
“do unto others as you would have them do unto you” The world could use a little more of that I believe.
Glad you found us. Here’s a “steampunk for beginners” post you might be interested in. https://ageofsteam.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/steampunk-for-beginners/
“Besides, I invite you to step down a darkened ally known for muggings, and then tell me that White Privilege will do anyone any good.” – Joshua
Reading these words as a Black Puerto Rican Jewish Pagan Tridadian Cherokee Japanese Scottish French woman I am wondering, to what are you alluding?
Will White Privilege stop a mugging? Maybe-maybe not. If the White Person is “out of place” in that alley, the potential mugger may hesitate and think they are about to mug a police officer. Being White in an “ethnic” neighborhood may make you less of a target believe it or not. Ever notice how when race/color riots happen they occur in the very neighborhoods of those complaining? If I am mad at someone I don’t bomb my house, I bomb theirs (I AM NOT CONDONING VIOLENCE OF ANY TYPE!) But…why would Newark burn Newark down and not West Orange or LA burn itself to the ground and not BelAire? Ever look at crime stats and see that inner-city crime victims are more often those living in the inner-city? So in a very few words, you have in fact, made the point of several of the posters here you would probably rally against. In addition, White Privilege might allow police or “good samaritans” to respond quicker or provide you with more help than they would me.
Privilege comes in many many forms. The fact that I am using a computer means I am more privileged than someone who cannot or has no access to one. The fact that I am sitting at my job reading and responding means I am more privileged than someone unemployed. THE FACT THAN ANY OF US CAN ARGUE/CONVERSE/DEBATE USING $5 WORDS MEANS WE ARE MORE PRIVILEGED THAN THOSE UNEDUCATED OR ILLITERATE. The fact that I may suffer racism, sexism and bias based on my religion, ethnicity, etc. does not negate the effect these same “isms” have on others less able to fight for themselves. I am a Black woman in America- do I suffer as a result? Absolutely. Do I suffer as much or in the same way as an African woman in Cameroon? Absolutely not. I am PRIVILEGED not to. However, the fact that I do not know from where I hail as a woman of African blood or the name of my tribe, language, gods, favorite food or family means that the effects of colonialism still exist. Is it YOUR fault? “Your” as in anyone on this site? I am comfortable saying “no.” However, when “you” choose not to accept the reality that there are still people who suffer due to occurrences of years past “you” are contributing to its existence and continuation.
If you wish to not acknowledge White privilege and to engage in the: “let them eat cake” attitude of the privileged it is certainly your privilege to do so.
I read Charlie’s post at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/10/the-hard-edge-of-empire.html and his rant was less about Empire and more about how awful Victorian England was to the majority of people. His real rant was that Steampunk appears to be everywhere and is becoming a parody of its own invention.
You complain
“that the ignorance of someone who’s not involved deeply in steampunk, and the impression steampunk is giving outsiders. The first is easily ignored, or would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that shit like Stross’ rant makes us look bad, no matter how into steampunk we are.”
So change that perception. If the outside world considers Steampunk one thing but you personally thik it should be something else, you haveto educate and take along enough minds to agree, otherwise you need to come up with a new termfor your vision.
”
Ask any one steampunk to define the genre, what do we get? Very often, the following words are part of the phrase: “19th century,” “Victorian,” “England.””
So are you annoyed that Charlie states that Steampunk to the average Joe means one thing and you want something else or that when he says the reality of Victorian England was a harsh nightmare for most, you don’t want it so?
Did you read all of Charlie’s post? He dislikes the sugary view of Victorian England. He thinks that there is more to it and he hates the influx of pot-boiler novels. I think really you are both on the same side.
In the end, Steampunk is a fantasy make believe world. We all get to choose what we want for it. If you want to take Steampunk to somewhere away from Victorian England, that is fine. If FredTownward wants a rosey colonialism, that is up to him. If I want Spacecats ruling and a new Monarchy*, that surely is up to me whether you or anyone else think I am doing it wrong or not.
