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Their Own Devices: Steampunk Airships as Heterotopias of Crisis and Deviance Krentz, Courtney; Perschon, Mike; St. Amand, Amy
Abstract
Michel Foucault uses a sailing vessel as the exemplar of his theory of heterotopia because of its mobility. The lateral and vertical mobility of the steampunk airship indicates the potential for an even greater exemplar of heterotopia, particularly of Foucault’s defining principles of heterotopic crisis and deviance. These principles are explored onboard the steampunk airships of Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy and Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series, resulting in travel towards progressive social frontiers of gender and race. The protagonists of the Leviathan trilogy move from a position of crisis to deviance, as mediated through the friendship and romance of two representatives of warring factions. In contrast, the heroine of the Finishing School series moves from deviance to crisis as she navigates the vagaries of gender and racial identity. These airship heterotopias of young adult fiction, which not only descend geographically but also socially, cross liminal crisis spaces of class, race, gender, and identity to craft literary cartographies for these social frontiers, providing readers with literary maps for their uncertain real worlds of crisis.
Item Metadata
| Title |
Their Own Devices: Steampunk Airships as Heterotopias of Crisis and Deviance
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| Creator | |
| Publisher |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
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| Date Issued |
2022-01-13
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| Description |
Michel Foucault uses a sailing vessel as the exemplar of his theory of heterotopia because of its mobility. The lateral and vertical mobility of the steampunk airship indicates the potential for an even greater exemplar of heterotopia, particularly of Foucault’s defining principles of heterotopic crisis and deviance. These principles are explored onboard the steampunk airships of Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy and Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series, resulting in travel towards progressive social frontiers of gender and race. The protagonists of the Leviathan trilogy move from a position of crisis to deviance, as mediated through the friendship and romance of two representatives of warring factions. In contrast, the heroine of the Finishing School series moves from deviance to crisis as she navigates the vagaries of gender and racial identity. These airship heterotopias of young adult fiction, which not only descend geographically but also socially, cross liminal crisis spaces of class, race, gender, and identity to craft literary cartographies for these social frontiers, providing readers with literary maps for their uncertain real worlds of crisis.
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| Subject | |
| Genre | |
| Type | |
| Language |
eng
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| Date Available |
2022-03-21
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| Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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| Rights |
CC BY 4.0
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| DOI |
10.14288/1.0407263
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| URI | |
| Affiliation | |
| Citation |
Humanities 11 (1): 14 (2022)
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| Publisher DOI |
10.3390/h11010014
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| Peer Review Status |
Reviewed
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| Scholarly Level |
Faculty
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| Rights URI | |
| Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
CC BY 4.0