Transcript: "Claiming Narratives, Re-Telling History: Bringing Southeast Asian Steampunk to the World Stage"

Recently I went to a conference held by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley, entitled "Making Southeast Asian Culture: From Region To World." Thanks to Dr. Gui Weihsin, I was on a panel on literary transformations in Southeast Asia.

I wouldn't really say I'm a Southeast Asianist. In my main blog, I describe myself as being involved with UC Riverside's SEATRiP program not by research, but through my creative pursuits. I DO study Southeast Asian history and cultures, but that is because I write stories that are meant for a Southeast Asian audience. So when Dr. Gui invited me to submit an abstract for this conference, I wracked my brain trying to think of a good usable topic (that could, in the interests of an academic career, transform into a publishable paper) and thought of something completely different, but completely untenable, and he said, "why not just talk about your book? You edited it, you know the field, you'd be the only steampunk specialist there, and it's Southeast Asian literature."

I can do that?

And turns out, of course I can, which put me into the position of speaking as an academic about a book I personally edited. I was very uncomfortable because on the one hand, Dr. Gui was right, it IS Southeast Asian Literature (we've got one white woman in the entire Table of Contents; white women are very diverse these days) and I AM an expert on the field and it IS a great opportunity to tell people about the book, but on the other hand, I have been taught, in so many ways, that being proud of my work and what I've done and talking about it is kind of big-headed, arrogant, and kinda rude. But I have the support of many lovely people here at UCR, including my adviser, so I wrote it, and made a very nice Powerpoint (which I'm not actually putting up here). 

So here is the transcript!

101 List Updated!

To prove that I'm still alive, I just updated that tab above which reads "Read These Before Engaging."

Most of you who come to this blog in good faith actually wanting to learn will actually take some time out to read what's in that tab, for which I thank you.

Everyone else visiting this blog to blergh out at me for being racist or white-hating or whatever intellectually lazy non-arguments can fuck off; I'll be deleting comments if I suspect you just want your opinions heard. 

This comes in light of learning about @Anti_Racism_Dog, which Overland's Malcolm Harris talks about here. It's actually a long thing, so let me quote the relevant excerpts.

Racist Things Steampunks Are Not Immune To: Looking for Other People's Hurt To be Offended By

So this morning I woke up to like two emails about the exact same thing: some nonsense-filled thread talking about "how to not offend people" when it comes to multicultural steampunk. And a cursory glance through the emails, which copied the exact same Facebook thread, proved to me once more how impossible it is to talk to white people who don't want to change their mind about what offensiveness is and what not to do.

While I am certainly pleased to say that there are people who are definitely aware of the implications of what they do, even in some fuzzy way that they wouldn't be able to articulate properly even if their lives depended on it, I am also very well-aware of the fact that there are a ton of people... shall I say, LOOKING FOR OFFENSE. 

The offence comes in the form of some perceived limitation of their actions and options. Well OK, you were looking for offense, so here is some. 

There are some people who will set up strawman arguments about how POC are looking for things to be offended by to the point that these poor folks feel like they're walking on eggshells everytime they move. 

"I can't wear a pith helmet," they will whine, "because then it would be colonialist and thus offensive!"

"I can't wear a kimono," another set will whine, "because then it would offend Asian people!"

"I can't incorporate gypsy styles," some more will whine, "because then I'd be accused of appropriation!"

Can we even consider the absurdity of these statements?

You CAN'T because then... someone will remind you why it sucks for them to see you wearing it?

You CAN'T because then... someone might tell you off and express their anger at you doing it?

You CAN'T because then... someone will remind you they are hurt that their culture has become a commodity item, while they're trying to live their daily lives trying to gain recognition as human beings? 

That's so fucking self-centered I can't even begin to fathom the amount of sociopathy it takes to not empathize with the person who you perceive is being "offended". 

It's also really fucking self-centered because then it starts being all about YOU, and how YOU CAN'T. There is no empathy for anyone else in such statements. There is nothing at all in these statements demonstrating you understand the large-scale problems behind these statements and behind what, exactly, makes these actions so problematic.

