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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
LITERARY ANTHROPOLOGY
Imaginary Worlds
Invitation to an Argument
Wayne Fife
Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology
Series Editors
Deborah Reed-Danahay
Department of Anthropology
The State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY, USA
Helena Wulff
Department of Social Anthropology
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden
This series explores new ethnographic objects and emerging genres of
writing at the intersection of literary and anthropological studies. Books in
this series are grounded in ethnographic perspectives and the broader
cross-cultural lens that anthropology brings to the study of reading and
writing. The series explores the ethnography of fiction, ethnographic fic-
tion, narrative ethnography, creative nonfiction, memoir, autoethnogra-
phy, and the connections between travel literature and ethnographic
writing.
Wayne Fife
Imaginary Worlds
Invitation to an Argument
Wayne Fife
Department of Anthropology
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John’s, NL, Canada
Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology

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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the help of the anthro-
pologist Sharon Roseman, who read and helped edit the entire book, pro-
viding emotional support and encouragement along the way. It is to her
that I want to dedicate this book, not just for her helpful scholarship but
for thirty plus years of putting up with me as her partner.
I began the book with the editor Mary Al-Sayed who—as always—
offered her unstinting encouragement and helpful suggestions. It was she
who recognized the book might fit into the Palgrave Studies in Literary
Anthropology series. After Mary left the press, Elizabeth Graber very ably
took up the mantle of Senior Editor, offering timely advice and stepping
in to encourage me on when we hit a difficult patch. Palgrave Macmillan
has been lucky to have had two such talented editors as part of their orga-
nization. I would also like to thank the editors of the Literary Anthropology
book series for their support, Deborah Reed-Danahay and Helena Wulff,
who recognized a kindred spirit when they saw one. My thanks are also
due to the anonymous reviewers who pushed me to better explanations,
sharper definitions, and the greater elaboration of key concepts. Without
peer reviewers who are willing to put the time into this too often thankless
task, there is little doubt that scholars would produce less accomplished
texts. I have also benefited from the comments and debates I have had
over the last decade with both undergraduate and graduate students in
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
recurring courses I’ve taught at Memorial University on The Anthropology

of Play and on Imaginary Worlds. Special mention might be made of all
the Steampunk practitioners I have engaged with through these classes
over the years. As always, any errors, omissions, and less than clearly
expressed ideas remain the sole responsibility of the author.
Contents
1 Imaginary Worlds in a Comparative Framework 1
2 Steampunk as Stealth Politics 31
3 The Perils of Belief: Fantasy Fiction as Narrative Theology 53
4 Androids
as Slaves: Lessons from the Science Fiction of
Philip K. Dick 81
5 Imaginary Worlds and Contemporary Alienation111
Appendix A: Marxist Approaches to Speculative Fiction129
References Cited135
Index149
vii
CHAPTER 1
Imaginary Worlds in a Comparative

Framework
A plausible case can be made for the idea that all humans live in an imagi-
nary world and that we have always done so. Arguments can be found in
many disciplines that we largely invent our worlds through specific, though
never static, cultural formations. These inventions are mediated by par-
ticular kinds of language use (e.g., Lee 1959a, 1959b; Sapir 1986; Whorf
2012) and by the structural constraints of our biological selves (e.g., there
are light spectrums that other species can detect, odors that other species
can smell, and tastes other species can differentiate that we cannot). Our
sense of history is largely regulated by our present concerns projected
backward (Dening 1988; Lowenthal 1988; White 1990; Trouillot 1995),
and our overall existential condition has a quality of strangeness that allows
few humans to feel truly comfortable (e.g., Camus 1989; Sartre 1993;
Jackson 2012). Read even a few of the many books available about quan-
tum physics, and you will be left wondering what we are supposed to be
standing on when we assert that we have both of our feet planted firmly
on the ground (e.g., Bohm 1989; Feynman 2006; Hawking 1998). As
Loren Eiseley put it some fifty years ago “words are startling in their
immediate effectiveness, but at the same time they are always finally
imprisoning” (Eiseley 1970: 31–32). Words imprison, according to
Eiseley, because they allow us to create an ‘unnatural world’ of our own,
which ‘we call the cultural world,’ and in which ‘we feel at home’
(ibid.: 32).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
W. Fife, Imaginary Worlds, Palgrave Studies in Literary
Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08641-0_1
2 W. FIFE
It has become commonplace in anthropology over the last 100 years to

understand that humans create cultural worlds and then do our best to
convince ourselves that these worlds somehow correspond with what we
take to be our living reality. A number of anthropologists have paid real
attention to this issue in different ways (e.g., Bateson 1958, Lee 1959a,
1959b; Lienhardt 1961; Wagner 1981; Appadurai 1996; Crapanzano
2003) and have grappled with the ramifications of doing anthropology in
an invented world.
The truism of an invented world, however, does not take us very far in
helping us understand the contemporary popularity of specific imaginary
worlds. For the purposes of analysis, if imaginary worlds are everything
then they are nothing at all. However, it is quite possible to delineate the
study of imaginary worlds for the purposes of comparison in much stricter
terms, and that is what I propose to do in this book.
Why Should We Care?

I would like to begin by briefly focusing on some of the most compelling
arguments for studying imaginary worlds in the first place. For the
moment, the spotlight will be on only a few of the key issues.
Imaginary worlds offer researchers a unique source of evidence for
developing and testing our theories about how social and cultural worlds
work. Unlike researchers in some disciplines, qualitative researchers such
as myself (see Fife 2005, 2020) have never been able to effectively utilize
either standard experimental methods or computer modeling in the same
way as many of the sciences (e.g., biology, archaeology, chemistry, phys-
ics). This is a chance for those who rely on ethnographic and other qualita-
tive methods to have a fieldwork analogue for the development of theory,
one that can complement our traditional fieldwork or case-study-based
research and engender new theories for consideration in relation to the
standard world.1
The best way to explain this dimension is with a specific example. I
choose to use Marxist theory here, though I could just have easily turned
to feminist theory, one of the forms of post-structuralism, queer theory,
semiotics, actor-network theory, or virtually any of the many conceptual
systems that critical researchers find useful in our work. Marxist theory has
been very influential in many disciplines for a considerable period and is
therefore a useful interdisciplinary example (see Appendix A). It should be
noted that I am using Marxist theory as an exemplar. Throughout the
1 IMAGINARY WORLDS IN A COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK 3
course of this work, my plan is to make use of whatever theory or perspec-

tive best illustrates what can be done through applying a specific set of
ideas to a particular imaginary world rather than taking a singular approach
to the analysis of these worlds. This, I believe, will yield the most useful
examples for those who wish to understand some of the many ways that
imaginary worlds can be analyzed and provide insight for researchers in
the social sciences.
One of the standard issues in the various strands of Marxist theory is
the extent to which an analysis based on mode of production and an
assumed class struggle can be fruitful for the study of non-capitalist or
only partially capitalist political economies. We can gain insights on this by
treating imaginary worlds as thought experiments in which we can test out
the issue. The on-line game World of Warcraft (WoW), for example, would
prove to be an excellent venue for such a thought experiment (e.g., Nardi
2010; Bainbridge 2010; Geraci 2014). This gaming world, which has mil-
lions of participants, offers its players (who assume an in-world avatar as a
stand-in) a subtly complex economic platform for their agonistic actions.
Without going into detail, WoW involves complicated auction houses for
the buying and selling of items that avatars gain in-world through combat,
successfully completed adventures, and ‘grinding’ (repetitive work such as
hunting, mining, or tailoring). Each avatar is something of a petit-
entrepreneur. Players have to ‘work’ their avatar in a myriad of ways to gain
gold, experience points, new levels, and various forms of valuable weapons
and other useful tools. In-world labor, which also comes in the form of
strategic combat while engaging in quests, can occur both alone and in
combination with other avatars (logged-on players). Combining with oth-
ers typically occurs in a quest, as a large number of these missions are
designed to work against being successfully completed alone. Many play-
ers/avatars also choose to combine themselves into semi-permanent
‘guilds,’ which are collectives that have their own rules (at least, to some
extent). There may, for example, be collectively agreed-upon rules for
being accepted into the guild, for how to act during in-world play, or for
the disposition of spoils and other forms of wealth. In short, some of the
in-world economic underpinnings of WoW appear to be capitalist in orien-
tation and some appear to be non-capitalist (and more suited to medieval
feudalism, a tribal organization, a chiefdom, or even a foraging society).
The in-world guilds that many players form can perhaps be best compared
to clans and point to the importance of kinship-like social forms in some
in-world social organizations of WoW. The question for a researcher then
4 W. FIFE
becomes to what extend Marxist theory, and more specifically modes of