*Actually in mine we discover the diesel engine and then go on to make valves and ultimately computerchips, but then, I live in England, we have a royal family and I work as an inventor for real life. The only difference is I wish half the population did not have the vote, but then I never really got on with anyone south of Watford.
@Peter Davidson: I’d have really liked it if Stross’ article acknowledge that Steampunk includes, and includes rather prominently, people like Jha, and Moniqueill, and Ay-Leen, and I could list us all day long, this bunch of Steampunks who’ve been using Steampunk to critique and deconstruct and do anything but glorify Victorian empire for years before Stross wrote his essay.
But then he’d have to have written an entirely different essay. You know, one that doesn’t erase the existence and voices of People of Color in Steampunk. On the other hand, that might have been a good essay.
I think we reflexively hear “imperialism” and “colonialism” so much in the post Edward Said periods that we think that empire, as an object, is inherently immoral and wrong and I think that’s just wrong.
It is true there have been many repressive and oppressive empires out there, but every progressive society has also been an empire.
Athens, source of democracy and the beginnings of Western science and culture…also an empire.
Rome, rule of law, religious and ethnic pluralism, engineering etc. Empire.
British Empire: Industrial advancement, Parliamentary gov’t, individual liberties, Obviously an empire.
This is also not a reflexively West vs. East thing. Ashoka’s embrace of Buddhism, The establishment of the Han Confucian civil bureaucracy, the attainment of medicine, algebra, astronomy under the Abbasids, the Aztec calendar, Incan engineering, The great stone houses of Zimbabwe, all imperial contexts.
Some are larger than others, but all have the same features, strong cultural ties, large economies, expansive trade, efficient civil institutions, and of course, large militaries.
I know that this is an extremely distasteful idea to some, because of long years of academic presumption, that empires are inherently bad, but as we reap the technological, cultural and social benefits of empire, it’s pretty hypocritical to pretend to stand with indigenous peoples and cry against the calumny of empire.
I know that’s the message of movies like Avatar and others, but honestly, who among us would trade their positions with any of these indigenous peoples?
Instead of uncritically banding about the term “empire” like it’s a naughty word, let’s critical examine the benefits of our society and try to act as benevolently as possible and extend the benefits of the society to everyone in the world without hypocrisy or condescension if we can.
We can separate the wheat from the chaff and project the best outward.
Or let me put it another way.
I’m an author and steampunk as a genre depends a lot on the free time and enterprise of individuals living in the western world who have that free time because of the opportunities created from the free market system. That free market system exists in large part because we maintain large armies that secure for us a safe zone to free exchange ideas, goods and services. (Let’s leave out whether the precise actions of those militaries have been moral or not for the moment. Suffice it say I think they have not.) Either way, regardless of our latest military adventures, we still maintain armies to secure this zone. That is the benefit of empire.
We are not writing these comments with reed pens we cut ourselves, but on machines supported by rare minerals that in many cases came from far off countries, mined under circumstances that are less than ideal, and negotiated under terms to our advantage because of our large trading base and those militaries.
That is empire. We simply can not remove ourselves from it. And we would be hypocritical to condemn it as long as we are part of it, and no one REALLY wants to leave it anyway. I like my laptop and it is a great vehicle for good. I just want every person working in a chinese rare earth mine to have the opportunity to buy one themselves from the wages they made in a safe environment.
But let’s not kid ourselves, we are far from that.
Getting back to Steampunk as a form of romanticizing empire, I think one of the appeals of the genre is the civilizational confidence that accompanies empire. It’s not the empire we love, it’s the feeling of opportunities that comes with living in an empire. Let’s face it, there are no steampunk cons or gathering in Darfur. But there SHOULD be, hopefully someday. I worked with refugees from Liberia a decade ago and I can tell you, what a transformation it was for them to come to America and see all this potential. I wish that they will see it in their own country someday.
What I think people seek in Steampunk is that potential, it is that spirit, that joy of discovery, without the taint of colonialism. I think back to JFK’s inaugural address and the concept of a New Frontier. The last time we had such generational confidence in ourselves.
