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THE MACHINE ANXIETIES of STEAMPUNK: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY, NEO-VICTORIAN AESTHETICS, and FUTURISM Kathe Hicks Albrecht IDSVA

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THE MACHINE ANXIETIES of STEAMPUNK: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY, NEO-VICTORIAN AESTHETICS, and FUTURISM Kathe Hicks Albrecht IDSVA Maine State Library Maine State Documents Academic Research and Dissertations Special Collections 2016 THE MACHINE ANXIETIES OF STEAMPUNK: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY, NEO-VICTORIAN AESTHETICS, AND FUTURISM Kathe Hicks Albrecht IDSVA Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalmaine.com/academic Recommended Citation Albrecht, Kathe Hicks, "THE MACHINE ANXIETIES OF STEAMPUNK: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY, NEO- VICTORIAN AESTHETICS, AND FUTURISM" (2016). Academic Research and Dissertations. 16. http://digitalmaine.com/academic/16 This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections at Maine State Documents. It has been accepted for inclusion in Academic Research and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Maine State Documents. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE MACHINE ANXIETIES OF STEAMPUNK: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY, NEO-VICTORIAN AESTHETICS, AND FUTURISM Kathe Hicks Albrecht Submitted to the faculty of The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy July, 2016 i Accepted by the faculty of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________________________ Donald R. Wehrs, Ph.D. Doctoral Committee ______________________________ Other member’s name, #1 Ph.D. ______________________________ Other member’s name, #2, Ph.D. July 23, 2016 ii © 2016 Kathe Hicks Albrecht ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii This work is dedicated to my parents: Dr. Richard Brian Hicks, whose life-long exploration of the human mind and spirit helped to prepare me for my own intellectual journey, and Mafalda Brasile Hicks, artist-philosopher, who originally inspired my deep interest in aesthetics. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation director Donald R. Wehrs for his unwavering support and encouragement. Don has a wonderful gift for guiding the student through what is a uniquely arduous process of research and writing. His astute commentary, intriguing ideas, and continued enthusiasm for the project encouraged me at every step of the way. I am forever grateful for the opportunity to work with Don these past few years. Other important mentors, colleagues, and friends at IDSVA also guided me throughout the doctoral journey. George Smith, Simonetta Moro, Christopher Yates, Michael Smith, Christopher Lonegan, Amy Curtis, and countless others provided much needed inspiration and guidance. Finally, I would surely have stumbled along this path without the encouragement of fellow students in Cohort ‘11, and in particular my study group stalwarts Maria LaBarge and Mary Anne Davis. We are in this process together and our regular study group communications kept us moving forward, individually and collectively. Nancy Bookhart, IDSVA friend and colleague, also encouraged me as I struggled through research and writing. Most importantly, however, I would like to thank my family whose patience and sacrifice made all this possible, especially as the dissertation temporarily took over many aspects of my life. My children Nicole, Alexander, and Olivia, encouraged me from the beginning to walk this path. And it was Alex who first described steampunk to me as we stood in the halls of Comic-Con in San Diego many years ago. That conversation and the characters we encountered piqued my interest in this unique philosophical and aesthetic enterprise. My husband Dr. Mark Jennings Albrecht has been co-navigator on a lifetime of adventure together. Without his unwavering support, patience, intellectual insight, and perpetual encouragement this project would not have been possible. Certainly the long evenings of study, never-ending deadlines, paper-writing, and book-reading impacted him as much as it did me. Mark’s sacrifice of our time together allowed me to flourish at IDSVA and I could not have done it without his encouragement and support. Our adventure together has always unfolded unexpectedly and with great joy and thus it has been with my (our) experience at IDSVA. Thanks, Mark, for taking this magical turn in our journey together. v ABSTRACT Kathe Hicks Albrecht THE MACHINE ANXIETIES OF STEAMPUNK: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY, NEO-VICTORIAN AESTHETICS, AND FUTURISM This dissertation examines the steampunk movement as a significant contemporary expression of the human condition. Although its aesthetic inspiration comes from the Victorian past, as re-tooled, re-imagined, and re-energized for the twenty-first century, steampunk’s underlying interest is in a speculative view of