production and the notion of class struggle, can be of value while doing
an in-world analysis of WoW? For example, could the members of several
guilds be convinced to get together to organize an auction co-op outside
of the already existing auction structures? What role does theft play in the
WoW economy? Could the gold standard be subverted in some fashion?
Are any of the guilds similar to ‘primitive forms of communism’ (Marx
1990), and could they be pushed further in this direction if they already
exhibited such a tendency?
I would like to offer a second example to illustrate how Marxist theory
could be newly considered through an imaginary world. I have been
researching Carlos Collodi’s original story of Pinocchio (e.g., Collodi
2002). Conceived in Italy near the end of the same period in which Karl
Marx was researching and writing some of his key works about capitalism,
it appears to me that Collodi’s Pinocchio can be partially read as an aes-
thetic critique of capitalism. That is, I believe it forms an artistic parallel to
some of Marx’s political economy criticisms. Eschewing detail, I would
like to provide a small amount of evidence for this conjecture. Produced
as serial narratives for the periodical Giornale per i bambini in 1881,
Collodi originally ended his Pinocchio stories after chapter fifteen
(Wunderlick and Morrissey 2002: 4), when his unfortunate puppet was
hung on a tree and left for dead. After initially being released into the
world by the very poor and violently quarrelsome woodworker Geppetto,
Pinocchio surprises his ‘father’ by refusing to work or go to school.
Geppetto hoped to profit on his puppet/son by having him work as a
traveling entertainer (a common enough desire for this time and place, see
Ipsen 2006). But Pinocchio demands to be looked after, asking Geppetto
for better food and clothing. Prefiguring Guy Debord’s (1967) revolu-
tionary slogan “never work,” Pinocchio gets into trouble because of his
refusal to labor or to study, his search for joy in a hostile world, and his de
facto anti-capitalist stance. He is treated badly by authorities and denied
help by a wealthy blue-haired young girl—a snub that leads to his hanging
by a pair of con-artists/thieves. In chapter 16 (which re-starts the serial),
the girl is revealed to be an ancient fairy. Looking out her window, she
notices the hanging Pinocchio and decides to send a Falcon to cut him
down. The survival of Pinocchio therefore depends upon the passing
whim of a powerful person. Throughout the rest of the book, Pinocchio
is subjected to relentless pressure from the ‘blue fairy,’ his ‘father,’ and
other authority figures to end his resistance and become an obedient
family member, worker, and citizen. Finally worn down after many adven-
tures, he capitulates in the very last chapter (Collodi 2002). The standard
interpretation suggests that this book is about how young children learn
to become ‘sensible’ and ‘civilized’ adults. But this can just as easily be
turned on its head if we look at Collodi’s ideas in parallel to some of those
put forth by Marx during the same period of time. In this viewpoint,
which pretty much any Marxist scholar would recognize, we can justifiably
interpret Pinocchio as teaching readers about the relentless forces (famil-
ial, economic, and state) arrayed against individuals who are determined
to refuse to ‘obey.’ Resistance is possible, but the price is fierce (possibly
including death), and you will probably give in at the end. The structural
forces of capitalism are too strong for any one individual to successfully
resist for any length of time on their own.
Please note that I am certainly not suggesting here that Collodi is ‘really
a Marxist’; what I am saying is that a Marxist analysis of the imaginary
world of Pinocchio can shed some very interesting light on Collodi’s orig-
inal story. Ideas that we might wish to further explore in this way through
Pinocchio could include the concepts of species being, commodity fetish-
ism, alienation, class struggle, the proletariat, and the lumpenproletariat.
It might also tell us something important about the way that artistic cri-
tiques can both parallel and differ from more analytical critiques of capital-
ism (or society in general). In this light, it is legitimate to ask to what
extent imaginary worlds contain aesthetically coded social, cultural, eco-
nomic, and political criticism (or its converse, coded conservatism).
It is also possible that imaginary worlds can become popular forms of
criticism, acted out in disguise. That is, not only the originators of the
imaginary worlds but the contemporary participants and/or consumers of
these worlds may at times use them to shape their own social, cultural,
political, and economic critiques through the latent possibilities contained
within a given world (see the chapter in this book on steampunk for an
example of this form of enactment). This kind of understanding is in keep-
ing with Ernst Bloch’s (e.g., 1988, 2000) many writings about the revo-
lutionary potential of writings on utopia, and in this sense, we might
consider other kinds of imaginary worlds as potential sites for revolution-
ary or at least anti-capitalist forms of thought.
6 W. FIFE
What Is an Imaginary World?

To facilitate a discussion about what should and what should not be
included in the study of imaginary worlds, I offer some definitional guide-
lines for consideration. These are not meant to be hard-and-fast ‘rules’
about what constitutes imaginary worlds but rather as guiding principles
that will allow us to begin our conversations about them.
To being with, I would contend that a true imaginary world must exist
outside of the confines of standard physics, social formations, economic
orders, and/or existing forms of cultural logic. That is, an imaginary world
needs to have a self-contained logic of its own. This should be a logic that
in some way ruptures already existing human conceptions about how
things are assumed to work. This would mean, for example, that Phillip
K. Dick’s science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep would
qualify as an imaginary world, but the original Ridley Scott–directed film
Blade Runner, which was inspired by this novel, would not qualify as one.
The difference between the two is the complete elimination of the techno-
mystical religion of Mercerism in the film. Mercerism in Dick’s novel
erases the assumed borders between virtual and standard reality in a way
that does not dovetail with a contemporary sense of what is and what is
not part of the physical universe. As Rebecca Gibson (2020: 28) astutely
notes, the novel centers around the issue of human authenticity, tying
everything together into a “mutual conversation about what ‘real’ means,
and why it matters so very much.” The Scott film, on the other hand,
contains some gee-whiz technology and a generally dystopic Los Angeles
of the future, but it does not offer a fundamentally different physical,
social, or cultural logic from our standard understandings of what is (or
might become) humanly possible. Rather than an imaginary world, Ridley
Scott’s Blade Runner film belongs to the world of imagination. More will
be said about ‘worlds of imagination’ a little later and how they differ from
true imaginary worlds.
A creative world based on an already existing but unproven theoretical
notion from quantum physics, such as the multi-verse hypothesis, could
however qualify as an imaginary world (e.g., Michael Moorcock’s graphic
novel Multiverse). Similarly, a world built around an alternative form of
political economy might also qualify. A good example of the latter would
be Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, which includes a whole society
based on the principles of anarchy. Frederic Jameson’s examples of genre
novels that embrace what he calls a “mode of production aesthetic” might
also fit well into this kind of world creation (Jameson 2005: 59). Although
seemingly based on standard world tropes, these examples explore highly
unlikely scenarios and create their own (alternative) social logic in the
process.
At the same time, I would contend that standard forms of metaphysical
worlds should not be considered true imaginary worlds. This would have
the benefit of excluding what we ordinarily refer to as religion from our
definition, as well as some forms of philosophy. The key defining factor in
this regard is, I think, whether-or-not the participants in the specific cul-
tural world have a conscious understanding that they are participating in
an act of imagination. Beliefs that are channeled through specific religious
or philosophical regimes of knowledge belong, for me, to a different realm
of study.
This criterion may not be clear-cut as it sounds. What to do, for exam-
ple, with the ‘lost continent’ of Atlantis, which would be a travesty to
exclude from research on imaginary worlds. The problem is that many
people who write about Atlantis avow that they or others have lived past
lives in it, create art about it, and even mount seriously expensive expedi-
tions in search of it. They seem to honestly believe in the existence of
Atlantis and assume they are undertaking activities associated with a place
that was at least once part of our standard geographical world (e.g.,
Donnelly 1949[orig. 1882]; King 2005; Steiner 2007; Cayce 2009;
Menzies 2012). Would Atlantis, therefore, more properly be understood
as a religion than as an imaginary world? Alternatively, there are people
who write about the history of Atlantis as an idea, or who use it quite
knowingly as a muse for their artistic productions, that do consciously
acknowledge its imaginary status (e.g., Bacon 2010 [orig. 1627]; Ellis
1999; Vidal-Naquet 2007; Turtledove 2008; Johns 2013). Still, could not
the same be said about many religions? We might ask if all painters of reli-
gious icons, sculptures of religious statuary, or even writers of religious
texts necessarily believed in the literal reality of their subject matter. Who
can say what was in Michelangelo’s mind when he created the murals on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? For me, the strongest argument to
include Atlantis in imaginary world studies would be that the philosopher
Plato very consciously offered us Atlantis as an ideal world in order to
stimulate debate about the standard world (for support of this position,
see Forsyth 1980; Ellis 1999; Vidal-Naquet 2007). If the originator of the
world in question had conscious intent, then I would argue that however
many people subsequently come to accept the imaginary world as part of
8 W. FIFE
the standard world, it should remain within the purview of our field of
study. An alternative position would be to include some aspects of Atlantis
as an imaginary world and some aspects as religion (or alternatively, phi-
losophy)—which would have the added advantage of forcing researchers
to carefully delineate their parameters at the outset of a given project
involving Atlantis.
A related aspect of our conundrum is that some imaginary worlds may
prove to be part of the standard world as time passes. If a novel from the
early 1800s involved flying machines, for example, it might well be prop-
erly classified as an imaginary world in the context of its own time and
place. However, a similar novel published in 2010 clearly would not
belong in the imaginary world category. Time and place therefore mat-
ter—imaginary worlds must be contextually defined and related to the
knowledge regimes in existence during the period of creation and/or par-
ticipation. In other words, they need to be historically located.
It follows, then, that specific forms of creativity that rely on actual his-
tory or standard social, cultural, economic, or other human formations
and are based on classic forms of physics and metaphysics will not qualify
as imaginary worlds but might rather be better viewed as worlds of imagi-
nation. An excellent example of a world of imagination can be found in
the Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels that were written by Patrick
O’Brien (e.g., O’Brien 1994; on the kinship between science fiction and
historical novels, see Jameson 2005). O’Brien’s main characters, Royal
Navy Captain Jack Aubrey and the physician, naturalist, and spy Stephen
Maturin, are tremendously imaginative creations. However, the novels
rely on the historic reality of the Napoleonic wars to lend themselves a
patina of realism. That is, the social and cultural logic that flows through
the twenty novels of O’Brien’s series remains the standard social logic of
our own historical world. Which is why I would prefer to understand them
as worlds of imagination rather than as imaginary worlds.
What about other, more difficult to classify, forms of contemporary
novels, such as a recent penchant for vampire themes? The only reasonable
response to this question is the classic scholarly answer of ‘it depends.’ For
example, should the Chicagoland Vampire series of novels by Chloe Neill,
which began with Some Girls Bite (Neill 2009), be excluded from being
considered an imaginary world proper because it makes extensive use of
standard social and cultural worlds in the stories? In my opinion, the
answer to this question is no. In this series, the standard world includes a
shadow world, which contains vampires, nymphs, fairies, shapeshifters,
angels, demons, trolls, sorcerers, and witches. To my mind, it is this post-

