It’s a common adage that sometimes the answer to complex problems lies in simple solutions. Similarly, our complex industrialized lives could use some simple hands-on technology. If you took stock of your possessions, what could you fix yourself? What would you have to keep buying? Unfortunately, we are beset by the pressure to consume as much as possible to get our money’s worth—what can we produce ourselves instead?
Addressing Ability and Accessibility
The use of the DIY ethos so encouraged in steampunk has applications beyond costuming and props, beyond replicating little Victorian machines and refurbishing vintage gadgets. Steampunk believes in constant improvement; few Makers ever stop fiddling with their work.
Yet the concept of the perfect human body has always dogged us, becoming even more entrenched during the era of scientific progress. Many Western cultures are fixated on this, and aberrations from this ideal are medical conditions that must be treated and “fixed.” Going back to our relationship with nature made manifest in our technology, so, too, has our relationship to human bodies changed, and now ruled, by the technology that a culture of consumerist convenience produces. Things must be made easily and cheaply; everything should be standardized; anything that does not fit this standard must be customized at greater cost.
This affects a wide range of people, as there is no such thing as a standard human being, with a standard body, and a standard mental capacity. Yet we live with expectations of bodily averages: you can’t be too fat, or too thin. You should be able to walk, or be mobile to some extent, according to the average person’s capacity. The reality that many people do not, and cannot, is so disregarded, that laws, such as the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) must be created before it is even a consideration. Even then, loopholes are constantly sought after, just to cut costs.
In steampunk, prosthetic limbs, mechanical appendages, and assorted gadgets already exist as assistive devices, making up for some part of human weakness. Although it’s easily read in pulp fiction as a common desire to be stronger, it also offers an alternative way of thinking about the human body— namely, that what is a physical disability is simply only an obstacle because too often, people with no physical problems don’t do anything to help people who do have any variety of physical conditions.
Steampunk favours visible technology, and people with physical disabilities can lay claim to that, to raise their own visibility, and assert their right to participate in public spaces without obstacle. Such technology reveals the flaws of an able-bodied society that strives so hard for bodily averages, people with disabilities are ignored at best, killed at worst, simply because mainstream society doesn’t want to “accommodate” people with disabilities. Disabled steampunks are already involved across various physical spectrums: witness the accessorized wheelchairs and scooters, the canes and crutches. Any steampunk revolution must be wheelchair-accessible.
In steampunk, con-goers are already mindful of the amount of space taken up by costumes and props; we must extend this mindfulness towards people who require physical space in daily life, not just in costume. If you have a physical disability, how do you want your assistive devices shaped and made? How can we create them so these can be easily repaired? If steampunk DIY places the power of creation and modification in the hands of people, not corporations, then it should also empower those of us who use assistive devices in meaningful ways.
This extends to how we think of other bodies that don’t conform to what we consider to be “average” and thus “human.” If we lay aside any claims to bodily norms, how does our thinking towards transgender, transsexual, or intersex people change? We must let go of the harmful ideals of what humans should look like, in favour of a society that enables people to just be themselves.
And what of non-evident disabilities, such as mental illness and autism? If we let go of a bodily ideal, how does our perception of what is “neurotypical” or mental health change? Steampunk is a valuable creative outlet for people with mental health issues. However, the mad scientist trope, combining both pathological behaviour and physical disability in a dangerous conflation, remains a popular trope. How do these tropes change with a shift in attitudes towards disability?
Visibility and Representations
Such considerations remind us that treating everyone equally is not treating everyone the same. It is thus worthwhile exploring how non-normative bodies are represented in steampunk media, especially media that draws heavily from history. This also applies to racialized peoples, living with histories that are either co-opted, rewritten or erased.
Due to the focus on steam technology (as evidenced by its name), steampunk tends to center around the era that most utilized and developed steam: the nineteenth century, which just so happened to be the height of European conquest and colonialism. As many assume historical distance from the events that set the world on its current course, they feel free to re-imagine the era as a more positive time: of change (capitalism!) and discovery (Darwin!), when visible progress was achieved (the Industrial Revolution!). Because of cultural imperialism, it is difficult to divorce British/Western European supremacy from historical narratives. However, with the rising prominence of antiracist activism, it is not impossible to dream of alternatives. In fact, there are very few reasons why we should not address stereotypes created and perpetuated in the past while refraining from creating new, equally destructive ones.