Can we make an empire that is benevolent and to the benefit of all (or nearly all) it’s members? I think we can and will but it will take time.
One last note…how is it the spellchecker doesn’t recognize “Steampunk?!”
Our system can be called an empire just as it can be called fascist, socialist, communism, etc. It gets call everything by someone, somewhere, everyday. And all those labels can be defended to some degree. But you don’t hear our system being called an empire very often because it’s so inaccurate it borders on silliness.
Yes there are some grand empires out there, if we use the term as loose as possible. Certainly more true if you’re part of the empire. Saudi Arabia for example is a great little kingdom that would make Queen Vic seem like a loose woman. Subjects want for ever little. Gasoline is 50 cents/gal, health care provided, cheap housing, food subsidies, well, everything subsidies, no taxes. What’s not to love? You only have to do one thing, exactly what the king says to do. If I were a veal calf it might seem like a pretty sweet deal…but I’m not.
And that is the concept steampunks will never understand. There are a lot of people in the world who would rather lose all those empire perks for a chance at a bit more freedom. I see your prospective. I live in Arizona and am surrounded by many people who feel a police state is better than an open system. They’re afraid of everything and that false sense of security is very appealing to them. An empire would be perfect for them. I understand the appeal to them as I understand the appeal of being Lords in an empire.
But the concept that imperialism brought us all computers, the internet, cell phones and every other cool gadget is silly. I’m sure it can be defended but still silly. Sure, sailing to a weaker country and stealing everything possible and sending it back home is indeed a great system for the folks back home. Never been very sustainable. And yes India I guess should thank Britain for the great roads and railroads left behind once all the stuff that could be taken away on those roads and rails were gone. And Britain did all that great “work” without even being asked. Seems a high price though.
@Waterbug: “And that is the concept steampunks will never understand.”
A month later and you still don’t get that pretty much everyone in this very thread, including the OP, who has posted to critique empire is a Steampunk. Mindboggling.
Tweed,
True from a steampunk prespective. Inside steampunk the definition of steampunk includes all. To be steampunk you only have to call yourself steampunk. It’s a valuable definition for a group desperate to grow in numbers if not in understanding. It’s also valuable in discussion because any perceived slight is easily deflected with the standard “steampunk is everything execpt that”. Obivously people outside of steampunk who wish to have a serious discussion cannot accept that definition because it’s meaningless and self serving.
By my definition an embrace of empire is a requirement to being steampunk. The second largest steampunk forum is called “The Steampunk Empire” so I feel on safe ground with my definition.
If you consider youself steampunk and are trying to change the view of all other steampunks I wish you good luck. If you succeed I don’t know what you’d have but I would not see any point to calling it steampunk.
@Waterbug: Once it’s understood that you have your own private definition of “Steampunk” that requires an embrace of empire, it should be clear that dialog with Jha, Jeannie Lin, Noah B, modiciai, suzanneleazar, Jeff Lilly, George Spelvin, Austin Sirkin, Moniquill, Mia, Aro, Mely, Amal, Jade, Trinker, Chris, Dorothy Winterman and I is impossible because you and they can’t even agree on whether or not they qualify as Steampunk. The difference is at first principles.
Given that I’ve just listed eighteen Steampunks from this thread alone who have no problem doing Steampunk without embracing empire, the validity of your definition seems highly questionable, to say the least.
18 is indeed a larger number than 1. Should I now list the 7,000 to 10,000 members of Brass Goggles & The Steampunk Empire? Say only 4,000 of those are considered in this definition by numbers. Only 0.45% of them would have embrace empire as being a part of steampunk for my definition to win based on your own criteria. So I’m sorry, I stand pat.
Beyond numbers I also consider what people do and write. Simply saying they don’t embrace empire means little to me. Few ever say they embrace empires. It isn’t cool. But their actions and words show they have both arms fully around the ankles of empire and are kissing its feet.