modern mash-up that qualifies the series for imaginary world status.
Combining these figures into a single formation is not something that
comes from a specific mythological or religious tradition of the past. The
re-combination therefore creates a new mythological logic, and hence a
new imaginary world. Re-combining older material in a new way is not
appreciably different from what J. R. R. Tolkien did in his Lord of the
Rings trilogy (Shippey 2003; Carpenter 2011; Lee 2014), which I think
all researchers would agree belongs to the imaginary world side of things.
Theatrical worlds can present a special kind of challenge to an imagi-
nary world versus world of imagination distinction. Highly imaginative
worlds, such as Cirque du Soleil’s circus-inspired theatrical performances,
would seem to be outside of the imaginary world proper, despite their
cutting-edge creativity. This example allows us to understand that imagi-
nary worlds are not about creativity per se, but rather about very specific
forms of human creativity. The production of ‘O’ in the Bellagio Hotel’s
theater in Las Vegas, for example, includes many kinds of innovative
clown, acrobatic, and diving performances, loosely wrapped in the conceit
of a special watery world. It could be argued that, at times, this perfor-
mance does rupture standard forms of logic. However, it does not do this
in any consistent fashion. In other words, it never establishes a consistent
logic of its own. Instead, it relies on a more surrealistic and/or ad hoc
challenge to standard forms of expression, which makes it a comment/
play on our cultural world rather than a true alternative world. When the
final curtain comes down, it is really just a new take on an old performance
vehicle (the circus) and therefore something that belongs to the world of
imagination.
But what about an operatic performance of Wagner’s Der Ring des
Nibelungen (aka The Ring), or a New York or London theatrical produc-
tion adapted from Gregory Maguire’s (2005) book Wicked? The argu-
ment here becomes more intense. Wagner of course was partially
re-inventing much older Germanic mythological traditions. Does a per-
formance of The Ring show an adequately self-consistent world and a suf-
ficiently contrarian form of human reality to qualify it for imaginary world
status, or is it more fruitfully left under the rubric of the world of imagina-
tion? It is beyond the remit of this chapter to thoroughly answer the ques-
tion - which would have to involve a careful analysis of the music, lyrics,
and performative features of a specific production. Rather than giving a
definitive answer, I would prefer to suggest that it is precisely grappling
10 W. FIFE
with such borderline cases that we will learn the most. A researcher who
seriously considers the question of whether-or-not Wagner’s opera forms
a true imaginary world would add something to the analysis of this opera
that has not been there before. Therein, I would suggest, lies one of the
values of our research: to reconsider both older and newly emerging forms
of human expression in ways that would not occur without analyzing
imaginary worlds within a comparative framework. As for a Broadway,
West End, or other productions of Wicked, the answer will depend on the
extent to which the complex world of the book by Maguire becomes
reconstituted in a specific stage performance. There is no question that the
Maguire books offer a well-realized counter-world to Baum’s original
world of Oz books (e.g., Baum 2014) and are therefore something that
can be counted as a new imaginary world in their own right. But a specific
play might be defined as either an imaginary world or as an adjunct to the
book worlds already created by Maguire (e.g., Maguire 2005) and Baum
(e.g., 2014). In this regard, it should be noted that the play ‘Wicked’ typi-
cally combines elements from each of these two (i.e., original and counter)
imaginary worlds and, in this sense, might be thought of as simply adding
one and one together rather than forming a truly new ‘world’ on its own.
Deep Worlds Versus Shallow Worlds

There are other key differentiations that need to be drawn, ones that can
have a major impact on the ultimate assignment of a specific symbolic
world. The first issue is whether the world in question has been created as
a relatively well-realized and complex social and cultural world with many
layers (a ‘deep world’) or merely contains a thin veneer of difference (a
‘shallow world’). In either case, the world in question needs to be easily
differentiated from other worlds to qualify as an imaginary world. If we
cannot do this, then it is best understood as an adjunct to a specific world
(whether standard or imaginary). For example, the land of Azeroth in
WoW can be easily defined and described in relation to other on-line gam-
ing worlds, on-line communities, or standard world social populations.
Worlds created inside of novels such as the region known as “The Land”
in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever book series (e.g.,
Donaldson 1977a) are equally easily defined in relation to other imaginary
worlds created in literature and elsewhere. An example of the latter would
be Frank Baum’s series of books set in the world of Oz (e.g., Baum 2014)
or even the world created inside the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz,
directed by Victor Fleming.
Following this criterion allows us to more precisely understand where
to place only partially realized worlds or poorly defined worlds. For exam-
ple, many popular songs contain acts of imagination that would seem to
qualify them for imaginary world status. But I would suggest the overall
lack of social and cultural complexity in these songs, and the relative shal-
lowness of their semiotic realization normally excludes them from just
such a designation. Songs are much more likely to be included as part of a
larger imaginary world complex. For example, the songs of the Steampunk
band Abney Park in albums such as The End of Days or Aether Shanties are
well-crafted stories, but for our purposes they really make sense only as
part of the much larger Steampunk universe. The living movement of neo-
Victorian Steampunk generates an imaginary world through the mediums
of fiction, music, fashion, found art sculpture and other art forms, film/
television, and through such live events as conventions and garden parties
(see Vandermeer 2011; Robb 2012). The songs on the Clockwork Angels
album from the band Rush are again certainly small gems of imagination,
but they become part of an imaginary world only when coupled with the
Steampunk novel of the same name, co-written by Kevin Anderson and
Rush drummer Neal Peart. They depend on an already existing imaginary
world (i.e., Steampunk) to gain their meaning and are therefore best
understood as specific adjuncts to that world, in much the same way that
a love song by Paul McCartney would be best understood as an adjunct to
the specific Romantic tradition that can be found inside one of the many
knowledge regimes of our standard world.
The same imaginary world can sometimes yield examples that can con-
found easy classification. The wonderful Steampunk tragedy, The Alchemy
of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia (2008), tells the tale of Mattie, an intelligent
automaton. This fully realized world contains a delicate balance of power
among alchemists, mechanics, and gargoyles that is teetering on the edge
of disaster. Mattie’s search for knowledge as an alchemist leads her to dan-
gerous secrets and ultimately to her own ruin. The novel can be appreci-
ated both as a fully autonomous imaginary world and as a special example
of the much larger Steampunk worldview. In this case, it is the uniqueness
of this specific novel within the overall steampunk framework that qualifies
it, at least in my eyes, for full imaginary world status. Ultimately, each
example needs to be treated for its own special insights and not
12 W. FIFE
automatically assumed to be an adjunct to a larger imaginary world simply

