Steampunk, Scholarship, and Me

It just occurred to me this week (I don’t know why it didn’t hit me earlier…it just didnt…I’m special sometimes) that I should probably do a post on steampunk since it’s still playing such a large part in my life.

Why, you ask?

Are you some crazy costumer who doesn’t leave their house in the morning without their goggles???

Um…no.

Since I suppose I’ve never put a proper introduction up on my site (and for that I apologize…I’ve totally meant to.) you probably have no clue who I am or why I’m babbling about steampunk(unless you do know me, in which case you do know and ignore that).

I’m currently trying to finish my M.A. up in literary studies.  My thesis just so happens to be focusing on steampunk, which I think is fun.  An older gentleman at work yesterday (I work at a bookstore…to fill that little bubble in) disagreed.  I tried explaining what steampunk was to him and at the word “Victorian” he totally zoned out and eventually told me “nevermind, I’m not interested.”

He totally burst my bubble, and I promise I wasn’t going off into some boring theoretical tangent or anything because I COULD have (there’s nothing that quite puts people to sleep like theory)–but I was trying to be interesting.  Sometimes I’m nice like that.

So…fail….

I wish I had some awe inspiring definition to spout out when people ask me what I’m doing, but I think my problem is that the more research I do the more useless I think it is to come up with a definition.  If you don’t know what steampunk is, google it and I promise you’ll get an idea.  I’m currently reading through the “Steampunk Scholar’s” dissertation (and if you’ve never visited his blog and are interested in steampunk lit, then do so now —-> here).  He essentially argues that what I’m calling in my thesis the steampunk “sub-genre” is actually an aesthetic.  He argues that the aesthetic is made up of three features–technofantasy, neo-Victorianism, and retrofuturism–and, essentially, this allows works to be either more or less steampunk.

Honestly, this makes a good bit of sense.  For example, when I give my awkward definition of steampunk I almost always mention the Victorian period having advanced technology that wouldn’t have actually been available at the time.  That’s all well and good, but becomes problematic when you come across a book like Tim Powers’ Anubis Gates.  It’s considered steampunk (by the unnamed masses–thanks in large part to K.W. Jeter’s letter to Locus) but I challenge you to find the technology.  There just isn’t really any of that.  The modern world certainly collides with the Victorian period, time travel does that, but there isn’t any crazy time machine with brass buttons and gears and crystalline knobs and switches invented by a mad scientist propelling the time travel.  It’s all magic.  Put that side by side with a work like Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan or Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker and you’ve got to admit you’re looking at a horse of a different color even if the books have the same type of feel and in your heart of hearts you really think that they’re all steampunk.

I like Perschon’s argument (Mike Perschon would be the Steampunk Scholar) because it gives you a way to gauge what you’re talking about.

Early on in the dissertation, I didn’t mark it so no direct quote, sorry, he discusses how “steampunk” is often a label publishers give to it.  They create a “genre” in order to market things easy to sell and market, despite the fact that a new genre may not be necessary.  I’ll admit that I fall into that trap.  I’ve worked as a bookseller for five years-ish and if there’s a funny word that will make my job easier, then all the better.  I am also of the mind that if a collective group of people recognizes a mass of literature as something, then that can also constitute a genre.  The first two definitions in the OED for genre are:

a.  Kind; sort; style.

b.spec. A particular style or category of works of art; esp. a type of literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose.

With that in mind, I’m not entirely convinced it isn’t a genre.  But Perschon, like I said, presents a compelling argument, and for all I know I may end up completely agreeing with him by the time I’m done reading his dissertation.

To answer the next question that clearly just popped into your mind(yep…I read minds), no, I’m not writing a thesis trying to define steampunk.  Honestly, for as much attention as it’s gotten in the past so many years there’s not much scholarship out there.  I feel like continuing to try and define the sub-genre is a waste of energy (and I’ve read a lot to come to that conclusion, it might be my opinion, but Perschon at least seems to agree with me that scholars need to offer new ideas instead of rehashing the old argument…if we do that long enough I think maybe creating that elusive definititon might actually be possible…possibly).  I do think scholars should creatively analyse works and try to come up with more common ideas that appear in texts other than just The Difference Engine(I’m going to change the beating a dead dog cliche to…typing on a crashed computer).  That’s, I think, why I’m really enjoying Perschon’s dissertation.  He’s found three common features and he’s showing how they operate in steampunk literature.  Awesome.  That’s what I’m trying to do in my thesis.  I’m focusing on a classical literary/aesthetic concept, the grotesque, and discussing how it applies to steampunk.

There are actually more articles out there on steampunk.  Stephen Hantke’s comes to mind as the one that’s been around for-ev-er (1999, methinks) but there are more.  For those of you casually interested, the VanderMeers’ steampunk anthologies are a nice starting point because they give you a few articles and some fiction and everybody is happy.  If you’re interested, the journal Neo-Victorian Studies has published quite a few interesting articles, and  (and you can find them free online…there’s even a special steampunk issue).  Altogether, though, there aren’t many.  I think I get, maybe 3 pages when I do an MLA search.