I considered myself steampunk for a few years. But as I started to see the pro-empire perspective in steampunk it clashed with my beliefs. The speech limits in most forums, the class rankings of members didn’t match my values. I also disliked goggles and the over use of gears as decorative elements, like on this very web page. At some point I questioned how I could be steampunk and also be against almost everything that defined it. Obviously I had never been steampunk at all.
Of the 18 listed how many will consider themselves steampunks in a year? Two years?
The complete lack of any definition of the steampunk lifestyle causes these types of misunderstandings.
What do the 18 propose steampunks should do to show they don’t embrace empires, beyond just saying it, which I have ready endlessly for years. Should “The Steampunk Empire” change its name to the “The Steampunk Freemen”? Should steampunks stop using high ranking military and royal titles? Should they stop dressing as “the upper class”? Should they use commoner speech and drop the aristocrat prose?
What would remain?
Even in the air pirate wing of steampunk, the one case for anti-empire in steampunk, there is still a strong bias for classes as most want to be an air marshal. And they generally call themselves Air Pirates and only tack on the steampunk sometimes.
@Waterbug-
I have been “Steampunk” before such terms were clearly established in the mainstream. Corsets, long skirts and hats were a part of my wardrobe in law school (1992-1995). I am steampunk- yesterday, today and tomorrow. Period. My mannerisms are more reminiscent of yester-year than of today and my speech patterns considered odd in this day and age of truly vulgar parlance.
However, I am quite comfortable not embracing “empire” or shall we just say it aloud- the imperalism of White Europe and Europeans against those they felt superior to and over. Perhaps I am too blunt or too aware (no, there is no such thing) but I will say that many who now embrace steampunk do so to fantasize about being more and something they are not. I shall now differentiate between a role-playing SP and a SP for life. I am the latter. Many of us who have responded are the latter- we reject the crassness of today, the overt and blatent sexuality, the homophobia, the gender hatred and racism, classism, etc. So we take what pleases us from one time period and interject it into or day to day realities. We carry parasols generally. We wear long skirts or dresses and possessed waist cinchers and corsets before they became popular at Rainbow shops. We frequented Goodwill and vintage shops for “oddities” and cameos. We treat each other and others with the dignity and respect of a by-gone age and yes- we enjoy tea. But we bring our understanding of “isms” and hatred with today’s eye and vision and we can see the results of the empires others are role-playing. We know what slavery did to the Americas and genocide did to the first nations. We see what happened to Jews as they immigrated here and the actions taken against those of the East through literature and legislation- we ALL SUFFER from the age of empires and imperalism- some of us are comfortable enough to admit it- others are not and they are the ones who role play. They take pride in pretending- and that is fine for them. The put on British accents even if the time period of the Victorian age happened simultaneously throughout the world at the very same time. A French, Spanish, Hungarian, Moroccan, American, Japanese accent would be just as appropriate and historically accurate because these countries existed and had history occur within their borders as well. People who pretend to become the “upper crust” are those that are comfortable with the idea of being and remaining priviledged and then turning it up a notch. Being “upper class” in that time period had less to do with dress and mannerisms and more to do with birth and dare I say most people role-playing SP “royalty” are probably not high-born gentry but merely those uncomfortable with being a laborer or cad or part of the much larger lower classes- again a sign of being very comfortable with one’s priviledge and a need to portray oneself as something other than. I do it when I make my outfits- instead of being a day-to-day African woman living in Benin/Dahomey in 1868 I chose to portray a female warrior of that time period instead. Steampunk? You betcha. Aside from working laser sights I was showing a historically accurate (even if I took liberties in the clothing and style) depiction of what was happening in Benin during that time period that encompassed the Victorian era. But I am privileged to do so and comfortable enough to acknowledge said priviledge.