because it is also attached in some fashion to that larger world.
Deep versus shallow criteria can help us place specific cultural products
within a wider framework. There is no question that the living movement
of Steampunk involves complex multi-layered realities that form an alter-
nate social and cultural logic of its own. This firmly places it on the imagi-
nary world end of things. Since an approach to understanding imaginary
worlds must ultimately be comparative, this criterion will allow us to add
extra dimensions to our research projects. We will want our comparisons
to always take into account very specific instances of imaginary worlds,
even when they are part of the serial iterations of a thematic world. A good
example of this would be a single movie such as Star Trek: The Wrath of
Khan, versus the whole series of Star Trek movies and television shows.
Imaginary Worlds Versus the Standard World

There is another aspect that we might wish to consider. This is the extent
to which the standard world intrudes upon, enters into a dialogue with, or
bleeds into an imaginary world (and vice versa). It is perfectly possible for
a great deal of ‘bleed’ to exist between an imaginary world and the stan-
dard world and yet for the former to remain an imaginary world proper.
An excellent example would be the on-line community of Second Life
(e.g., Boellstorff 2008). The makers of this world have created a ‘plat-
form’ in which the participants are primarily responsible for creating con-
tent. This world includes the possibility to ‘transport’ or fly oneself to
different areas of the world: to live out one’s on-line life as a ‘fuzzy’ (a
furry animal character), or a human baby, or a sprite, or even a dot of light
(among a myriad of other options). One may create a university, a night-
club, run a fashion business, have a convention, or constitute a coven of
Wiccans. Some participants spend small amounts of time in-world, some
make it the center of their professional lives, and some consider it to be
their ‘real home’ and lament the necessity of spending time outside of it.
Participants can create homes, hotels, clubs, and other built forms that can
sit upon land, float on water, perch on the tops of trees, or hang sus-
pended in the air. Clearly, there are characteristics of this world that rup-
ture the common logic of our standard world; just as unmistakably, there
is a great deal of ongoing interaction between the realm of this imaginary
world and the standard world (e.g., Boellstorff 2008; Malaby 2009). This
points out the fact that it is important to remember that the notion of a
‘border’ between imaginary worlds and the standard world is merely a

heuristic device that allows us to differentiate these worlds in a way that is
conducive to our analytical aims, rather than as something that clearly
demarcates fully separated ‘worlds’ in our lives.
Additional Reasons to Study Imaginary Worlds

in a Comparative Framework
It is probably impossible to get an accurate account of the untold millions

of people who engage with on- and off-line gaming worlds (which would
include everything from World of Warcraft to the board game version of
Dungeons and Dragons), in imaginary worlds created inside of fantasy or
science fiction novels (such as Terry Pratchett’s forty book Discworld
series, e.g., Pratchett 2013), through living movements such as neo-
Victorian Steampunk, or by watching films such as Avatar or one of the
many iterations of Star Wars. It seems fair to say that a considerable per-
centage of the world’s population has spent a large period of time thought-
fully engaging with each other through the medium of imaginary worlds.
This alone would certainly justify a greater research engagement with
these worlds. Yet relatively few researchers in my own field of Anthropology,
for example, have chosen to do full-scale investigations of a specific imagi-
nary world. Notable exceptions include Bonnie Nardi’s (2010) fine eth-
nography of the World of Warcraft, Tom Boellstorff (2008) and Thomas
Malaby’s (2009) detailed inquiries into the on-line world of Second Life,
Lee Gilmore’s (2010) interesting work on the Burning Man event, and
Rebecca Gibson’s (2020) intriguing book investigating science fiction and
fact in relation to human desire. Perhaps the excellent research methods
book by Boellstorff et al. (2012) on virtual worlds will help change the
situation. Certainly, there are a much larger number of studies done by
sociologists, folklorists, cultural studies scholars, economists, psycholo-
gists, communications and literary scholars, journalists, and of course
imaginary world users themselves than by anthropologists. Media, com-
munication, and literary studies researchers have been leaders in research
on imaginary worlds (e.g., Murray 1998; Saler 2012; Wolf 2012, 2016;
Freeman 2016). Many studies, however, appear to focus on either indi-
vidual studies or on frameworks that focus on a more limited interest, such
as narrative theory or media theory. Sometimes they are set within smaller
research fields such as gaming studies—which can unfortunately cut them
14 W. FIFE
off from non-gaming imaginary world researchers. In the field of

