I was thinking about our conversation last week on representations of race and ethnicity, and the question about who is "allowed" to claim various identities. It reminded me of a blog post which I have now added into the "optional readings" for week 5 in D2L. The piece is about someone who self identifies both as Native and as steampunk, and the author raises some very interesting points. It is a piece about representations of race, subverting stereotypes, and navigating a fine line between cultural appropriation and cultural honoring. I also enjoyed reading about Native Tech, and thinking about what that concept means if your culture has often been portrayed as frozen in the past. The whole blog that the piece was posted on - Beyond Victoriana - is an exploration of "multicultural perspectives on steampunk".
Is steampunk that takes place in the "meatspace" sort of like a live action version of an avatar? What are the potentials and pitfalls of using fantasy or fictional spaces - online or offline - to explore history and alternate histories?
Interesting point about the realization of avatar presence in "meatspace." Steampunk could be an example of this, but also other fantasy communities that meet face-to-face periodically. Then I started thinking that these are not so much different from the way we engage each other as "our real selves." We (whether online or not) choose a persona (some more intentionally than others - look up Mark Snyder, U of MN, Self Monitoring Theory) and work at presenting ourselves as that person. Whether in Cyberspace or Meatspace, sometimes we succeed in managing our impressions and sometimes not. Just as in real life, often the image is not consistent with the content - or becomes a mere caricature of the obvious reality. That said, the post is interesting and informative and I like Monique Poirier's writing style.
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