I believe, and please Jha, correct me if I am wrong, the purpose of this thread is to do just that- acknowledge your priviledge, accept its role in your costuming/role playing choices, give credit where credit is due, be respectful of the cultures the oppressors/empire builders of the Victorian age disrespected and accept the fact that terrible, culture-destroying aspects of the Victorian age are as real and tangible as top hats and bustles (usurped by White men invading Africa who were entranced by the larger, shapely posteriors of the African women and brought home the idea of enlarging the backside of their women so they could in turn “role play”with their wives). No one can make you feel guilty without your consent and participation and that is certainly not the goal here. But we (those mentioned by Daniel above) are not known to hold our tongues- we are and will remain blunt, inquisitive, challenging and ready to forge new paths and roads through this mire and new territory- and what, may I ask, is more steampunk than that?
Cheers
@Waterbug: Dorothy has done an excellent counter-point, so all I’ll do is quickly point out some logic errors you’ve got going.
You seem to assume that, for example, membership in the “Steampunk Empire” social network indicates endorsement of empire as a political system. Given that Jha, Dorothy, Moniquill, and a whole lot of other Steampunks who reject, critique, and deconstruct empire are on that site, that assumption doesn’t seem warranted. I find myself similarly skeptical that every single member of Brass Goggles embraces empire, you’ll have to make that case.
If all you ever find amongst Steampunks are “upper crust,” royalty, and Air Marshalls, I really have to wonder what circles you were traveling in. Purely in terms of costuming, there was no shortage of mechanics, enlisted soldiers, sailors, civilians, workers, and all other sorts of costumes in evidence at Steampunk World’s Fair this year.
That said, even amongst those who do adopt those trappings, it is an error to assume that they are embracing empire, or even British empire. Professor Elemental is mocking British Imperialism, not embracing it. The General is critiquing rampant militarism — and doing it from a perspective one only gets as an enlisted soldier. The list does go on.
Could it be that you found Steampunk so distasteful and incompatible with your beliefs simply because you don’t get it? Could it be that you don’t get it because you persist in this insistence that when people speak and act, those words and actions can only mean what you want them to, not what they want them to?
I totally get steampunks want to be perceived as taking the politically acceptable bits from the Victorian while saying you’re against all the bad stuff. Of course, all propaganda does this. It’s the job of every member of any group to tow that line.
Me convince steampunks that there are any pro-empire feelings in steampunk? An impossible task. Being pro-empire is not cool and steampunks by steampunks’ definition are cool. Therefore it is an impossibility. That I get.
I can only convince myself. When an Imperial Over Lord from “The Steampunk Empire” tells me he’s anti-empire while speaking from a heavily censored forum, dressed in a General’s uniform from the Anglo-Boer War I kind of get a mixed message. I know this person wants me to totally believe what he’s saying and forget everything else, but I kind of have to follow my own common sense. I know “I don’t get it” from your perspective. That I totally get.
I don’t want to convince you all of anything other than there is at least one person in the world that isn’t buying what you’re selling. And I’m also talking about the dancing around the anti or kind of sorta some parts anti-empire talk here.
I would think the steampunk empire could handle a single dissenter.
Small points:
Victorians had many classes. Class by birth was important but small numerically. Military service, political power and wealth could put a person or family into a higher class. The line between lower and upper is not an actual line. One thing I’ve always found to be true is that most steampunks really have little Victorian knowledge. Most understanding seems to come from fiction movies and books.
Steampunks dressing as mechanics, enlisted soldiers, sailors, civilians and workers? Maybe at fairs. Never been to one. Those costumes are easier to make. I’ve seen a few online, but almost all online steampunks are the Over Lord type deals. Easier to doctor a single photo and adopt a long and impressive title.
And to repeat myself…that there are 2 or 3, or 18 people in all of steampundom who take an even mildly anti-empire position will never define steampunk no matter how much they think they speak for steampunk. Steampunk is defined by the entirety.
@Waterbug:
Victorians had many classes. Class by birth was important but small numerically. Military service, political power and wealth could put a person or family into a higher class. The line between lower and upper is not an actual line. One thing I’ve always found to be true is that most steampunks really have little Victorian knowledge. Most understanding seems to come from fiction movies and books.