Considering how much has been written in the sub-genre (aesthetic…whatever), that’s just sad.

I finally picked up a copy of Ann VanderMeer’s anthology Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution a few weeks ago, and, as usual with all the VanderMeers’ steampunk anthology, there are a few articles included that analyse the current state of steampunk.  Two of them really stuck with me, Margaret Killjoy’s “Steampunk Shapes Our Future,” and also Amal El-Mohtar’s “Winding Down the House: Toward a Steampunk without Steam.”  I really just want to bring up El-Mohtar’s article right now, though I might come back to Killjoy at a later post, but she ends her article by saying, “When grounded in the context of the British Empire of the nineteenth century, steampunk collapsed within itself multiple intersections of marginalization–race, gender, class, disability–which absolutely cried out for new treatment, for examination, for subversion”(394).  El-Mohtar talks about a story she had written, also included in the anthology, and how, though she believed it to be steampunk when she wrote it, her audiences disagreed because she chose to set it in a location other than London.  She tried to broaden the scope of the sub-genre and it was essentially rejected from inclusion within the sub-genre because it tried to expand the scope(and I actually really like the story, and do feel like it is steampunk–my critique would be that I wish it was longer).

I wonder if, when it comes to criticism, scholars see the genre as a narrow thing not worth looking at in full just as El-Mohtar is noticing steampunk’s lack of inclination to, um, broaden it’s horizons?

Mainly, though, I like her words: “steampunk collapsed within itself.”  They’re powerful to me because I think they sum up the scholarship.  It’s almost as if there are blinders in the world of academia that haven’t (up until the past two years or so with the Neo-Victorian studies articles) allowed scholars to see beyond the question of “What is steampunk?”  It’s like the question has been asked so many times that it doesn’t seem like it’s worth asking any more.  I don’t know…I’m babbling.

I do think the question is worth asking, though.  I just don’t think it’s worth asking yet.  I think we need to wait until one day when more than three pages pop up on MLA and other works besides The Difference Engine have been written and argued about multiple times.  There needs to be a conversation going, and yes, I know that there are many conversations going on around the internet about steampunk.  That’s all fine and good, but there needs to be conversations taking place in academia about it as well.

I’m sure I’ll post more on the subject in the future.  There’s way too much to say for one post.

 

 

 

 

4 thoughts on “Steampunk, Scholarship, and Me

  1. Good thoughts, Angela, and a number that I was considering in the late stages of writing. But as many people told me, a dissertation doesn’t need to be perfect, just finished. I amended my work toward the final stages to clarify that I don’t think of steampunk as aesthetic to the exclusion of considering it as genre. I just found my approach liberating. And yes, enough with the bloody Difference Engine already! You may want to see if your library has a copy of Steaming Into A Victorian Future, which is arguably the first academic anthology on SP.

    • Hi Mike,

      I have been following your blog for so long that I cant even begin to tell you how excited I was to find your comment in my inbox. I’ve been trying to keep the finish line in my mind, but its oh so hard when I just want to keep going back and changing things. And the longer I prolong things the more articles I find to read on the grotesque or are published about steampunk–and those, of course, take time to read. It’s a never ending cycle. I’m feeling a lot better about the whole process since I’ve started working on the actual draft. There’s nothing quite like revising your prospectus for the umpteenth time to make you want to bang your head against the wall.
      I will definitely check out Steaming Into A Victorian Future. Hopefully the person who checked it out this semester will be nice enough to return it next week like they’re supposed to. From the index it even looks like two of the articles mention John Ruskin, very exciting in my world. I’m sure they’re probably referencing a different chapter than I’m working on, but it’s still nice to see others making similar connections.
      I’ll admit that I haven’t made it all the way through your dissertation yet (I think I was about at the halfway mark), but I’m definitely citing you in the intro to my thesis and probably a few more places. You’re argument really helps with the “what is steampunk?” question, and for that I cannot thank you enough. Seriously.
      I am wondering now though, how many other bloggers out there have you found discussing your dissertation?

      Thanks so much for the comment,

      Angela

  2. There are folks commenting on it, which is funny to me, because I was told no one ever reads your dissertation. Mine’s getting a decent amount of attention, which is nice on the one hand, and frustrating on the other, because it’s so exploratory – I don’t think I nailed down fences for defining steampunk so much as tried to give some blanket terms for discussion. But I guess after all that work, it’s nice to have SOMEONE reading it. How are things coming along for you?

    • I, for one, thank you for your blanketing terms. My Director actually commented that using them helped hold my paper together a bit. Personally, I think steampunk scholarship was kind of floundering because no one was really creating anything of the like–most of the earlier articles were either super broad or so narrow that I couldn’t usefully cite them. You finally wrote something that makes sense and is actually usable, so, from someone who really needed something usable to back up her weird argument, I’m not particularly surprised your dissertation is getting attention.

      My thesis is done, my director likes it, and now I’m waiting on my readers to give it back. In theory I could be done with this before Spring semester even starts, but at this point it’s kind of out of my hands. Waiting is so hard. I’m going to keep wishing and hoping and praying, I suppose.

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