Conlanging today: an infantile disorder?

My recent study of the history of utopianism and science fiction has spilled over into my musings about conlangers and speculations about alt culture. I think there is something essentially trivial about today's conlangers as there is about TV/cinematic sci fi. And therefore I think there is something grievously missed on the sociological plane by Arika Okrent who has otherwise rendered a great service by documenting this phenomenon. I also think that the otherwise admirable Sam Green made some serious and harmful errors in his two documentaries on utopias and Esperanto, for which Okrent is also egregiously guilty in the latter. She is a linguist, not a historian or social theorist. Thank Godless I'm a baby boomer. These younger folks have no sense of history.

 I am being uncustomarily diplomatic here.  Somewhere I wrote what is wrong with the Esperanto documentary. I think Sam compounded Okrent's misrepresentation of the era that produced Esperanto. As for the Four Utopias and Sam's documentary approach, Stephen Squibb nailed what is wrong with it.

I get constant updates in my Facebook newsfeed from conlangers, and while I find the resources available in this area far more sophisticated than what I recall being available in the era of marginal print culture when I was a teenager, something has declined in one area as sophistication has grown in another. In the old days, most of the conlangers (when the term did not exist) at least pretended to be interested in an international auxiliary language, with an admixture of eccentrics and outright cranks making big claims, especially those inventing a priori languages. (I am so glad I was finally able to acquire my own copy of Fuishiki Okamoto's 1962 book on BABM at the 2010 Esperanto USA congress, which I recall from my nerd salad days haunting the Buffalo main library.) In those days the figure most known for inventing languages for the hell of it was J.R.R. Tolkien (whose medieval nostalgia I soon learned to disdain), which he referred to as a guilty pleasure. It was something for male nerds just past puberty to do in those days, in a far more innocent but hardly idyllic time.

Now artificial languages are commissioned ad hoc for superficially sophisticated sci fi and fantasy films and TV shows. But Dothraki could not get me to endure Game of Thrones.  And my opinion of Avatar was none too favorable either. I have already expressed my "esteem" for Klingon (see the post reproduced below).

All of this reminds me of a visit to Buffalo in the past year, in which I was taken to a congregation of a sci fi film club, coincidentally located a block from where I grew up. I had to endure episode 6 of Star Wars all over again, a scenario so preposterous even the person who brought me found it dubious. Every stereotype you can imagine about this subculture is true; the reality is even worse, much seedier and much more awful than anything I grew up with. It's a sad case of arrested development.

There are, of course, a few conlangs of philosophical or ideological interest: Lojban, Laadan, maybe Toki Pona and a few others. I don't think so highly of these either, but the conlanging hobby as I see it flowing into my newsfeed strikes me as decidedly infantile, as infantile as blockbuster films and "reality" TV, more childish even than all the crackpot Esperantists combined I've encountered over the past 45 years. Esperanto, at least, was designed for a serious purpose, and its subcultures exist at least to communicate, and while conlanging is a creative endeavor as any other, most of it in the final analysis is as pointless and redundant as the latest American film or TV series. O Stanislaw Lem, where art thou when I need thee?

---

Sociology of Klingonism, 23 December 2010

If I could have projected my 14-year old self forward in time more than four decades, I would have reveled in today's conlanger world. While I outgrew direct involvement in this sort of thing, I retain an interest in documenting it, and I can more or less respect the hobby . . . except when it comes to Klingon. Arika Okrent has provided a forceful argument that involvement with Klingon is not contemptible after all, which almost had me convinced, but ultimately I revert to the anonymous cynic who insisted that the existence of Klingon speakers is an argument for forced sterilization.

Now comes this sociological study, parts of which I find quite fascinating, as Mr. Spock would. Who knew that Pierre Bourdieu would be marshaled to analyze the Klingon phenom?