Philosophy, there is a whole series of books dedicated to teaching and
learning key ideas in the discipline by mixing together popular culture
(including many imaginary worlds) and philosophy, such as the excellent
World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath of the Philosopher King (Cuddy
and Nordlinger 2009), The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore
I Am (Cuddy 2008), and Dune and Philosophy: Weirding Way of the
Mentat. But again, this largely limits these studies to their utility for
philosophy.
I think imaginary worlds deserve to be understood as a greater whole.
They involve a very large and rapidly growing segment of the total human
population, and many of our disciplines (such as my own field of anthro-
pology) seem, quite frankly, not to be keeping up with the importance
these worlds have in a rapidly expanding post-industrial, service-based, or
entertainment economy. It is to that end that I offer my suggestions for a
comparative framework for the study of these worlds. It is my hope that
such suggestions will help push us along to engage more fully, as social
scientists, with these worlds, adding to the already excellent existing stud-
ies of them and treating this field of interest with the importance that it
deserves.
This brings me to another point: imaginary worlds offer excellent ven-
ues for teaching and learning and are therefore well worth exploration for
their educational value. For example, I created a third-year undergraduate
anthropology course entitled Imaginary Worlds and began teaching it on
an annual basis in the fall of 2012 at my home university. I did this so that
I might connect more directly with some of the interests that I kept hear-
ing about from my students. Roughly thirty years of experience teaching
undergraduate and graduate anthropology courses has brought me to the
conclusion that many of our contemporary students are more familiar with
World of Warcraft’s Azeroth, the school of Hogwarts from the Harry
Potter books (e.g., Rowling 2013), J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth (from
the Lord of the Rings trilogy), or even Pandora from the film Avatar than
they are with the San populations of Southern Africa, the Simbu of
Highland Papua New Guinea, or the Roma people who are spread
throughout Europe and elsewhere. One of the contemporary problems of
teaching anthropology, history, geography, folklore, sociology, and related
fields, at least in North America, is how to make it relevant to students
who appear to have become increasingly disinterested in people from
backgrounds other than their own or who think of ‘other people’ as, at
best, backdrops to their own lives. One solution is to make better use of
imaginary worlds, which many students appear to identify with more read-
ily than they do with the usual cultural configurations offered in our stan-
dard textbooks. Why not ask students to learn about political ecology
through Pandora, or the hidden curriculum of education as it is enacted at
Hogwarts, gender issues through Middle Earth, or the politics of violence
by way of The Game of Thrones?
Can we, for example, encourage our students to think about Marx’s
theory of alienation in relation to “Furries”? Furries are humans who pur-
sue either a part-time fandom or a full-time lifestyle as anthropomorphic
furry animals (inspired by creatures who have appeared in films or other
fictional venues) inside and outside of Second Life. Or can we think about
alienation in relation to some of the music created inside of the Steampunk
movement? Might the Lord of the Rings trilogy be a good place to pursue
a study of the Marxist theory of commodity fetishism? The eponymous
‘ring,’ after all, has a will of its own—threatening to destroy the morality
of any who might wear it (on commodity fetishism, see Nash 1993;
Taussig 2010).
What about using Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction novel Left Hand
of Darkness, in which the planet of Winter contains a humanoid species
that has no set gender or even sexual biology (the same person can, for
example, become both a mother and a father in a single lifetime) as a focus
for Judith Butler’s performative theory of gender? In this world, a hetero-
sexual male envoy from Terra named Genly Ai gradually comes to have
feelings for a native of Winter named Estraven. The possibility of a sexual
relationship between the two comes into existence during a period when
Estraven temporarily becomes ‘female.’ This occurs during kemmer, in
which the members of this normally non-sexed population undergo tem-
porary biological changes, which sexualize them in relation to the context,
circumstances, and relationships of the moment. Why not use such imagi-
nary fiction to challenge students’ notions about the ‘naturalness’ of sex-
ual attraction and gender distinctions?
What if we asked students to use insights from cognitive science or
semiotics (e.g., D’Andrade 1995; Eco 1986) to construct a typology of
the ‘kinds’ of persons that appear in Tolkien’s Middle Earth (for a good
non-academic typology, see Stanton 2001). Could we use this material to
consider the issue of racialization? For example, are the many types of
persons that appear in The Lord of the Ring books best considered as sepa-
rate ‘species’ or by the more commonly used terms of ‘race’ that are used
16 W. FIFE
in the books (and elsewhere in many forms of science and fantasy fiction)?
In comparison, what if students were asked to create a project that used
interview techniques compatible with fields such as cognitive anthropol-
ogy (e.g., Spradley 1979) in order to question avatars in the highly racial-
ized world of Azeroth (World of Warcraft) about their avatar-lived
identities? Would the answers dovetail with the official descriptions put
out by Blizzard Entertainment (the owners of WoW)? If not, what would
these discrepancies tell us about lived experience versus the ideology of
‘race’ that might be applicable to standard world situations? What I am
suggesting here is that one of the best reasons to encourage the study of
imaginary worlds is that they are, to re-invent Lévi-Strauss (1962)
thoughts about totemic animals, good to teach and good to think.
I am not suggesting in any way that studies of imaginary worlds could
satisfactorily substitute for standard research with actual San, or Cree, or
Roma people. They can, however, serve as a lesson in learning about real
differences in social and cultural formations. By the very definition offered
in this book, imaginary worlds are not the worlds we live within on a daily
basis. Ideally, they can bring students to a greater understanding about
why it is important to study the lives of people with whom they are not yet
familiar. Learning to understand, appreciate, and analyze difference
through imaginary worlds should be a transferable skill. The confidence
gained through learning a craft often encourages the newly skilled to
embark on wider fields of application. Becoming comfortable analyzing
imaginary worlds might well transfer into becoming more comfortable
with (and interested in) analyzing and understanding the lives of actual
human beings living very different kinds of lives to ourselves.
At the same time, I do not want to suggest that imaginary worlds are
merely bridges to real anthropology or sociology or folklore or literary or
cultural studies. They are well worth examining in and of themselves for
what they can tell us about contemporary human life. What makes a sub-
stantial number of people want to spend most of their time pursuing a
Steampunk existence? Can the alternative economics of virtual worlds
(e.g., Castronova 2008, 2014) teach us about economic paths we might
want to explore in the future? And about which ones we might not want
to explore, such as the Second Life example of turning oneself into a sex
slave for sale. Will it become possible, as some people think (e.g.,
Castronova 2008) for a substantial number of people to make livelihoods
and even careers inside of imaginary worlds in the very near future? Are
film and television worlds such as Star Wars or Firefly, which appear to
re-imagine older American Western fantasies, simply timeworn ideologies

in new guises or are there true imaginary world dimensions to them?
Arjun Appadurai (1996: 4) has stated that the contemporary world
(and particularly the explosion of mass migration and mass media) practi-
cally compels works of the imagination. In 1999, Eric Wolf suggested that
we must study ideational worlds to fully understand dimensions of power
(Wolf 1999). In these suggestions, we discover an additional reason to
study imaginary worlds—they are important venues for comprehending
contemporary political realities. Walter Benjamin (1978) knew that the
playfully mimetic faculty of humanity needed to be considered. Theodor
Adorno (Adorno 2006; Witkin 2013) thought it was just as important to
ruminate about music as it was to analyze contemporary politics in order
to learn about ‘political issues.’ Raymond Williams (1975a) believed that
images of the countryside were necessary for understanding historical pro-
cesses, and Fredric Jameson (2005) asserted that studying fantasy and sci-
ence fiction was critical for researching the role of utopian imaginaries in
political life. In the same way, I believe imaginary worlds can offer special
insight into the nexus of power/knowledge (Foucault 1980) and there-
fore hold a key to understanding contemporary political relationships.
Not to study such worlds would be an abrogation of a critical field’s prom-
ise to be an arena for the evaluation of human life (e.g., Marcus and Fischer
1999). More than anything, imaginary worlds offer us insight into other
ways of thinking—the primary rationale for why we have always sought to
investigate outside of the confines of our own standard social realities.
Walter Benjamin considered toys to be a fit object of critical inquiry in the
late 1920s (e.g., Benjamin 2005: 98–102; 113–121). I feel confident in
suggesting that if Benjamin were examining the contemporary world, he
might now be offering us essays about gender in the World of Warcraft,
the racial politics of Harry Potter books, or a consideration of the way the
film Avatar fits in as an aspect of political ecology studies. And I can’t
believe that he wouldn’t have something interesting to say about the egre-
gious spectacle of violence offered in The Game of Thrones series.
Imaginary worlds also offer us a unique reservoir of ideas. We are used
to thinking of science, philosophy, and other scholarly fields as conceptual
depositories, which we can call upon as they become relevant to practical
endeavors, policy discussions, or new directions in thinking. Imaginary
worlds also store ideas, often very singular ones, and we would be remiss
not to take advantage of the fact. Many fine minds have found satisfaction
in developing imaginary worlds through the use of different mediums
18 W. FIFE
(e.g., science fiction, fantasy television or movie productions, living enact-

ments, and musical storytelling). Why would we ignore this tremendous
storehouse of ideas or dismiss it as ‘just culture’? For example, it is quite
possible to argue that the best ideas about how to deal with a potential
encounter between humanity and organic or non-organic entities from
other parts of our universe can be found in the worlds of contact that have
already been written into the record of science fiction (both literature and
film). This would be true whether these models suggest benevolent con-
tact, as in the film E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, predatory contact, as in the
films Independence Day or Alien, or ambiguous contact, as in the Hainish
Cycle of novels by Ursula K. Le Guin or the science fiction novel entitled
Contact written by real-world cosmologist Carl Sagan (for anthropology
that engages with ‘aliens’ and ‘outer space,’ see Battaglia 2006;
Messari 2016).
Anthropology and Literature

