Why might we care about Dieselpunk?
Operating Premise #1: An arts aesthetic is a
situational response to a particular artistic/historical moment and context. Deco,
Arts & Crafts, Rococo, Neoclassical, Romantic, avant-garde, Baroque
aesthetics are all responses generated as a result of human experience within
specific historical contexts, and their meaning both derives from, moves
through, and reveals transformations of historical thinking and meaning.
My own subjective critique and aesthetic politics: an arts
aesthetic that fails to implicate a political awareness of its originating
historical context(s) risks becoming privileged, precious, ahistorical, appropriative,
and/or culturally-adrift. As a result, I am not interested in an arts aesthetic
which disavows the political.
Operating Premise #2: Art which reinforces dominant
cultural or historical tropes is less interesting to me than art which
questions them.
Terminology: to “-punk” an idiom, an expression, or a
genre, is to critique, subvert, or read against its presumed grain. Hence
punk-rock read against the grain of 1970s rock music; cyber-punk read against
the grain of mainstream hard-SFF utopianism; and so forth.[1]
Therefore: Dieselpunk, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Solarpunk—all
are essentially both aesthetics, and implicitly politics. That is: the prefix—“Diesel-,”
“Steam-,” “Cyber-,” “Solar-”—references the historical time-frame of a specific
aesthetic (respectively and approximately 1914-45, 1870-1914, 1950s-forward,
1960s-forward), but the suffix “-punk” references that aesthetic’s
oppositional politics—its political intentions.
Thus, to “-punk” an aesthetic is to read the prefix “Diesel”
or “Steam” or “Cyber” or “Solar” against the grain, against the norm—to employ
the period aesthetics of c1914-45, 1870-1914, 1950s-forward to critique and/or
subvert dominant culture in those periods. To “punk” is to occupy the
subaltern; to push back; to hack the norms and counter-jam the aesthetic
presumptions and even more importantly the cultural politics and entitlements from
which those presumptions emerge. This is what the original punk-rock did, what
the original cyber-punk did: they read the dominating aesthetic against the
grain—oppositionally.
So what would a truly Dieselpunk politics look
like?
For the sake of comparison, perhaps we could say that the
appeal and the pitfalls of Steampunk run from the gamut from charming, exotic, inventive—to
orientalist, appropriative, posturing, precious, racist, while we might say
that:
The appeal and the pitfalls of Dieselpunk run from
constructive, proletarian, patriotic, courageous—to historicist, brutalist, xenophobic, proto-fascist.
Again—and therefore—what would a dieselpunk politics look
like? Or, to phrase this as a more explicitly interpretative question: what
would be the oppositional politics of dieselpunk?
If “Diesel-” as an aesthetic (especially a visual one)—in
its period of c1914-45—is industrialist, assembly-line, mechanistic,
future-utopianist, proto-fascist, then “diesel-punk” could be read as oppositional,
subversive, subaltern, proletariat, reading “against the grain”, opposing
authoritarianism.
A very central strand of dieselpunk aesthetics in popular
culture (games and films especially) is essentially “post-imperial”,
mechanistic, romantic, focused upon the visual aesthetic of Mitteleuropaische
militarism; see Iron Harvest, etc.[2]
In opposition, what would be less monolithic, less
militaristic versions of period-accurate historical manifestations
(c1914-45) of a dieselpunk” politics? Certainly not fascism, militarism,
industrial consolidation, brutalism—these were the dominating (and
repressive) tendencies of the era.
Rather, a -punk-style oppositional stance would seek to counter
these tendencies, “reading against the grain” to subvert fascism,
militarism, industrial consolidation, brutalism. So “dieselpunk” would be
anti-fascist, anti-militarist, anti-industrialist, anti-brutalist; celebrating
participatory (ideally anarcho-syndicalist) democracy, radical peace-making,
workers’ and communities’ collective ownership and pride in work, organic and
sustainable.