Most understanding of history comes from books and writings. Where would you have gotten your “knowledge”? And your knowledge seems a bit skewed. Classism was rampant. One could no less be born in a gutter and become a lord then as one may be born in a ghetto and become president now. I sincerely doubt butchers daughters were marrying generals and raising dukes. Why- because of the difference in their births. That’s what classism is and if you do not believe classism existed and was kept alive and whole in the Victorian era I must thoroughly question from where you obtain your information. Also never forget history is just that- HIS- STORY and it is written by the winners- imperialism/racism/sexism/empire won and they are the ones who wrote their perspectives.
While many can state that they are “anti colonialism” the proof is in the pudding- if you will. Some steampunks like the fantasy aspect and do not wish to see or learn other ideas, ideals and perspectives. That is their choice – the world would not function well if everyone was informed- sheep are needed in this pasture to keep the cogs moving- if you will. However as someone who was at the SPWF and attended the multicultural panels I must say there were many more than 18 people in those rooms and at the flash labor mob and rally. Some wish to see beyond themselves and others do not. Both are equally fine so long as both are equally honest about why they do what they do. Those jumping upon the “anti imperalism” wagon just be different are just as wrong as those jumping away from the wagon just to be the same as othe kool-aid drinkers. “To thine ownself be true” even if your (meaning the general “you” and not you specifically) truth involves racist, sexist, homophobic, pro-colonialism thoughts and beliefs. But as someone still feeling the effects of slavery, genocide, anti semitism, sexism, the Trail of Tears and other colonialist actions I cannot turn a blind eye or deaf ear to what others portray without asking them personally are they completely aware of who and what they are portraying. If they say “yes” then even if their truth does not comport with mine, it is still THEIR truth. However if someone does NOT know other aspects of the time period especially ones occurring in other areas of the world then why not discuss such differences over a spot of tea? Undoubtedly we will both learn something.
When I said “Victorians had many classes” somehow that means I don’t think “Classism was rampant”? You’re free to read it how you like I guess.
“One could no less be born in a gutter and become a lord then as one may be born in a ghetto and become president now.” Robert Cain is the Victorian poster boy for social mobility. Born in a slum, became a merchant and wealthy which provided political influence and status. There are lots of example, easily Googled.
As for presidents I don’t know what your definition of a ghetto is but President Obama wasn’t exactly born in Beverly Hills. Many people consider him to be from a “poor family”. Is that not ghetto enough?
You really think if Obama’s birth place was a touch rougher he would have had no chance at President?
Andrew Johnson was raised in poverty and was an indentured servant. Ghetto enough?
I’m guessing I could never provide enough examples, that each would be dismissed. Indentured servant, that’s not ghetto! From slum to one of the most powerful men in Britain sure, but he didn’t marry the Queen! Internet forums…pointless babble.
That’s as far as I made it through your post. Endless word splitting and spin gets boring pretty fast. Good day.
Sir you believe your small incidents make the general reality more true. President Obama also went to Harvard- had he been truly born in a ghetto (perhaps you do not truly understand poverty because it is quite apparent you do not understand much) Harvard would have unfortunately been a virtual impossibility. Ever been to a true ghetto? No you probably have not- being Black and living somewhere does not mean it is automatically a ghetto- how racist of you to believe such. Tsk tsk. President Obama was one of the lucky few and he had opportunities millions upon millions did not. Period. But for every President Obama there are nameless, faceless thousands who remain in their plight due to a lack of real chances and opportunities and for every President Jackson how many millions from then until today have been ignored, lost and remained poverty-stricken. Googling their names will result in nothing because as I said HIS-STORY is written by the winners and not those marginalized as a rule. There are always exceptions. But since you could not read through all of my previous post I shall assume you have not done so with this one and that is neither a loss to me or those who understand what is being said here. You are entitled to your own opinion- that is what makes the world go ’round. But in my opinion you sir, have shown yourself to be no gentleman and someone who wishes to teach without learning. One cannot be done with the other and thus I wish you well on whatever journey you take although your path is crystal clear. If you do not like this forum and disagree with it you have options available to you. Those of us here who live with the results of imperalism and empire daily will not remain quiet or allow others to dictate how we are steampunk. I believe you to be part of the role-playing group and not one of us who live the life. It takes all kinds and to each his own. So I bid you fare well and hope one day the vitriol you spew trying to “teach” can be reversed into learning something- even things that make you uncomfortable because that’s when true learning occurs.