Klingon as Linguistic Capital: A Sociologic Study of Nineteen Advanced Klingonists
[Hol Sup 'oH tlhIngan Hol'e' wa'maH Hut tlhIngan Hol po'wI' nughQeD ]
Yens Wahlgren, Bachelor’s thesis, Soc 346, 41–60 p, Spring semester 2004, Department of Sociology, Lund University
http://www.angelfire.com/trek/yensw/PDF/thesis.pdf

Esperanto is cited for comparison, including Peter Forster's 1982 sociological study, The Esperanto Movement.

One surprising--to me--twist here is the dissociation between Klingonists and Trekkies. (I think they prefer to be called Trekkers, but I prefer the more supercilious term). I would think that Klingonism would be Trekkiehood taken to the point of a psychotic break, but oddly, many Klingonists begin with a fascination with the language and not with the fictional universe from which it originates.

Many Klingonists seems to lose their interest in Star Trek after speaking Klingon a while. This may be a result of that the average age is higher among Klingonists than Klingon fans. Star Trek fandom is in many ways a youth culture (Gibberman, 1991).

However the KLI as a socializing institution is probably one reason for the fact that many Klingonists not consider themselves as trekkers anymore. In the process of Klingonists becoming Klingonists is not only the process of languages learning. A kind of secondary socialization (Berger & Luckmann) is occurring when interacting in the peer group of KLI. Officially the KLI emphasize that they not are a fan organization. Their journal it is not a newsletter or a fanzine, it is supposed to be a scholarly journal, indexed by the Modern Language Association, that uses blind peer review. The education level of the Klingonists is as we have seen very high and it would be reasonable to assume that the use of an academic language and style is endorsed.

But compare this to respondent Adam:

The fact that there’s a rich fictional background to the Klingons gives this language incredible character, and makes speaking it fun.
If you’re speaking Esperanto, you can’t ask yourself, ‘how would an esperantoan express this idea,’ because there’s no such thing as an Esperantoan. There are fictional Klingons with a fictional culture, so one can ask ‘How would a (fictional) Klingon express this idea,’ and that makes it more fun.”

Note the perversity:

Many Klingonists choose to perceive and treat Klingon as a “real”, actual alien language and not as an artificial language. Thus they are not interested in creating new words for human concepts. Their goal with the language is not that it will be as easy as possible to use for humans, but rather they want to understand how Klingons use their language. This adds another dimension to the Klingon community. To become a notable member among Klingonists linguistic capital is not enough -- you need cultural capital as well to know how a Klingon would think in a certain situation. Or more specifically: how the group of Klingonists think Klingons think.

However, the influence of attempting to adapt Klingon to earthly needs is also felt.

The dissociation between interest in the Klingons in the Trekkie universe & the Klingon language is quite intriguing:

In the ordinary Klingon fan world where role-playing and dressing-up as Klingons is the major activity, the knowledge of Klingon is to be considered as sub-cultural capital, in the eyes of the relevant beholder. Though to be a Klingonist seems not automatically to get you sub-cultural capital. By judging from my informants opinions there is a conflict between Klingon fans and Klingonists. To actually learn the full Klingon language is seen as a waste of time and somewhat strange. In my opinion this conflict can be connected to the fact that the KLI states that it is not a fan organisation. It may as well be a result of different focuses; the KLI’s primary concern is intellectual and the fan groups activities is more practical (creating uniforms, Klingon weapons etc.)

Different respondents have different views, of course, so I may sense a contradiction based on conflating informants, but it's odd, I think, to wonder how a Klingon thinks without being interested in Klingons, i.e. as they exist in the Star Trek cosmos. It's like being interested in a culture without being interested in it. I suppose this could be just a small step beyond being interested in a language only for the language. So I guess this is not as pathetic as dressing up as a Klingon after all. Still, wondering how a Klingon thinks is like wondering how a thug from South Buffalo would express himself, and I'm glad I haven't had to think about that for some decades.

