Steampunk and Neo-Victorian notes

This page in my web garden is currently just excerpts/reading notes from scholarly literature about steampunk and neo-Victorian things. Originally, I made these notes as part of preparation for a paper presentation about the video game Frostpunk although doing this reading made me start to wonder about various subterranean threads connecting steampunk and neo-Victorian things to live coding, which is something I'll probably come back to...

McAllister, Robbie (2018). "Reengineering Modernity:Cinematic Detritus and the Steampunk Blockbuster." Neo-Victorian Studies 11:1

"The word steampunk was first coined in the April 1987 edition of the science-fiction magazine Locus. Writing to the editor, author K. W. Jeter playfully designated himself (alongside fellow writers Tim Powers and James Blaylock) as propagators of a literary trend: creators of science-fantasy fictions that utilise historically-disjointed nineteenth-century technologies and settings (Jeter 1987: 57)." "What unites steampunk across various media is its retro-futuristic vision of Victorian life where industrial progress has careened wildly off its historical track ,transformed by anachronistic machinery."
"the steampunk genre does little to mask its construction, recasting its fictional histories as alternatives, falsities, and often explicit lies. As texts that flout historical credibility through their anachronistic tendencies, they might (most alarmingly) be considered as definitive examples of Fredric Jameson’s warnings of a postmodern perpetuation of –what he termed –“the enfeeblement of historicity in our own time”(Jameson 1990: 130)."

Danahay, Martin (2016). " Steampunk as a Postindustrial Aesthetic: “All that is solid melts in air”". Neo-Victorian Studies 8:2.

"steampunklacks a coherent political agenda., At least in part,it is an aestheticmore concerned withproducing beautiful objectsthan advocating aclear programmeof widersocial reorganisation. In its reaction against “all that is solid melts in air”, it romanticisesnineteenth-century industrial production and uses its objects for postindustrial leisure consumption."
"both steampunk and Arts and Crafts present challenges in defining themselvesas coherent movements beyond a visceral rejection of contemporary industrialisation, represented by factories (as opposed to collaborative workshops) for the Arts and Crafts movement and by computer products(whether individually or collectively manufactured) for steampunk. In both cases a commitment to creating handcrafted objects is not necessarily linked to an articulatedpolitical cause, although some practitioners do attempt to establish a wider social agenda for the aesthetic. Neither representsa coherent ‘movement’inthe sense of a political organisation with explicit demands for social justice(Tilley and Wood 2009: 3-5), which I will argue in conclusion ultimately risks subvertingsteampunk’s opposition to commodification and rendering its aesthetic liable to co-option by commercial interests." (makes me think of live coding, also!)
"For steampunks, there isno ‘authentic’Victorian period (nor an authentic Medieval age as celebrated by the Arts and Crafts movement). Steampunk therefore express a postmodern approach to history in which anachronistic references can be winsomely mixed together for an effect that is fueled by adesire to refashionthe past by rewriting its texts and recycling its products.For Morris this would be destroying the past, whereas for steampunk it is an imaginary resistance to the revolutionising of the means of production." "Victorian London in steampunk is botha reference pointand a historical space that can be reshaped at will through imagination, in a fictional parallel to the ‘creative destruction’of capital tearing down old buildings and erecting larger, more profitable structures in their place. In steampunk fiction’s urban environments“all that is solid melts in air” thanks to these flows of capital, and to the resulting reshaping of London. By extension this reconfiguration of the urban landscape is applied to time,where familiar historical events and figures are brought into collision with oneanother in re-imagined chronologies reshaped by digital technologies."
The author has further publications about the Arts and Craft movement in conjunction with/relation to steampunk: Martin Danahay – English Language & Literature
"Pho and Goh point out the dangers of recuperating colonialismthrough steampunk celebrations of imperial power (Pho and Goh: 2012: 104)" - Pho, Diana M. and Jaymee Goh. 2012. ‘Steampunk: Stylish Subversion and Colonial Chic’, in (ed. Tarrant, Sheila and Marjorie Jolles)Fashion Talks. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 191-208.
Conclusion: "In a postindustrial environment where relationships are being monetised in online social media like Facebook, steampunk couldprovide a literary and visual vocabulary with which to resist such commodificationof everyday interactions. As it currently stands, however,steampunk only performs an aestheticreaction against the fear that“everything solid melts in air”.Cogs, steam and dirigibles alone do not yet represent a significant and sustained resistance to the endless cycle of production and consumption to which we are all connected, online and offline, as consuming subjects."

Patrick Jagoda (2010). " Clacking Control Societies: Steampunk, History, and the Difference Engine of Escape." Neo-Victorian Studies 3:1.

"the novel travels down an earlier path, available yet never traversed during the early nineteenth century, in order to examine the underlying contingency of history." (speaking of The Difference Engine)
"The narrative about power that underlies The Difference Enginemost closely resembles the history elaborated by Foucault between the 1960s and 1980s. In his major works, Foucault describes a transition from a sovereign society to a disciplinary society..."
"Some government Engines in this alternative Victorian society are devoted to theoretical science and pure mathematics, but most of their computing power is devoted to statistical analyses and police surveillance. One character, Prince Albert, articulates this biopolitical function, when he argues, “[S]tatistics is the key to the future. Statistics are everything in England” (Gibson and Sterling 1990: 369)."
A key turn in the article is the argument that The Difference Engine stages a progression from sovereign through disciplinary to control forms of power. (By contrast, FrostPunk oscillates between sovereign and disciplinary forms.)