Unfortunately, too often it is assumed that people who do not have an Anglo cultural/historical background would find no appeal in steampunk. Many people of colour performing non-white steampunk are still told that steampunk must remain rooted in Victoriana, or subscribe to racist stereotypes of the period, to be recognizable. This is untrue and unfair, as it implies that narratives that do not have the same standards of success as the dominant one are not worth as much, and thus not worth owning. Marilyn French wrote in the preface of the first book in her four-volume From Eve to Dawn, “I wrote this history because I needed a story to make sense of what I knew of the past and what I saw in the present.” Similarly, those of marginalized histories can explore these histories to make sense of the past that led to our present. Doing this can connect us to our heritage and root us in an identity larger than ourselves, if that is what we want.
But where to begin as a non-white person participating in a discourse that either spends too little time fitting in non-white peoples, or tokenizes them? There are many steps to take as people of colour, among them reclamation of the histories that are so rarely spoken of in mainstream media. N. K. Jemisin’s story in this anthology, “The Effluent Engine,” is a clear example of this, exploring white supremacy and various mechanisms of racism between black people of different shades. It uses steampunk to break away from the narrative of Haiti’s dependence on the States and Europe for support.
Paolo Chikiamco’s “On Wooden Wings,” also in this anthology, infuses steampunk with Filipino history and a story of race relations specific to the region, centering Filipino actors in a genre that often sidelines them. Chikiamco had been working on the reclamation of Filipino heritage before writing “On Wooden Wings,” editing Alternative Alamat, an anthology that places a modern SFF spin on Filipino myths and legends. Or, further from literature into the realm of the material, we have Massoud Hassani’s Mine Kafon, a large ball of sticks shaped like a dandelion head designed to be blown by the wind onto minefields, detonating mines. While not specifically steampunk, Massoud Hassani’s project draws directly on his personal history in Afghanistan, and his invention draws direct attention to the effects of U.S. military imperialism in the region and its continued echoes in the present.
There are questions people of colour must ask of themselves as well: do I participate in the auto-exoticism? Am I perpetuating a racial stereotype in my dress, media, and performance? Do I dress to stand out, and how? Or do I dress to blend in, somewhat, while still participating in an extraordinary aesthetic? It is only when people of colour particip
ate fully and honestly in steampunk without holding ourselves back from the common fear of discrimination that we can truly celebrate inclusivity and multiculturalism in steampunk.
However, “multicultural steampunk” has become a new social cachet in many white steampunk circles; it is often code for non-white (or non-Victorian) steampunk imagined through a white gaze. It is also very aesthetic-based, and more to do with play than with engagement. The knowledge gained is rarely connected to the humanity of the people whose culture is being re-imagined, but rather is turned into a commodity item that can be mixed-and-matched at will, while the people whose culture is being explored remain sidelined.
Steampunks must recognize the politics of terms such as “multiculturalism” and “cultural exchange” versus “cultural appropriation,” because the power to aestheticize a cultural product that is representative of a culture is not an artistic license, but is granted by a long history of imperialism and cultural domination. It has enormous implications for non-white peoples, who remain “stigmatised, exotified, and patronised, if not subjected to physical violence, for practicing their culture, [while] white people selectively taking on aspects of these cultures often gain a great deal of fame and praise” (Fire Fly, 2012). Individual intention stops mattering in the face of these global trends, but in many conversations between white people and people of colour, this is often where we reach a stand-still, as white people scramble to defend themselves from accusations of racism on a personal level.
This is why multicultural steampunk must move from mere aesthetic into active policies that center non-white steampunks and steampunks of colour, and provide ample opportunity and encouragement to reclaim, retell, represent their own histories in narratives that will run counter to a world that would rather do violence to them than let them speak. We must move beyond racism as individual acts towards people of colour, and mark how whole societal trends bend towards favouring white people, and people privileged by whiteness must figure out how to confront their complicity without becoming paralysed with guilt. Since cultural appropriation is more than non-white people getting mad that you’re using the wrong buttons, what becomes the next step towards acknowledging the act without resorting to self-defensiveness and the insistence of innocence and goodness?
So many histories are ignored to uphold racist systems; every person of colour inherits at least one such history. And these histories are told as if they are separate and irrelevant, rather than interwoven into the larger narrative. Or suppressed so they do not threaten the status quo. We must be able to reconnect with our own histories if we are to be able to truly connect between peoples for solidarity purposes. Where better to do this, than in the spectacle of steampunk? We can claim our place there, and our right to write the next chapter of our stories for ourselves.
Connecting Across History
Steampunk is fascinating for many reasons, among them a curiosity about and love for history. Steampunks find themselves connecting between generations as younger participants outfit themselves with fashions that older people recognize. Depending on your personal history, this can be an occasion of joyous reconnection, or an awkward moment of unfamiliarity and distance. While steampunk is certainly an outlet to create whole worlds from scratch, steampunk is also a communal aesthetic.