Steampunk & history

Steampunk is the imagined futurology of the past. As such, at its best it invites a critical approach to the real past and its unrealized potentialities. Steampunk is a product of our time, and thus a comparison with the imaginative universe of the real 19th century, and the imagined worlds at various points in the 20th century, is warranted.  There remains the question of what we are imagining now about our future, and what is actually in the cards for the 21st century.  For all we know, we are winding up our assessment of our entire human history and our species will not survive this century.

Esperanto literature has its own history of utopian and futuristic visions. You can find several of them, spanning the 20th century up to the 1970s, in William Auld's 1981 survey of original novels in Esperanto, Vereco, Distro, Stilo: Romanoj en Esperanto [Veracity, Amusement, Style: Novels in Esperanto]. Esperanto fiction exploded in the 1970s and afterward, so this survey is seriously incomplete. None of the other authors cited in Auld's book can compare to the historical importance of the work of Hungarian Esperantist author Sándor Szathmári.

But as Esperanto evolves with the times, Steampunk appears in Esperanto literature as Esperanto appears in the literature of Steampunk and alternate history.

But now here are some interesting links to viewpoints (in English) on Steampunk and historical perspective:

Cultural Historian, James Carrott Part 1 – Steampunk | The Tomorrow Project

Cultural Historian, James Carrott Part 2 – Steampunk | The Tomorrow Project

CultHistorian (blog by James H. Carrott)

Trial by Steam (history of Steampunk)

Steampunk and History (GD Falksen)

The Importance Of The Responsible Use Of History In Fiction, June 27, 2012 by bryantschmidt

Steampunk is also a commodity of late capitalism. Thanks to this workshop, you too can learn to configure your imaginary world:

Tweaking History: Steampunk And Other Tales Of Alternate History

And the ideological and institutional place of Steampunk in today's real society is intriguingly, and perhaps ambiguously, presented to us here:

“Can Steampunk Look Towards the Future?” Vintage Tomorrows Screening Report by Ay-leen the Peacemaker

Black Steampunk / Negra Vaporpunko

I have no investment in steampunk as a lifestyle/subculture or as a literary/artistic genre, but I do think it is a significant phenomenon and symptomatic of our time. It is the futurism of the past, and that it should surface as a recognizable phenomenon and be named in the present is probably not accidental. (Of course there were manifestations of steampunk long before it became a category, but I’m referring to its emergence as a conscious movement.) Why now the futurism of the past?

The fantasy future of unlimited possibilities coexists, even as it did a century ago, with the fantasy of a terminal disaster much closer to realization. The contours of futurism have already been mapped out. Not only do we live in an alleged postmodern age, but we live in a combinatorial age, and a retrospective age. Our society has already reached the peak of real abstraction. We look backwards toward origins, reevaluating the past, the present, and the path taken in between.

Steampunk matters, I think, because the tangible origins of science fiction, of futurism, and of what has been constructed throughout the twentieth century, is really the nineteenth century. Science and technology as well as the projective imagination reached a critical point in that century, and so, rather than with foraging, pastoral, agricultural, feudal, mercantile, or emergent industrial society, the future originates in the nineteenth century.

Steampunk, with its odd mixture of futurism and the quaint and outdated Victorian aesthetic, combines and naturally merges with the parallel genre of alternate history, which itself could be considered the fantasy counterpart of the historical novel, which has also taken on a new flavor in recent decades. And this retrospective consciousness is also a reflexive consciousness. We are already aware of fundamentally changed assumptions in contrast to those of the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, so when we look back more than a century, we are not just trying to recreate a bygone era but to be aware of its presuppositions, and from there postulate alternate histories.

(This retrospective consciousness enters into historical Jewish fiction as well, which is where Esperanto now shows up as one of those utopian possibilities of a long-lost era. But Esperanto and Volapük show up outside of Jewish preoccupations as well.)