Since this work makes extensive use of literary forms of imaginary worlds,
it is useful to take a moment and briefly consider a little about ‘anthropol-
ogy and literature’ and where this work fits in relation to this more general
subfield of study.
Working extensively with non-literate peoples throughout much of the
twentieth century, anthropologists have had a long-standing interest in
oral literature, an interest that continues today. For example, many
researchers in anthropology and cognate disciplines have written about
the importance of understanding oral literature (including oral history)
when doing research with populations of people living in various regions
of Africa (e.g. Stoller 1989; Okpewho 1992; Feder 2021), North America
(e.g. Basso 1996; Cruikshank 1998; Hurston 2008; King 2008), parts of
Asia (e.g. Raheja and Gold 1994; Prasad 2006; Bruckner 2009), or the
Pacific Islands (e.g. Counts 1982; Finnegan 2017; Burt 2021), along with
many other regions. Some of the things all of these researchers hold in
common are a concern to both record and show proper respect toward
what are often undervalued forms of knowledge transmission, alongside
an interest in how expressive forms reflect and potentially impact other
social forms. As Dorothy Counts (1982: 158) suggests: “Oral literature is
an important mode of communication for the people of Kaliai, for the
people consider the stories to contain historical, cultural, or sociological
truths; they reflect and reconstruct experienced reality.” I believe various
forms of speculative fiction are also often experienced by listeners as con-

taining important cultural and sociological truths. Or, as John Niles
(1999: 3) put it: “Through storytelling, an otherwise unexceptional bio-
logical species has become … Homo Narrans, that hominid who … has
learned to inhabit mental worlds that pertain to times that are not present
and places that are the stuff of dreams.”
It is common among Indigenous storytellers to ‘use’ stories to present
moral lessons (e.g., Counts 1982; Basso 1996; Cruikshank 1998), but
these ‘lessons’ are always presented in an indirect fashion (i.e., never didac-
tically) and they always rely on the active participation of the listeners to
hear and understand the lessons as something pertaining directly to their
lives. This indirection is, I think, also common in the lessons of both fan-
tasy and science fiction, as is the reliance on an audience to ‘get the mes-
sage’ as they see fit and turn it to their own ends.
Anthropologists can even turn what we have learned about the power
of storytelling into an ethnographic method for research (e.g., Cruikshank
1998). Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston (2017), for example, has shown
how a creative and cooperative use of ‘dramatic storytelling’ between the
anthropologist and their interlocutors can yield very different kinds of
information than the forms of storytelling that occur while using more
standard interview techniques. Dramatic storytelling and improvising ‘life
scripts’ can help generate ‘affective interiors’ that help interlocutors and
anthropologists alike come to a co-created understanding that meaning is
not generated in the stories themselves, but through the connections coop-
eratively generated by those present (Kazubowski-Houston 2017: 212).
Some anthropologists (e.g., Marcus and Fischer 1986; Geertz 1988;
Wulff 2016) have been more concerned about ‘the anthropologist as
author.’ These anthropologists and others like them recognize that it is
important to reflect on our forms of written expression to consider what
they can inform us about the relationship between anthropologists and
those with whom they work, as well as anthropologists and their assumed
audiences. Marcus and Fischer (1986: 54–55) have noted, for example,
that a realist form of ethnographic writing gives the author a tremendous
amount of authority, drawing as it does on a ‘commonsense’ world that is
presumed to be shared between writer and audience. It therefore becomes
much more difficult for the reader to mentally contest a ‘just the facts’
style of presentation. Johannes Fabian (1983: 86) suggested that the com-
mon use of the present tense in anthropological writing marked a particu-
lar cognitive stance, one that denies those we deem to be ‘others’ coeval
20 W. FIFE
inhabitation with ‘ourselves.’ Fabian also states that both fiction and eth-
nographic forms of writing require a reliance on autobiography. “In that
sense, facticity itself, that cornerstone of scientific thought, is autobio-
graphic” (Fabian 1983: 89).
It is not surprising, then, that anthropologists and other scholars have
also explored auto-ethnography. Deborah Reed-Danahay (1997a: 4)
noted in the late 1990s that the term had already been in use by various
writers for over two decades. “The term has a double-sense—referring
either to the ethnography of one’s own group or to autobiographical writ-
ing that has ethnographic interest” (Reed-Danahay 1997b: 2). In either
case, it has often led to experimental forms of writing that draw upon vari-
ous non-scholarly writing traditions. Reed-Danahay, for example, made
use of a genre of rural French memoir to explore the idea that one ‘needs
to leave home’ to accomplish anything of importance and of the relation-
ship between power and educational literacy in France (Reed-Danahay
1997b: 125, 140). In the same volume, Caroline Brettell wrote about the
relationship between her research involving the life histories of three
Portuguese women with the biography she wrote about her own mother—
a Canadian journalist. “My discussion focuses specifically on issues of
genre and voice and the implications that these have for the ethnographic
enterprise” (Brettell 1997: 224). In Translated Woman, Ruth Behar wove
back and forth between the ‘life story’ of a Mexican street peddler and
herself as a Cuban-American academic. “I was crossing borders without
knowing it long before I met Esperanza—but through knowing her I’ve
reflected on how I had to cross a lot of borders to get to a position where
I could cross the Mexican border to bring back her story to put into a
book. We cross borders, but we don’t erase them; we take our borders
with us” (Behar 1993: 320). Much more recently, Behar has crossed
boundaries again with her auto-ethnographic children’s book Lucky
Broken Girl, based on her own 1960s’ childhood as an immigrant to the
United States from Cuba (Behar 2018), a work she refers to as ‘fiction’
(Behar 2020: 223).
The potential examples in this genre are almost limitless. I have dabbled
in it myself, just recently writing my own auto-ethnography entitled
Growing Up Winnipeg. In the preface, I suggest: “I prefer to think of
auto-ethnography as using oneself as a brush in order to paint the emo-
tional tone of a specific time and place. The cultural features of a given
social population become viewed through the lens of the ethnographer’s
singular experiences” (Fife n.d.: 1). Taken together, these works point to
anthropologists and other social scientists acknowledging the extent to

