- SteamPunkAs Labor Populism
- SteamPunk: A New "Guilded" Age?
- 5th Gen. Seattleite's Dismay: "Boneshaker"
- Absinthe (AKA "the Green Fairy")
- Remembering the "Steam" in Steampunk: the Virginia V.
- "Steam" in Steampunk, part II The S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien
- "Steam" in SP pt. II, the regal triple expansion steam engine.
SteamPunk: A New "GUilded" Age?
The destructive acts of 1960's young radicals in the name of necessary change and the pessimistic romanticism of the 1990's goths are history. It's far easier to be against something than to figure out with what to replace it. Or to assume it can't be fixed, which justifies gloom and passivity. What about repairing a system that's broken rather than tossing it aside? Seems to be a hallmark of SteamPunk: rebuilding what isn't working, and artfully at that. Or repurposing items. Old gears and industrial hoses and leather strips used for sculpture and costuming. So it's not at all about ripping things apart; it's about the joy of elegance, creativity, and technology that people understand. As a mechanic, I've actually worked on ornate old steam engines. I can attest to the delight of putting something unique back together and getting it to run. As a SteamPunk, I know how fun and rewarding it is to create a novel identity and then to clothe yourself accordingly.
The issues of industrialization and alienation are still here; a not so lovely legacy of a process beginning over a century ago. Which has worsened exponentially as globalization, controlled by the few, renders the means of production more and more abstract and less and less humane. The elements of one's own life become less and less about personal choice.
SteamPunk is not about escapism. It's about claiming a positive future by rewriting the past. The claims staked out are a de facto gold rush of renewed literary works, artistic endevours, and appropriate/humane/beautiful technologies. Although not well expressed yet, the above implies a very different orientation than viewing workers as featureless, easily replaced cogs. Since gears are now art forms, why not consider flesh and blood the same? Whether the creation of a deity, the self-created identity of a role, or the outcome of a lifetime of experience. Like the medievel guilds and 20th century trade unions, where work was about exquisite details made possible through skills learned directly from masters. How about a new twist on that old "Gilded Age:" a new Guilded Age!
The phenonenon of SteamPunk is interesting for other reasons. It is happening despite the alleged disinterest of the young in history, reading, and writing. Or their supposedly shortened attention spans and imaginations stunted by TV or video games. I've read the entire set (50+pp) of introductions at Brass Goggles, the well-known SP site centered in the UK. I was amazed how many teens could express themselves. I mean not just the Europeans with the best elite educations, but ordinary public school American kids from small rural towns in Indiana or Kansas, inner city Los Angeles, or suburban Birmingham, AL. Think about this: SteamPunk is driven by literature. Not by pop music, violent video games, or single sentence misspelled self-centered instant communications.
There is another aspect of "putting things back together." A decade or two ago, deconstruction was all the rage. It was a post-Einstein philosophical interpretation of relativity. That there is no location separate from what is being observed by which to make an objective observation or judgement. Especially after the critiques put forth by feminism and multiculturalism. What was accepted as "objective" turned out to be mostly the viewpoints of older western European (and American) white males. So then to taking apart what was once taken for granted. However, this devolved into the view that all opinions were equally valid. No absolutes, no standards by which to make judgements.
The Enlightenment, the start of modernity, was defined by the belief that rational science would answer all human problems. People only had to learn what the experts considered thinking rationally. Of course this ignores altogether another way of being human. For example, a painting described scientifically is a chunk of cloth and splotches of pigment. It is the non-rational-- the artistic, the poetic, the mystical, and the spiritual, by which we which give a painting meaning. Same for human life.
Modernity also did not forsee the negative uses of science. The devastation and horror of war based on technology. It is a truism among historians that the Enlightenment died in the trenches of WW I. What will replace naive optimism, weary pessimism, or the intellectual fad of deconstruction? Whatever is now emerging is called Postmodernism. What that means is unclear. But we seem to have gotten past the stage of delight in destroying the old and established. We're sitting on the bricks of the old edifaces, wondering what to do with them. But that's the point of SteamPunk. There has been enough distance so that we can reclaim what was of value. Those old bricks can be made into dandy boiler fireboxes. Full steam ahead to what I call Past-Modernism.
Raphi Alexandrian Jose, aka EngineRmRaphi
7/19/2011
The issues of industrialization and alienation are still here; a not so lovely legacy of a process beginning over a century ago. Which has worsened exponentially as globalization, controlled by the few, renders the means of production more and more abstract and less and less humane. The elements of one's own life become less and less about personal choice.
SteamPunk is not about escapism. It's about claiming a positive future by rewriting the past. The claims staked out are a de facto gold rush of renewed literary works, artistic endevours, and appropriate/humane/beautiful technologies. Although not well expressed yet, the above implies a very different orientation than viewing workers as featureless, easily replaced cogs. Since gears are now art forms, why not consider flesh and blood the same? Whether the creation of a deity, the self-created identity of a role, or the outcome of a lifetime of experience. Like the medievel guilds and 20th century trade unions, where work was about exquisite details made possible through skills learned directly from masters. How about a new twist on that old "Gilded Age:" a new Guilded Age!
The phenonenon of SteamPunk is interesting for other reasons. It is happening despite the alleged disinterest of the young in history, reading, and writing. Or their supposedly shortened attention spans and imaginations stunted by TV or video games. I've read the entire set (50+pp) of introductions at Brass Goggles, the well-known SP site centered in the UK. I was amazed how many teens could express themselves. I mean not just the Europeans with the best elite educations, but ordinary public school American kids from small rural towns in Indiana or Kansas, inner city Los Angeles, or suburban Birmingham, AL. Think about this: SteamPunk is driven by literature. Not by pop music, violent video games, or single sentence misspelled self-centered instant communications.
There is another aspect of "putting things back together." A decade or two ago, deconstruction was all the rage. It was a post-Einstein philosophical interpretation of relativity. That there is no location separate from what is being observed by which to make an objective observation or judgement. Especially after the critiques put forth by feminism and multiculturalism. What was accepted as "objective" turned out to be mostly the viewpoints of older western European (and American) white males. So then to taking apart what was once taken for granted. However, this devolved into the view that all opinions were equally valid. No absolutes, no standards by which to make judgements.
The Enlightenment, the start of modernity, was defined by the belief that rational science would answer all human problems. People only had to learn what the experts considered thinking rationally. Of course this ignores altogether another way of being human. For example, a painting described scientifically is a chunk of cloth and splotches of pigment. It is the non-rational-- the artistic, the poetic, the mystical, and the spiritual, by which we which give a painting meaning. Same for human life.
Modernity also did not forsee the negative uses of science. The devastation and horror of war based on technology. It is a truism among historians that the Enlightenment died in the trenches of WW I. What will replace naive optimism, weary pessimism, or the intellectual fad of deconstruction? Whatever is now emerging is called Postmodernism. What that means is unclear. But we seem to have gotten past the stage of delight in destroying the old and established. We're sitting on the bricks of the old edifaces, wondering what to do with them. But that's the point of SteamPunk. There has been enough distance so that we can reclaim what was of value. Those old bricks can be made into dandy boiler fireboxes. Full steam ahead to what I call Past-Modernism.
Raphi Alexandrian Jose, aka EngineRmRaphi
7/19/2011