Someone expresses anger that you done fucked up again? It's about YOU, and YOUR ANGER, and how YOU FEEL about being put on the spot and made to feel guilty.

I get comments on here sometimes, people looking for offense saying, "well now I know but you didn't have to be so rude about it."

How fucking long have I been writing this blog? Since 2009, folks. 2009! And we STILL have these conversations. And people STILL fuck up. And well-meaning allies whom I do adore STILL get awkward and remain unable to fully articulate in a clear way why this is a problem. 

If politeness got us anywhere, I'd still be writing on here on a regular basis, reviewing white-written work about POC and dealing with the pain I get everytime I see potentially good work ruined because it's clear this person just doesn't talk to a wide range of POC who have various diverse experiences with oppression. Let alone other white people on various axes of oppression, gosh! 

This is not a steampunk problem, this is a cultural problem, this is a problem with white supremacy.

"Steampunk is just fantasy!" cry these assholes looking for things to be offended by.

Well then don't let your fantasy ruin mine!

"People aren't perfect!" whine these assholes looking for offense in perfectly reasonable requests to not do certain things which may cause harm.

Well then go fuck up on your own time and in your own goddamn space! Not where I can see you, not where other people can be collateral damage! 

We ask and ask. We ask nicely and get told "well whatever" and we ask again and get told "you're looking for offense where there's none" and we ask again and we get told "you ALWAYS have a problem and NEVER a solution" and we ask again and we get told "I JUST WANNA DO WHAT I WANT!"

And since you assholes like to make it about YOU, how about I make it about ME.

Because I wanna do what I want too. I want to have fun in steampunk and have great discussions about how steampunk can teach us real history and help us have conversations about the past and how it has been so skewered and mis-read by historians as a site of culture and knowledge and I want to have wonderful dialogue with wonderful people coming up with strategies to help ameliorate current suffering that came about because of the history we want to re-imagine (because mark this: solutions can never come about through ONE PERSON alone, it comes out of cooperation, willingness to listen, and honesty about the problem and if you expect a singular person who notices a problem to come up with a solution on their own, you fall back on individualist hero thinking that got us to where we are in our selfish, self-centered society today).

And you know.... despite all that, I STILL do this. And I CAN do this. Even with assholes railing against our work in trying to point out the problems because they're more keen on digging in their heels to defend their freedom from knowing about other people's hurt and anger, even with ubiquitous louts who aren't willing to even admit that there is a problem or if there is one it's really not that bad and I will still do this even though I know, at every event out there I'm going to come across at least ONE of these irredeemable sociopaths who just wants to look for offense in what I do. 

Because my love is stronger than your ignorance. It is fed by the knowledge of past wrongs never uncovered to the light of day because we are too afraid to reckon with it, and it is fed by the rage of knowing past wrongs still surface in different ways today, and it is fed by the pain I feel that every thing I consume, every move I make, every cent I spent, is part of a machine built by greedy people and run by their fearful, perhaps innocent minions and oiled by cowards. 

And yes, my love manifests with fury and vengeance, and if you cannot fathom how this can even be, yet allow that injustices will happen and you don't have to hew your mind to fully comprehending your place in it, you're not as open-minded, or as inclusive, or as welcoming as you like to think you are, because you cannot seem to accept that there are variegated ways of being and doing that are beyond even your measly comprehension. 

So yeah, go ahead, go DO that thing you want to do! Just don't limit the reactions you're going to receive from them... because that's not welcoming either. Don't try to tell people how they SHOULD react to you. Frankly, I highly doubt anybody is going to engage with you out of the blue about your offensive-ass costume because if you had the brainlessness to even wear it out in public, you probably wouldn't have the peace of mind to handle any criticism of it without doing some crazy mental acrobatics justifying that shit you're wearing. I don't know, maybe you do, there have been such miracles in the past. (How sad is it that this is a miracle to us?)