For the period c1914-45, historical examples which
fruitfully “punked” the era’s dominant-culture consolidations of militarism,
fascism, authoritarianism (which dominate much dieselpunk art and design) might
instead celebrate:
·
The Bonus Army (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army):
the WWI veterans who came to and camped on the Washington Mall, demanding a
payout of subsidies they had been promised for their service. Their encampment
was broken up by Federal troops commanded by Black Jack Pershing and which
included George S Patton and Douglas MacArthur. Loc.gov lecture (https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-3710/)
·
Aspects, especially folkloric/cultural
expressions, of the Popular Front:
the international and especially cultural-production face of 1930s Soviet
support for international communist & socialist movements; eventually
subverted, suborned, and betrayed by Stalinist opportunism in the late 1930s
and early ‘40s. More detailed article on the UK version (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Front_(UK))
·
The New Deal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal)
and WPA
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration);
CCC, FTP, and the rest of the “Alphabet Soup” of FDR’s First 100 Days and
Second 100 Days in office, which transformed visions of the Federal
government’s responsibilities for organization, infrastructure, and public
engagement. Jump-started a revival of American modernist art forms, especially
photography, theater, journalism. Betrayed in the early 1950s by HUAC and in
the 1980s by Reaganism.
·
The anti-nationalist and internationalist
politics of the Republican
side in the Spanish Civil War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_faction_(Spanish_Civil_War)
·
The international archipelago of tramp steamer
lines, populations, communities—and, even more pervasively, the international
polyglot creole culture of port cities; see Denning Noise
Uprising (https://books.google.com/books?id=q1ZoBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=denning+%22noise+uprising%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifvMHlxIrsAhVkhOAKHQM5AKsQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=denning%20%22noise%20uprising%22&f=false)
·
Folksong collecting—but a folksong collecting
which more aggressively self-critiqued its own urban, educated, monied, and
white-supremacist presumptions. What the American Folklife Collection
(https://www.loc.gov/folklife/index.html)
at the LOC claimed to be, was in reality, versus what it could have been with
more rigorous self-examination. See John and Alan Lomax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lomax).
·
Lend Lease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease):
free nations mobilizing free populations to manufacture weapons to defend other
free nations against fascism. Again, FDR’s leadership.
·
Vernacular musics of all kinds being heard in
niche-marketed as well as popular-access media: 78s and radio: Appalachian
music, country blues, all manner of immigrant musics. New media providing new
touchstones for minority and proletarian cultural identities.
Seminal period texts which speak to this more sophisticated “-punk”
oppositional aesthetic: the 1940s
sections in Malcolm’s Autobiography
(https://books.google.com/books?id=EtVfCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22autobiography+of+malcolm+x%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj59tWvxYrsAhWOiOAKHRvAAtcQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=lindy&f=false);
Orwell Homage
to Catalonia (https://books.google.com/books?id=8rabAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22homage+to+catalonia%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7svTCxYrsAhUvTt8KHWvEC1QQ6AEwAHoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=%22homage%20to%20catalonia%22&f=false);
Agee Let
Us Now Praise Famous Men (https://books.google.com/books?id=qrmm6yNCZysC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22let+us+now+praise+famous+men%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi20Z7axYrsAhVsTd8KHfLrBRkQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=%22let%20us%20now%20praise%20famous%20men%22&f=false);
Hurston Their
Eyes were Watching God (https://books.google.com/books?id=AxOpIMLco8AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Their+Eyes+were+Watching+God%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjn0trmxYrsAhVIc98KHZQ_AS8Q6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=%22Their%20Eyes%20were%20Watching%20God%22&f=false)
and ethnographic work, Steinbeck Cannery
Row (https://books.google.com/books?id=1JOfAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT9&dq=%22cannery+row%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiskPX5xYrsAhVooXIEHet1BvEQ6AEwAXoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=%22cannery%20row%22&f=false)
and The
Grapes of Wrath (https://books.google.com/books?id=fUoQFk8aTCkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22grapes+of+wrath%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiS8rKIxorsAhWUmHIEHQLuB2MQ6AEwA3oECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=%22grapes%20of%20wrath%22&f=false);
Woody Guthrie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie);
Lead Belly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly)
, etc.