Yeah, I kind of saw the “small incidents make the general reality more true” comment coming. I wonder if I wrote a book on the subject if that would be enough. I don’t think so as many books have already been written on the subject.
It’s sad you think no one from a “ghetto” can ever go to Harvard.
I wish you had led with the HIS-STORY comment as it would shorten the discussion. Having no faith in written history makes discussion insane. There is no frame of reference.
I am nether part of any steampunk role playing group or one of “you”, the true steampunks I’m guessing. I am in no way any kind of member of anything steampunk. But thanks for guessing and labeling me an obvious short comer.
Good day.
@Waterbug:
“I don’t want to convince you all of anything other than there is at least one person in the world that isn’t buying what you’re selling.”
Which only leaves us to wonder why the non-buyer is reading an essay about Steampunk Postcoloniality in a Steampunk blog in the first place.
“And I’m also talking about the dancing around the anti or kind of sorta some parts anti-empire talk here.”
I’m really unclear what part of Jha’s essay you take to be dancing around anything.
“I would think the steampunk empire could handle a single dissenter.”
I sincerely hope you mean “the steampunk empire” here as some sort of snarky euphamism, because if you think it’s a concept in any taken seriously by Steampunks beyond the name of a web site, your reality severely gone off the rails.
Truth is, Steampunk can handle a million dissenters. If anything, I’m trying to get you to step up the quality of your dissent so that it at least engages the people at whom you’re dissenting.
@ Waterbug
It’s sad you think no one from a “ghetto” can ever go to Harvard.
How DARE you make such a statement. What I said is most youth from ghettos do not have the same opportunities in education, scholarships, support as those from wealthier/priviledges backgrounds. I have worked in real ghettos- and being Black or merely poor is not a pre-requisite. My parents grew up poor yet educated by their parents- but neither lived in a ghetto. Both grew up in the South Bronx- but neither grew up in a ghetto. A ghetto is akin to the Ozarks but with taller buildings. Blackness and being poor does not a ghetto make- abject poverty does. The attitiude of those around you both the residents and those providing “services” to the residents as well creates and maintains a ghetto. In a ghetto you are told you are worthless by everyone and everything around you- it is as mind and soul numbing as one can experience. And so I stand by my statement that most people born in a true ghetto do not get to Harvard and I have worked with agencies my entire life to ensure that the truth of this statement eventually dies with time. Perhaps that is why when children from ghettos or the Ozarks or abuse or homelessness make it into Harvard it is applauded much louder than when another Kennedy is admitted- because it is a rare and stunning achievement for that person, their family and those within their community who helped make it happen.
I wish you had led with the HIS-STORY comment as it would shorten the discussion. Having no faith in written history makes discussion insane. There is no frame of reference.
But history is that- HIS STORY and it is told by the winners. Yes- it is a frame of reference- one side of one story told by those who survived to tell it. When is the last time you read any historical mediums from the Aztecs or the Tainos or Caribs but we have plenty of “accounts” from the Spaniards who invaded and murdered these groups. How many histories have you read from the men, women and children condemmed to die during the Burning times versus the accounts of the “witch hunters”? Read many accounts of the Africans who were placed on boats during the Middle Passage or do we see the placards of “slave auctions” once these humans reached American shores? So yes they are all history- from certain perspectives. Have you read Howard Zinn or do you obtain your facts merely from books you are presented and told to read? Ever read any history books that have been deconstructed by survivors of certain atrocities or more modern historians?
Sir, I am quite as able to dismiss one’s opinions as you are. The difference I believe between us is I dismiss not because I dislike what someone says- I dismiss when what they are saying is inaccurate, biased, uninformed and generally poppycock. And a good day to you as well.