which ‘autobiography’ impacts our written work. Certainly, my own fasci-
nation with imaginary worlds from childhood onward has fueled my
research in them over the last decade.
Clifford Geertz shocked many anthropologists when he declared in
1973 that we should consider anthropological writing to be a kind of ‘fic-
tion.’ By this, he did not mean work that was made up or non-factual, but
rather that ethnographic texts should be understood as ‘something made’
or ‘something fashioned’ (Geertz 1973: 15). This is a point that was
picked up even more forcefully by Stuart McLean (2017), who wrote
about the possibility of ‘fictionalizing anthropology.’ McLean wants to
recognize anthropology as a creative discipline. “Situated as it is in the
interface between humanly conceived worlds and the nonhuman materials
that are their indispensable precondition and unsurpassable limit, anthro-
pology is nothing more or less than an art of fabulation, an art of third
personification, an art of the in-between” (McLean 2017: 95). Geertz
(1988: 138) further suggested that for an anthropologist to write almost
anything in an era of highly contested claims about scholarly authority
means that ‘the burden of authorship requires nerves.’ But that is what we
do. As Carole McGranahan (2020: 7) states: “Anthropology is a writing
discipline.” And what we write, at least these days, is everything from
fieldnotes to grant applications to ethnographies to novels.
It was the ‘nerve’ to write that was called for by George Marcus and
Michael Fischer in 1986 when they suggested ethnographers needed to
become more inventive in their narrative styles. “The task of this trend of
experimentation is thus to expand the existing boundaries of the ethno-
graphic genre in order to write fuller and more richly evocative accounts
of other cultural experience” (Marcus and Fischer 1986: 43–44). James
Clifford (1988) too expressed concerns about the kinds of ‘ethnographic
authority’ we were taking ahold of as anthropologists by the choices we
made in our writing styles. He pointed out that an intersection between
anthropologists, literature, and our own forms of writing was not some-
thing newly come upon. He noted, for example, that Bronislaw Malinowski
indicated in his diary that he spent a great deal of time losing himself in
‘realist novels’ so that he might escape from ‘Trobriand actuality’ (Clifford
1988: 109). Clifford goes on to speculate that these forms of realistic fic-
tion may have strongly influenced Malinowski’s creation of ‘realist cultural
fictions’ through his own ethnographic writing (ibid.). Ulf Hannertz
noticed the attraction that many anthropologists feel toward crime novels.
22 W. FIFE
From my own experience, this goes beyond merely enjoying reading them.
In Sala’illia: A Samoan Mystery, Bradd Shore opens with a first-person
account of being close to a situation in which a Samoan chief is murdered
and then uses the rest of his ethnography to tease out everything we need
to know about Samoan life to help us ‘solve’ the mystery of why this per-
son was killed. In 1998, I wrote an article entitled “The Bampton Island
Murders” and attempted to use a series of letters and other information to
lead the reader to a conclusion about who, or what, was responsible for
the killing of four Polynesian missionaries who were pioneering a mission
on Bampton Island on behalf of the London Missionary Society (Fife
1998). My intent was to pull the reader in by borrowing a few of the tech-
niques of mystery novels. I have not done a formal survey, but my reading
experience over more than the last four decades suggests to me that such
‘borrowings’ are far from uncommon. In other words, our writing as
anthropologists has clearly been impacted by the fiction that we read. It
would seem naïve to think that readers of imaginary worlds have not also
been affected, both consciously and non-consciously, by the works and
worlds with which they engage. And a great deal of this book is about
what I believe to be some of the ways that readers/participants might well
be affected by different forms of imaginary worlds.
Experimentation with writing among anthropologists certainly pre-
existed the call for such work by Marcus and Fischer. Ruth Benedict, for
example, was known to write poetry ‘on the side’ in the earlier part of the
twentieth century. Laurent Fournier and Jean-Marie Privat (2016: 82)
have noted about the 1930s in France that: “Many French intellectuals
were both poets and ethnographers.” Vincent Debaene (2010) noticed
that many mid-twentieth-century French anthropologists wrote two quite
different works after returning from ‘the field.’ The most famous example
would be the difference between the books entitled Tristes Tropiques and
Anthropologie Structurale by Claude Levi-Strauss (1955, 1958). The first
being very literary and the second being scientific/realist in form and style.
Some anthropologists, such as Laura Bohannan, even wrote anthropo-
logical novels in the 1950s, although she felt that she had to do it under
the pen name of Elenore Smith Bowen so that she might maintain her
scientific integrity as an anthropologist (Bowen 1964 [origin. 1954]).
This tradition has continued intermittently, without the necessity to ‘hide’
the identity of the anthropologists, who have now come to embrace writ-
ing fiction as another form of ethnographic expression (e.g., Stoller 1999,
2016). Ruth Behar (2009) and Helena Wulff (2019: xv) have pointed out
that many anthropologists commonly choose to write fiction alongside of
their more standard forms of ethnographic prose.
Paul Stoller (1997: 25) tells us that some of the Songhay elders he
worked with viewed anthropologists as ‘griots,’ masters of oral history
who are expected to spend decades learning complex cultural and histori-
cal forms of knowledge. Griots, he notes (Stoller 1997: 27), “care about
the poetic quality of their story,” and so should we.
My own experimental forms of fiction writing have been more private,
more in keeping with the Surrealists’ call for l’art pour l’art, or art for art’s
sake alone. In the last half-a-dozen years, I have written well over one mil-
lion words of fiction. Some of these are short stories, but most have been
either science fiction or fantasy fiction novels (ten in total). They range
from an epic fantasy fiction trilogy to a novella about—what else—the end
of the world. These writings grew in parallel with my anthropological
studies of imaginary worlds, and I soon came to appreciate them in a new
way—as windows onto the struggles that imaginary world creators faced.
I experimented with first person, third person limited, and omniscient
perspectives; played with jump cuts, flashbacks, and other standard literary
devices. In so doing, I gained a much greater comprehension of the issues
that literary and other (e.g., gaming) creators face when fashioning their
own imaginary worlds. Having a modest background in archaeology, I
realized that this ‘exercise’ was not really very different from the ones
undertaken by some archaeologists who, when they hope to better under-
stand stone tools or other forms of material technology, undertake to learn
how to create and use the items themselves. There is nothing like strug-
gling with character development or experimenting with plot placement
to give the researcher a more nuanced glimpse into the creation of imagi-
nary worlds. But if we ‘should’ care about the quality of our own writing
as anthropologists, as noted above, then it also makes sense that we should
care about the written forms of expression among those with whom we
are working. In a very real way, this is an important part of what I am
doing in this book by making use of written forms to better understand
imaginary worlds. As Vincent Crapanzano suggests “stories are never just
stories. They are communications and affect both their authors and those
to whom they are addressed” (Crapanzano 2003: 128). It makes sense,
then, to study the ‘communications’ that are being sent through the
agency of literary (and other forms of) imaginary worlds in any way that
we can, even when these ways do not always directly appear as a part of our
24 W. FIFE
scholarly writings. Learning to write fantasy and science fiction for its own
sake has certainly helped me appreciate and understand imaginary worlds
in a whole new way.
Some anthropologists have chosen to explore a form of writing that
might be said to combine elements that have more historically been associ-
ated with either fiction or ethnography, such as the anthropologists who
combined to create Crumpled Paper Boat: Experiments in Ethnographic
Writing (Pandian and McLean 2017). “With this volume and its experi-
ments, we pursue writing that is captivated, vulnerable, and implicated,
writing nurtured in pain and fear, writing that courts joy and seeks knowl-
edge in the uncertainty and excess of attachment, writing that puts its
authors, its readers, even itself, at risk” (Pandian and McLean 2017: 14).
In this regard, Michael Jackson suggests that “Surely it is not too far-
fetched to speak of ethnographic writing as a transitional space or holding
environment in which the voices of one’s interlocutors can be heard”
(Jackson 2017: 46). Stefania Pandolfo too takes ethnographic writing to
be a place for ‘passages,’ as she struggles to write about mental health
issues in Morocco. More specifically, she hopes that writing can provide “a
passage to another side of the real” (Pandolfo 2017: 94). I too have such
hopes for the science fiction, fantasy fiction, and other forms of imaginary
worlds that I utilize in this book—the hope that they can serve as conduits
to consider other ways of thinking about human life. I do not think that
these worlds are any less ‘real’ for their participants (e.g., readers, players,
creators) than other experiences. As Anand Pandian (2017: 146) suggests:
“Instead, works of ethnographic fiction take us further inward rather than
outward, into some semblance of the thoughts and perspectives of their
characters.” It is these ‘thoughts and perspectives,’ I believe, that can help
us reconsider how many people in the contemporary world are refashion-
ing their social realities through their participation in imaginary worlds.
Like myself, numerous anthropologists have made use of various kinds
of fictions to consider what lessons they might hold for scholars of human
life. As suggested by Philip Dennis (1989: 1): “Literature, in particular,
has been one tool used frequently by anthropologists in their efforts to
understand other cultures.” And, I might add, to better understand our-
selves, however that might be defined.
Matthew Wolf-Meyer (2019), for example, uses a 1990 speculative fic-
tion book by Dougal Dixon that focuses on a post-Anthropocene world so
that he can critically evaluate what lessons we might learn about the human
propensity to push ourselves to levels of unsustainable technological
destruction. William Lempert (2014) has written about an emerging tra-

dition among Indigenous filmmakers to use themes from science fiction to
reimagine ‘Indigenous Futurisms.’ Writing about a large commercial film
that came out in 1984, Wolf-Meyer (2019: 33) states: “Robocop brings
into relief the fears of a future of automation and of corporate control of
everyday life.” These echo (see Appendix A at the end of the book) the
interest many Marxist researchers have in speculative fiction as something
that could help pinpoint or comment on specific historical moments.
Some anthropologists have used fiction as an entry into or as a meta-
phor for understanding specific social processes (for some earlier examples,
see Angrosino 1989; Daghistany 1989). Elizabeth Povinelli (2011), for
example, makes use of Ursula Le Guin’s writing, particularly her story
entitled “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” to explore what she
terms ‘economies of abandonment.’ In Le Guin’s story, the happiness and
well-being of the citizens of the city of Omelas depends upon their will-
ingness to ignore the degradation heaped upon a child who is locked into
a filthy tiny space and willfully mistreated. As Povinelli (2011: 13) puts it:
“Like Le Guin, I am interested in forms of suffering and dying, enduring
and expiring, that are ordinary, chronic, and cruddy rather than cata-
strophic, crisis-laden, and sublime.” Povinelli uses Le Guin’s story as a
recurring trope throughout her book, a constant reminder of the kind of
‘reality’ that might underlay larger economic and social trends.
Richard Handler and Daniel Segal use the fiction of Jane Austin as a
window into understanding the ideology of kinship and social rank in
Austin’s England. “Specifically, we seek the strengths of literary narra-
tive … for social analysis; in particular, we seek the ability of Jane Austin’s
complex, multi-vocal narrative to help us understand a social world”
(Handler and Segal 1990: 150).
Sharon Roseman utilizes Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotype,
the use of narrative to render time and space palpable, to explore how two
novels in Galicia set in the Spanish Civil war helps bring that period ‘back
to life’ for Galicians. “Their work disrupts dichotomous ways of categoriz-
ing experience, promoting an openness to all of the senses, to dreams,
memories and the fantastic” (Roseman 2014/2015: 36), which allows us
to understand ‘historical consciousness’ in new ways. While in a later work,
Roseman (2016) exploits six novels about the experience of child migrants
who were brought to Canada to labor on farms so that she can explore the
process of ‘memory activism’ in relation to a little remembered historical
moment that profoundly affected the lives of over 100,000 British
26 W. FIFE
children. “Children’s literature has become an identifiable medium