Of course, any subculture can end up as yet another thoughtless, escapist refuge. There is no novelty left in subcultures, though of course creativity can be found anywhere. Still, this awareness of the ability to manipulate cultural codes has many twists. And so there is not only steampunk, but there is black steampunk, as there is already Afrofuturism, another conceptual category constructed many decades after its manifestations appeared in practice.

Which brings me to black steampunk. Maybe, in the spirit of retro, it should be called Negro steampunk. In any case, here are some manifestations of said orientation.

Beyond Victoriana

State of Black Sci-Fi 2012: Why I love Steampunk!
Balogun, 23 Jan 2012

The State of Black SF 2012: Why I love Steampunk 
Valjeanne’s Blog, January 24, 2012

Guest Post: Steampunk/Alt History Week
Living in Color by Tanita Davis
SFWA Blog, December 23, 2010

The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism’s After-Effects & Other Stories, from a Steampunk of Colour’s Perspective
By jha
Racialicious (blog), June 24, 2009

Do Goggles Block the Sun? Steampunk in Africa
Clay and Susan Griffith
Tor.com, Oct. 28, 2010

Steampunk Webcomic Set in Africa
By Manny, Steampunk Costume, June 11, 2010

Africa: "Steampunk Values." Bushpunk Slums
Bombasticelement.org, November 22, 2010

African Empires
By G. D. Falksen
Steampunk Fashion, June 30, 2009

Steampunk Author Balogun Oyabode Abeegunde Writes Harriet Tubman as an Extraordinary Gentlewoman!
Alicia McCalla, December 5, 2011

Interview with the African American Steampunk Author of "Moses: The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman"
Yahoo group discussion, Dec. 6, 2011

Steampunk: What it is, why I came to like it, and why I think it’ll stick around
The Clockwork Century, August 8, 2009

Books: Yet Another Ramble About Steampunk Romance
The Fancy Reader, Dec. 12, 2011

African steampunk merchandise
Etsy

Esperantistoj, iam mi tradukos miajn cerbumaĵojn pri vaporpunko al Esperanto. La temo rilatas al Esperanto pro la apero de Esperanto en historiaj kaj ukroniaj fikciaĵoj, kaj pro la fakto ke Esperanto estas samtempa kun la vaporpunka erao. Legu miajn antaŭan afiŝojn pri vaporpunko kaj ukronio.

Jewish peoplehood from Zamenhof to Jewdas

There is an interesting web site hailing out of Britain called Jewdas, subtitled "radical voices for the alternative diaspora". The contributors tout a countercultural version of Jewishness as an alternative to both Zionism and traditional religiosity. There is much of interest here, but for our purposes, I call your attention to this essay:

The Big Ethnic Love-In by Baruch Trotsky

Mr. Trotsky is skeptical about some contemporary propaganda in favor of Jewish "peoplehood", deeming it a dubious ideological metaphysical concept as problematic as nationalism or race. More importantly, he delves into the actual diversity and hybridity of real Jewish history and existence, and wonders what a unifying conception of Jewishness could possibly be. The readers' responses are also quite interesting, and in the process, the delineation of the question becomes refined.

Interestingly, this very question was debated over a century ago when a definable ethnic culture or meta-culture was easy to pinpoint, though even then the defining criteria of peoplehood proved to be elusive in the case of the Jews. One very interesting intervention, which is not brought into historical specialist or popular discussion as much as it should be, was that of L.L. Zamenhof, whose claim to fame is the creation of Esperanto, but who also went through a fascinating evolution in his engagement with the Jewish question perplexing Eastern European Jews. Zamenhof was an early proponent of Zionism, first recommending a settlement in the USA, later ceding to the Palestine option, and eventually categorically rejecting the whole project. Zamenhof also published a project for the reform and standardization of Yiddish, also later abandoned.

