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Steampunk, with its odd mixture of futurism and the quaint and outdated Victorian aesthetic, combines and naturally merges with the parallel genre of alternate history, which itself could be considered the fantasy counterpart of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.

Steampunk / Vaporpunko & Esperanto

Mi jam menciis . . .

League of Steampunk Esperantists (GVE), ero de The Steampunk Empire (La Vaporpunka Imperio).

Jen aliaj ligoj:

Steampunk in Esperanto (Ĉe la Koro de la Tero) 
by Marquis de Montcalm on March 3, 2011

The value of Esperanto to the Steampunk Crossroads?
by Leane Roffey Line on February 6, 2011

Multiculturalism for Steampunk: February is the Great Language Learning Challenge! *fanfare*  
January 24, 2011

Successes, News and Other High-Fives for SlugTribers 
The Slug Tribe, Summer-Winter 2011-12

"N'Gasta! Kvata! Kvakis!" I found Esperanto in Skyrim!
Tia Marie, February 08, 2012

Cândido Ruiz's Page
 
1ºEvento Steam
Video

R. Cândido Ruiz's Gallery
Ipernity

Teknoviktoriano 
Diskuto, novembro 2011

Bizarro Lit / Strangega Literaturo

" . . a chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!"

— Lautréamont

Here is a literary genre I did not know existed, Bizarro Lit, as reported by Cracked.com. (I presume this web site has its origins in Cracked Magazine, a lesser-known competitor to Mad Magazine in my childhood.) Here we see perverse hybrids of other pulp genres.

This itself is hardly surprising. I cannot fix offhand when explicitly combinatorial or self-conscious genre-bending came into existence, but one can trace this tendency as least as far back as the last third of the 19th century. Consider various movements and genres over the past century and more— 'pataphysics, surrealism, Oulipo, alternate history,  steampunk . . . All are outgrowths of certain time periods and social circumstances. Individual authors such as Hermann Hesse and Jorges Luis Borges also come to mind. I think also of Richard Brautigan's genre experiments in the 1970s.

Yet, it seems to me that, for those not entirely immersed in popular culture and its attendant historical amnesia, we live in a markedly retrospective time, returning to and reexamining the past, especially of the 20th and late 19th centuries. We live in a combinatorially self-conscious period. I suppose this is usually termed postmodernism. But whatever you call it, there is a looking backward and a self-conscious comparison with the different presuppositions and norms of the present. I'm guessing this is where steampunk came from. I'm also guessing that the appearance of Esperanto and Volapük in historical and alternate history novels at this time is no accident; this also reflects our self-conscious exploration of the social/cultural past. (I know an English professor and Esperantist who agrees with me on this.)

What we cannot know, if there is to be any future at all, what to look forward to that is qualitatively new. But then, we're in a situation at least partly described by Hegel:

". . . the Owl of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall."

Steampunk / Vaporpunko

First, introductions via Wikipedia & Vikipedio. While I have encountered manifestations of what is now called Steampunk, the term--the named genre--is new to me. Back in the 1960s I watched the TV series The Wild Wild West, an obvious precursor or example of the genre. (And, a few days ago, I made it halfway through the ineptly executed film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) Someone had to name the confluence of science fiction, the historical novel, and alternate history scenarios into a single concept. It's a new focal point for elements that are not so new. Yet I suspect it fits into the self-reflexive character of our time.

I wrote about the increasing profile of self-referential cultural artifacts in a 1993 essay:

Cultural Sophistication and Self-Reference on American Television: Seeds of Hope?

Owing to the acceleration of social and cultural change, it becomes obvious how drastically basic social assumptions are different now than from decades past, which has long been a device pursued by TV series, most recently the runaway hit Mad Men. Also, I've long held the view that all the avant-gardes have done their work, that we have reached the end of the line, and what's left to us is retrospective engagement, combined with a recombinant orientation towards cultural elements, also a long-standing feature of avant-gardes. Combining all this with alternative history, it makes sense that writers would add to the mere possibility of alternative outcomes for critical historical/political events (the Civil War, World War II, assassinations of heads of state, etc.) alternative technological, cultural, and aesthetic developments, as an extension of a retrospective, self-reflexive orientation. This becomes yet another manifestation of an all-encompassing artistic ars combinatoria.

Given that the Steampunk era coincides with the rise of artificial languages as a mass social phenomenon, I would naturally be interested in the intersection of Steampunk with Volapük and Esperanto, and less likely, other artificial languages.

I have already blogged about Andrew Drummond's novel A Hand-Book of Volapük, which is in the neighborhood of steampunk, a genre admired by Drummond. See An interview with Andrew Drummond (2006).

Note also Michael Chabon's popular Yiddish Policemen's Union, which also pays homage to Zamenhof and Esperanto. See The Grad Students Who Mocked Michael Chabon's Science Fiction by Charlie Jane Anders.

Volapük is featured also in Spook Country by William Gibson, godfather of cyberpunk.

But here's the pay-off for you super-nerds: you can join . . .

League of Steampunk Esperantists (GVE), a unit of The Steampunk Empire.