We live in a world where corporations and various institutions demand that people pick themselves, their families and their lives up from one end of the country to the other. We are encouraged to be rugged individuals, moving out of our parents’ place to form our own nuclear family households. We are encouraged to be prettier, stronger, healthier, and more efficient by buying and consuming various products, as individuals.
Steampunk has already provided people with excuses to get out and meet— witness the conventions and groups that keep popping up all over the Americas, from Sociedad Steampunk Argentina to the Toronto Steampunk Society. Steampunk groups now dot Europe. Whole families get involved. Younger people have access to the knowledge of the past held by the elder generation, and children get to see multigenerational friendships in action.
This calls for us to think about what we produce, and how these products affect our relationships with other people. If we know how to connect intergenerationally between living people, and how to connect with people long faded into history, then we have the tools to connect with future generations. If we can understand how the past has affected us today, then the next logical step is to understand how our actions will affect future generations.
Steampunk differs from other reenactment groups: it is not married to historical accuracy. It is driven by a modern sensibility that has the affluence to wield and understand technology, using technology to comprehend the intergenerational reverberations of actions taken today and in the past. If steampunk can teach us something, perhaps it is to revise our relationship to history. Many of us all over the world have access to information about the past that is assumed to be long-dead. However, the Victorian era is not long-dead; it set in motion an age of colonialism and imperialism that still reverberates today. This is not a history to “get over” as if it existed in a bubble separate from ourselves; it is part of the process that has shaped our modern lives.
Escapism and Accountability
Steampunk is fun. In between connecting with many types of people, re-searching different fields of knowledge, seeing tangible projects come to life, dressing up and reading, there is a whole world of imagination.
However, too often, we decontextualize the knowledge we come across, not out of malice, but out of a self-centered desire for entertainment. We filch and stereotype, we create rules for our world of imagination, and in due process we exclude or re-create problematic representations that continue marginalizing people. Then we cover it up with the excuse of “it’s just fiction” or “it’s not real,” allowing colonial performance to pass under “satire.”
Everything that we do in any imagined world is informed by what is in our world. Thus, as much as we would like to celebrate other cultures or ways of being in our play, by insisting on the falseness of our worlds, we often put real problems of institutional prejudice at arm’s length and refuse to acknowledge the damage done to living people. We justify it under the spirit of seeking knowledge, and ignore the colonial power dynamics that allow for this kind of intellectual query. We hide behind enlightenment, claiming that anyone who doesn’t see beyond the problematic facade just isn’t “getting the joke.”
This is not limited to steampunk. It is simply more visible because of the subject matters that steampunk deals with: real and lived histories. Even claiming only the aesthetic for separate worlds draws clear lines back to our world. Perhaps steampunk is so compelling because it is an imaginative aesthetic that refuses to give up the real. The best steampunk draws fine lines between the real and the imagined, and uses the familiar to create the extraordinary.
The desire to stay true to the real is sometimes the dig. In conversations about multicultural steampunk regarding cultural appropriation, there are two axioms: “do your research” and “say sorry.” They are arguably applicable to most anything to do with marginalized groups, except few have recognized crip-drag as an actual problem. We often assume that doing research and saying sorry are good steps to avoiding flagrant displays of bigotry, that it is enough. But saying “sorry” means someone got hurt in the first place and has to accept the apology.
This is the problem with the axioms: it is not enough, and does nothing to address the underlying systems that allow these prejudices to continue unchecked. For all our love of history, we have yet to connect how our systems of institutionalized bigotry are present in the abuses that living people go through, normalized by the very histories that we play with in steampunk. Some of us must suffer microaggressive blunders that cut deep reminders of our marginalized bodies and must hold our tongues to keep the peace. Others play anticolonials, seeking to right the wrong of long-dead imperialists, but this instils a false s
ense of comfort that “we” know “better” while ignoring the continued imperialism of today.
We must not be afraid to hold ourselves and our peers accountable for any acts that we recognize as continuing the horrifically normalized legacy of the past. We must have the intellectual courage to confront the idea that we, too, participate in the perpetuation of systemic bigotry today and address it not just while we perform steampunk, but in all aspects of our lives. If we are to steampunk our lives, we must do it beyond play and ornamentation, and translate our skills of making the material into reshaping the immaterial.
Steampunk: Revolution
Steampunk is a very visual and materially oriented subculture. A sentiment I often hear is, “How would you steampunk that?” “That” being anything: how do you steampunk Chinese culture? How do you steampunk your clothes? How do you steampunk your food? (Jury’s still out on the last one.) Where do you buy this, how did you modify that, where did the materials to build such-and-such come from…? These are all questions that are common in steampunk spaces. It is easy to imagine, not so easy to enact.
Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution Page 47