The "punk" part of Steampunk, a subculture largely rooted in Victorian fashions which places an emphasis on retro-futurism, imagination, and machinery (hence "steam"), is arguably often pushed to the side.
The mainstreaming of steampunk has caused many people to push back in an attempt to defend the DIY anti-commercial traditions of the culture (Stimpson, 21). However, white steampunks have not shown a great deal of critical reception and interrogation with regards to the colonialism embedded within the culture, nor do they seem to make the effort to make the culture more welcoming to POC.
Some argue that the historical fiction nature of steampunk makes it susceptible to reactionary tendencies, even claiming that steampunk is too centered in the Victorian European imagination to be revolutionary. In the introduction to Clockwork rhetoric: the language and style of steampunk, David Beard says "As a rhetoric, [steampunk] generates a utopian nostalgia or memory, rather than a utopian vision, and so cannot guide new sociopolitical relationships. Steampunk defines how we wish things might have been, instead of how we can work for change in the future" (Beard, xvi). However, while this statement may indeed reflect the majority of contemporary steampunk, there are also steampunks of color who are using the aesthetics of steampunk to do just what Beard says it doesn't do: look toward the future.
The genre is filled with radical potential. While Kristin Stimpson claims that steampunk revels in imperial aesthetics (Stimpson, 25), Miller and Taddeo write that "it is not mere nostalgia for corsets or fantasies of goggles and dirigibles, but another lens through which to examine the racial, class, and gender politics of both the past and present” (Stimpson, 23).
I believe that it ultimately comes down to how critically the practitioner is engaging with the potentially problematic elements of the subculture and how publicly/visibly they are doing so. Stimpson's argument implies that steampunk's "aesthetic of empire" reproduces the "ideological power relations it claims to leave in the past"-- though she does concede that steampunk simultaneously "resists" and "reproduces" (Stimpson, 21).
However, I do not believe that simply using the aesthetics of something inherently implicates the new thing in the same politics of the original thing. For example, Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare also uses aesthetics from Victorian England that simultaneously harshly criticizes Victorian Empire while also admitting an affinity for its fashion sensibility. He designs scenes replete with Victorian furnishings and centers mannequins clothed in patterns virtually straight out of a Victorian catalogue. However, Shonibare makes it very clear where he is coming from. He uses African/Dutch wax prints instead of typical fabrics, patterns which are a popular staple of African fashion as well as a commentary on the global colonial network (these were originally made in Indonesia and spread due to the Dutch colonists). Shonibare also composes explicitly political anti-colonial pieces whose messages are quite apparent (Shonibare).
Shonibare's 2003 installation, The Scramble for Africa
Obviously, it depends on who is using certain images and for what purpose. Similarly, there are steampunks who, like Diana Pho, acknowledge that, especially because "steampunk has the requisite ingredients to seem laudatory of and nostalgic for Western imperial domination" (Pho, 127), we have a responsibility to engage with retro-futurism critically. What does this mean?
Pho writes:
"A postcolonial view of steampunk posits the reexamination of dominant historical narratives in the Western canon to embrace cultural hybridity and challenge the traditional power dynamics of national identity." (Pho, 129)
Whether through retrofuturism, just plain futurism, or just plain punk, BIPOC are constantly finding ways to "explore the complicated intersections of racial and national hybridity" (Pho, 128), "seek a remedy for real-world historical traumas…” (Pho, 129), and self-advocate.
Though alternative subcultures focused on fashion and music are often considered white dominated communities/phenomena, in reality, there are plenty of people of color who engage in such arts and communities. In fact, these subcultures are often heavily influenced by people of color. Punk as a movement was highly influenced by black artists such as Death, Bad Brains, and X-Ray Specs as well as the rock genre's objectively black origins in R&B. It makes sense that punk would be attractive to and always co-invented by BIPOC because of its clearly political origins and overtones of societal critique. Looking at alt fashionistas and creators of color like steampunks, we see the revolutionary potential of these subcultures. And, looking at Black and/or Indigenous punk bands like Vancougar, Sihasin, No More Moments, Nizhóní Girls, Indian Giver, and so many more, we can see that the traditions of Punks of Color are alive and kicking, as they offer up their energy to decolonize and absolutely shred.
Stimpson, Kristin. “Victorians, Machines, and Exotic Others Steampunk and the Aesthetic of Empire.” Clockwork Rhetoric: The Language and Style of Steampunk, edited by Barry Brummett, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2014, pp. 19–36.
Pho, Diana. “Punking the Other: on the Performance of Racial and National Identities in Steampunk.” Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2016, pp. 127–149.
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