Just do it far away from me. The fandom's big enough, right? 'Cos I'm certainly not looking for fuck-ups anymore and I don't even have to because people keep pointing them out to me. I got better shit to do, cut me a break and go fuck up somewhere else.

But never mistake that I am offended by anything anymore... no, I've COME to expect this sort of racist shit. I'm done having high expectations for you folks. 

And you people "afraid" of giving offense... you sure do take a lot of offense when being told you've being offensive.

I'm now going to go read about slave ships. I'll see you all later.

Link of Great Interest: What Is Cultural Appropriation?

A year or two ago, ardhra added her two-cents to a conversation I was having on Tumblr about cultural appropriation, which I've never forgotten, "cultural appropriation involves power." Since then, I've fumbled around trying to explain and extrapolate on this. 

Now she's gone and explained, quite concisely, I think, the general way cultural appropriation works, in what is very straightforward language that if you can't figure out what a word means, you can Google it. 

Some quotes:

The problem isn’t that cultures intermingle, it’s the terms on which they do so and the part that plays in the power relations between cultures. The problem isn’t “taking” or “borrowing”, the problem is racism, imperialism, white supremacy, and colonialism. The problem is how elements of culture get taken up in disempowering, unequal ways that deny oppressed people autonomy and dignity. Cultural appropriation only occurs in the context of the domination of one society over another, otherwise known as imperialism. Cultural appropriation is an act of domination, which is distinct from ‘borrowing’, syncretism, hybrid cultures, the cultures of assimilated/integrated populations, and the reappropriation of dominant cultures by oppressed peoples.

...
What’s being appropriated in *cultural appropriation* isn’t the things themselves — the images, stories, artefacts, themes, etc. — it’s the capacity of people of oppressed groups to determine the meaning, scope, usage, and future of those things. Cultural appropriation involves taking over peoples’ control over representations of themselves. Cultural appropriation is an attack on cultural autonomy and self-determination, backed up by historically constructed domination.
....
Anything that depoliticises the definition of cultural appropriation as being about cultural “borrowing” erases the reality of how cultural appropriation has come into being and operated. It’s the “colourblind,” i.e. race-aversive and power-aversive, version, that sanitises the history of cultural appropriation. 

What white people always erase is that cultural appropriation has historically been accompanied, and enabled, by violence. From weavers’ fingers to genocidal rape, the violence built into cultural appropriation is undeniable.

This is going into the 101 page, but I wanted to make sure ya'll who have me on your feeds got a chance to read this excellent essay, rather than sneak it by you.  Seriously, go read the whole thing. Twice.

Racist Things Steampunks Are Not Immune To: Microaggressions

Oh, good, you're still here. Now that I sic'd Aversive Racism on you, have another racist thing that steampunks do. Like aversive racism, this is not unique to steampunk, so much as it is baggage that steampunks will carry in from the larger culture.

So, have your second Racism 101 item: Microaggressions.

Racist Things Steampunks Are Not Immune To: Aversive Racism

I talk a lot about racism in my work, not least because, uh, part of why I get pretty fucking angry about colonialism and whatnot is because the histories of colonialism that many POC live with today are the foundation for systemic racism that exists today.

It's gotten to the point where I am kind of aggressively avoiding novels that feature straight white dudes unless it's a YA (out of the four novels I have attempted to read in the last while, the only one I could stand was a YA novel) because I am just kind of pissed off at the reminder that straight white dudes have been allowed to call the shots when they have been so utterly wrong, and have created such utterly wrong worlds, both in fiction and in reality, and continue to be accepted when they exhibit utterly wrong behaviour. It gets to the point where I want to cloister all my white friends who are wonderful people away from all this wrongness in case it's catching, like a flu.

But I can't, so instead I go about identifying Things That Are Wrong and tell any listening public (like all four of you reading this blog!) about them, so I have the satisfaction of having at least attempted to mitigate the wrongness of the world. And you will have some names for Things That Are Generally Wrong With The World that also creep into steampunk, so you can start learning how to call it as you see it and thus help in the long arduous battle against racism in steampunk! Our first term is: Aversive Racism!