Ultimately, Zamenhof set his hopes on the reform of the Jewish religion itself, in a doctrine he called Hilelismo. Here he makes his most forceful arguments, mercilessly demystifying the notion of Jewish peoplehood, while posing the very questions now being asked in an entirely different historical situation. To learn more about this, you can follow the links on this blog. The key blog posts are:

L.L. Zamenhof's 150th birthday


L.L. Zamenhof and the Shadow People


Zamenhof & the new Jewish intellectual historiography (2)

Hilelismo was not Zamenhof's final formulation.While he sought to bring Eastern European Jewry into the 20th century, creating a modern people out of a "pseudo-people" nostalgic for a religion and a homeland it could no longer believe in (or at least the intelligentsia could not), Zamenhof generalized his religious reform program to include all who wanted to participate in a universal, common alternative religious practice, while recognizing or maintaining their inherited religious traditions if they so chose in a non-absolutist, non-theistic fashion, somewhat akin to Ethical Culture or Unitarianism. He dubbed his revised religious doctrine Homaranismo (not strictly translatable, but meaning considering oneself a member of humanity) which, along with his thinking about Jews and about Esperanto itself, continued to develop until his death in 1917.

George Orwell, Nellie Limouzin, Paul Gille, Esperanto

SOURCE: Blair, Eric A. (George Orwell). Letter to Leonard Moore, 27 January 1934; in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Volume IV: An Age Like This, 1920-1940; edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (1968).

In this letter Orwell refers to a French book which appears to him to be of an "anti-materialist, anti-marxist tendency." Footnote 3 clarifies:

Essai d’une philosophie de la dignité humaine by Paul Gille which had been suggested to Orwell by his aunt, Nellie Adam, neé Limouzin, then living in Paris, because her husband was translating it into Esperanto. Orwell had asked Moore in a letter of 16 January 1934 about the prospects of getting a translation of the book published in England. He never did the translation.

The husband in question was none other than Eugène Adam, known by his pseudonym Lanti. Here is the reference to his translation:

Gille, Paul. Skizo pri Filozofio de la Homa Digno, de Paŭlo Ĵil (Paul Gille), el la franca lingvo trad. E. Lanti. Paris: Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, 1934. 148 p.

Here is some information about Paul Gille, in French, in the Dictionnaire international des militants anarchistes.

Orwell's aunt Nellie Limouzin is mentioned repeatedly in the Wikipedia entry on Orwell. Here is a passage on Orwell's life in Hampstead:

This job was as a part-time assistant in "Booklover's Corner", a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope who were friends of Nellie Limouzin in the Esperanto movement. The Westropes had an easy-going outlook and provided him with comfortable accommodation at Warwick Mansions, Pond Street.

There are some other details in the article on Orwell in Vikipedio, in Esperanto.

One can find hundreds of references to Nellie Limouzin in a Google search. In the process one can find oblique references to Lanti as well. Here is one:

He [Orwell] chose never to mention in print that he had himself mixed with many countercultural types, including his aunt, Nellie Limouzin—a bohemian whose husband was a socialist and stalwart of the Esperanto movement—and the Westropes, who owned the bookshop in Hampstead where he worked in the mid-1930s. Francis Westrope had been a conscientious objector in the war and was a member of the Independent Labour Party; his wife, Myfanwy, campaigned for women's rights—both were keen Esperantists. His backer Mabel Fierz, too, lived in a big house in Hampstead Garden Suburb and leaned towards a mystical and spiritual socialism.

SOURCE: Laity, Paul. "A Brief History of Cranks", Cabinet, Issue 20, Winter 2005/06.

In the same article, a cartoon can be found with this explanation:

Londoners, on their Sundays off, made special excursions by train to study Letchworth's strange collection of smock-wearing Esperanto speakers and theosophists: a cartoon from a local newspaper showed day-trippers at a human zoo. "Daddy, I want to see them feed!" pleads a child. Signs for visitors include: "To the Long Nebbed Sandal Footed Raisin Shifters," "This Way to the Non-Tox Pub," and "To the Hairy-Headed Banana Munchers."

Ouch!