the future and a concern for the contemporary individual’s struggle to retain autonomy in a de-centered, de- territorialized world. As such the steampunk movement participates in, and contributes to, an important ongoing philosophical and aesthetic dialog. The project examines the motivations for steampunk’s visual inspiration in the Victorian. Technological and scientific advancements in that period greatly impacted societal traditions and the role of the individual within it. Economic, social, and political changes revolutionized daily life and the individual faced a new self-consciousness as she confronted, and adapted to, these significant changes. Today, similar technological advancements force new tensions between the individual and the world around her. Astounding developments in computing and artificial intelligence, and the concept of the cyborg and other hybrid beings challenge the contemporary individual’s sense of self. By looking to the past, steampunk seeks to recuperate the Victorian individual’s successful navigation of technological change. She does so in order to facilitate our own navigation of current waters. vi The project traces the movement’s modest roots as a literary sub-genre of science fiction, explores its sources in the Victorian, and describes the movement’s rapid evolution to global phenomenon. Today steampunk is fully integrated into contemporary culture as an aesthetic observed in visual, decorative, and fashion arts, comic books, movies, and television. The project explores the current landscape of art and philosophy in order to position the steampunk movement within the larger scope of the contemporary scene. A triad of prevailing philosophical trends—postmodernism, transhumanism, and post- humanism, help to reveal steampunk’s involvement in the contemporary philosophical and aesthetic dialog. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...page 1 Chapter 1 The Origins of Steampunk: History and Early Development..….…………………………26 Chapter 2: The Victorian/Steampunk Connection: Upheaval, Discovery and the Birth of Mode……59 Chapter 3 The Steampunk Aesthetic in Contemporary Visual ……………………………………..123 Chapter 4 Performing Steampunk…….……………………………………………………………..170 Chapter 5 Steampunk and Contemporary Philosophy………………………………………………..209 Chapter 6 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...269 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………….289 Notes………………………………………………………………………………………298 viii Introduction “To me [steampunk] is essentially the intersection of technology and romance.” Jake von Slatt Steampunk designer and scholar (La Ferla) When one meets friends at the Edison Bar in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, the twenty-first century city is quickly left behind. Our modern reality is just another skin to shed. Built out in the basement of the Higgins building, the first private power plant in Los Angeles, this hangout for the young and hip is not only a chic watering hole it is also an artful homage to steampunk. Brass and metal bar stools, exposed mechanical elements from the original industrial facility, old-fashioned light fixtures, and a Victorian aesthetic surround you. What are the visual motivations of the founders and designers of this hip bar and restaurant? Why does steampunk have such broad appeal across certain segments of contemporary society? After all, carefully designed steampunk bars have cropped up in Asia, Cape Town, South Africa, Romania and elsewhere across the globe.1 This dissertation, The Machine Anxieties of Steampunk, thoroughly explores steampunk and its development into a global phenomenon, a movement whose aesthetic is reflected in visual arts, entertainment, fashion, the decorative arts, and even built environments such as the Edison Bar. In this project we will answer the question of what is the steampunk movement. But we will also address the more complex question as to why the steampunk movement develops and takes hold within our global culture. For reasons that will be carefully explored in the following pages, this quietly revolutionary aesthetic and viewpoint has settled into the contemporary consciousness. The steampunk genre captures the zeitgeist of our culture as a very diverse and global cross-section of humanity role-plays 1 in elaborate steampunk costume, gathers at ever-expanding festivals and conferences, and embraces the underlying philosophy of steam. I will argue that the steampunk movement is a significant contemporary enterprise worthy of careful analysis in terms of historical, artistic, and political constructs. It is my contention that steampunk expresses an underlying machine anxiety, a concern for the future of humankind, and a resistance to the power structures that dominate established society. Steampunk artists are at the same time perturbed and intrigued by the future and this tension is an important expression of the individual today. As humankind faces an uncertain
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