The Victorientalist Debacle
March 16th, 2010 by Ottens
The release of issue #11 of the Gatehouse Gazette earlier this month brought forth quite a floodwave of indignation. The magazine was dedicated to “Victorientalism”, a portmanteau of “Victorian” and “Orientalism” that is used to refer to modern day reimaginations of nineteenth century depictions of Asia.
In its editorial, the Gatehouse Gazette assessed that Victorientalism allows those “incorrigible aficionados of Oriental romance [...] to reject the chains of reality and all the racism and guilt” associated with the imperial experience. “Isn’t this, after all, steampunk’s very premise? To delve into a past that never really was.”
This claim draw some fierce reactions, from Jaymee Goh for instance who opined that the very term Victorientalism is a racist one that “maintains the East-West dichotomous construct that Others cultures.” Dru Pagliassotti agreed and added that Victorientalism should only be used in a “pejorative sense”.
Both authors cited Edward Said who in 1978 published Orientalism: a passionate charge against those nineteenth century artists, historians and novelists who engendered Asia as the unequivocal representation of otherness. Goh made a good point when she reiterated Said by stating that, “Orientalism as an idea is really about what Europe thinks about the East, which really means, it’s all about Europe, not about Asia.”
Said however went a little further than that and claimed that every Westerner, “in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” Unsurprisingly, those who accept this premise are quick to blame the Gatehouse Gazette for reviving racist ideas.
In defense of Victorientalism, I stressed the many shortcomings of Said’s argument. Orientalism, I wrote, “is not steeped in bigotry, nor was its purpose ever to facilitate the colonial subjugation of non-Western peoples.”
Craig B. Daniel, a Gazette columnist, added that although there “is something wrong with exoticising the other,” one cannot fully comprehend European nor colonial history without addressing Orientalism. In Daniel’s own words: “you can’t understand Europe without understanding how it reacts to the rest of the world.” Marcus Rauchfuß, who also contributes to the magazine, noted that, “To say that focusing on the glorious parts of the the Victorian Age means forgetting the plight of the common people is plain hypocritical.” There will always be nostalgia and Victorientalism is no exception: it doesn’t deny the horrors of imperialism; it does ignore them, for the sake of fiction.
This sort of reminiscence is, of course, what constitutes steampunk altogether. Not so much the implications of Victorientalism then, rather its very name have offended people. Ay-leen, for one, believes that we could romanticize the East, “if the political and social effects of Orientalism were dead and gone. However, because it is very much alive today—causing damaging stereotypes and promoting racist mindsets—then perpetuating the glorified stereotypes of the Orient only serves to hurt the people of color they were based on.”
The term “Asian-inspired steampunk” has been suggested at several points as an alternative. This would be less upsetting, its promoters argue, and less marginalizing of non-Western steampunk enthusiasts.
The debate on the whole is most welcome in today’s steampunk discourse. With the genre so rooted in colonial era literature and heavily borrowing from Victorian era sentiments, it is healthy to discuss the perhaps inherently tainted perceptions that make up the steampunk mindset. We might have to accept, as Piechur suggested, that “steampunk is a politically incorrect genre.”
Well Done, That Man!