through which this migration has become inscribed as part of a shared
social memory” (Roseman 2016: 31). In short, Povinelli, Handler and
Segal, and Roseman are all using fiction as both a research method and an
entry point into gaining a better understanding of specific social and cul-
tural processes. I am doing much the same thing in this book. The exam-
ples of this kind of usage of fiction for anthropological ends could be piled
end upon end, but this should suffice for our purposes here. Perhaps it is
fitting to conclude this section with words from Ursula K. Le Guin, who
suggested that: “Aesthetic decisions are not rational; they’re made on a
level that doesn’t coincide with rational consciousness. … The work tells
them [authors] what needs doing and they do it” (Le Guin 2004: 225).
We as researchers can impose our own form of rationalism upon these
works, even as Le Guin does herself when she offers an analysis of the
‘rhythmic patterns’ of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (Le Guin 1995:
95–107), but it is that quality of not yet rationalized expression that
anthropologists find so appealing about fiction and that draws us to use it
as both analytical fodder and templates for expanding our own forms of
expression. This remains just as true for the work in this book.
An Invitation to an Argument
I expect that many scholars will disagree with the definitions I am offering
for the study of imaginary worlds. This is one of the main reasons for writ-
ing the book. We create boundaries as scholars so that we might eventually
destroy them. It is during our arguments about these boundaries that we
discover our true subject. The book is not meant to establish rules by
which to judge those who wish to research imaginary worlds, but rather to
suggest some criteria for establishing a more defined and comparative field
of endeavor. Building on the work of those who have gone before, the
further refinement of a field can be brought about only by the argumenta-
tive participation of many voices, carrying out many specific forms of
research, and comparing these studies through emerging frameworks or
sets of overall guidelines. This book offers a small nudge toward the col-
lective creation of these guidelines.
The subtitle of this book is ‘Invitation to an Argument.’ The reader
may well ask: “An argument about what?” There are three arguments that
the reader is invited to in this work. The first is about the defining features
that make up a ‘true imaginary world’ versus a world of imagination, a
standard world, or anything else. That is, the reader is encouraged to

argue with me (and perhaps among themselves, as in a classroom or at a
conference) about the saliency of these ‘defining features.’ Secondly, the
reader is invited to dispute each of the three quite different interpretations
that I make about a specific imaginary world in the three substantive chap-
ters of the book. In this regard, I have made sure to include enough
descriptive detail (i.e., evidence) in each chapter to make such discussions
possible. And finally, the concluding chapter offers a number of avenues
for comparing imaginary worlds, one to another. I would also expect read-
ers to engage in deliberations about the usefulness (or otherwise) of these
criteria for comparison. At the same time, this should call forth discussions
about where, exactly, we should locate a specific imaginary world in rela-
tion to other such worlds. It is precisely in such argumentation that we will
push forward our understanding of imaginary worlds and the variable
roles they have played and will continue to play in our lives.
The Rest of the Book

There are four other chapters in this book. Three of them are substantive
examples of imaginary worlds. I present these so that we might concretize
the forms of insight that can be gained through specific experiments in
research. Each is written from a different perspective or analytical angle.
This is done on purpose, to show the reader a few of the many approaches
that could be taken in the study of a particular imaginary world. Chapter
2 involves the living movement of Steampunk, as it is realized through
literary, artistic, and lived expressions. In particular, I explore how imagi-
native forms of Steampunk mobility reflect a deeper level of political
engagement in relation to environmental and other key standard world
issues. My suggestion is that Steampunk can be seen as a model for a new
form of political engagement, one that is multidimensional and obviates
standard forms of political organization—reinterpreting and to a certain
extent disguising them through broader cultural practices. The result is a
kind of ‘stealth politics’ that may teach us something important about the
political directions we can expect substantial numbers of people to take in
their lives, mixing imaginary worlds with standard world concerns as a
means of re-conceptualizing the future of our planet.
Chapter 3 concerns fantasy literature and how it can function as a kind
of moral storehouse in a supposedly secular age. Developing a concept of
‘narrative theology,’ I make a case that the fantasy fiction of Stephen
28 W. FIFE
R. Donaldson serves up an embedded form of theology that is encoded

through a story-like format that does not appear (or overtly claim) to be
theology. Specifically, I consider ‘the perils of belief’ in relation to the first
trilogy of his Thomas Covenant book series and what it might tell us about
where many supposedly secular readers are obtaining what would formerly
have been considered a form of religious instruction about their place in
the universe and the role belief or faith can or should play in the world.
In Chap. 4, I turn to science fiction and specifically to the novel Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick. Here, I consider the
parallels between the androids of this imaginary world and slavery in the
standard world, including the phenomenon of the colonized self that was
first outlined in the works of Aimé Cesaire (2000 [1972] and Frantz
Fanon (2004 [1963]; 2008 [1952]). The dystopia created in the novel is
an excellent venue for the exploration of human classification systems and
how they so often lead to arbitrarily imposed sets of very unequal relation-
ships. The chapter also reveals the way we use seemingly objective criteria
in order to naturalize and disguise forms of domination that greatly ben-
efit some humans at the expense of others (i.e., both other humans and
non-human others).
Finally, in the concluding chapter I contemplate why I believe imagi-
nary worlds are exploding in importance at this particular historical
moment. Drawing on theories from writers such as Marx, Sartre, Camus,
and Kierkegaard, both economic and existential forms of human alien-
ation are considered in relation to imaginary worlds. I suggest that greater
numbers of people are turning to imaginary worlds not simply as a form
of escape, or for compensatory reasons, but as alternative forms of expres-
sion that allow them to reconsider their places within the standard world.
Part of this consideration involves the kinds of actions that might lead to
newer and perhaps more equitable social and cultural worlds. In this sense,
it is important that many imaginary worlds offer participants not only
much older forms of imaginary displacement (as in novels, board games,
or movies) but also many more forms of embodied expressions. This can
come in-person, as in Steampunk or through various forms of Live Action
Role Playing (e.g., Stark 2012), via avatars, as in the World of Warcraft or
Second Life. All forms of imaginary worlds offer room for re-thinking
existing modes of life, but it is the more embodied experiences that more
readily allow us to consider changes that might flow from our own actions.
In the last chapter, I also indicate how I believe a comparison of imagi-
nary worlds might proceed through the loose set of guidelines that were
outlined in the first chapter of the book and demonstrate how they can
lead to useful forms of comparative analysis and suggestions for valuable
new avenues of research.
I would like to end this chapter with a word about my specific goals of
the book. This is a work that is aimed at being more suggestive than con-
clusive, a volume that is meant to open up avenues for argumentation
rather than provide all-encompassing explanations for the issues under
consideration. In this sense, the book is offered as an addition to the
already ongoing deliberations, scholarly and otherwise, about the signifi-
cance of imaginary worlds. It is neither the first word on the subject nor
will it be the last, but it will hopefully contribute to our current conversa-
tion about the influence of imaginary worlds in the contemporary world.
Note
1. The term ‘standard world’ is often used by imaginary world researchers to
bypass terms such as ‘real world’ or ‘actual world’ so as not to imply any-
thing about the phenomenological reality of experiences within imaginary
worlds (e.g., gaming worlds such as World of Warcraft or Second Life). The
‘standard world,’ in this regard, simply refers to the world of everyday life,
such as our common work world, or the daily grind of going to school,
doing housework, raising children, or dealing with bills. It can therefore be
effectively contrasted with ‘imaginary worlds,’ which are about none of
these things, without getting into ontological arguments about ‘reality.’
CHAPTER 2
Steampunk as Stealth Politics
Introduction
In The Steampunk Bible, Jeff Vandermeer (2011: 9) suggests that
Steampunk “embraces divergent and extinct technologies as a way of talk-
ing about the future.” It is also, as Margaret Killjoy informs us, a way of
talking about right now.
Some call it a scene, some call it a subculture, some call it a movement, but
all of us call it steampunk. What began as a joke of a literary genre in the
1980s became, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, an idea that
fundamentally challenges humanity’s interactions with its technology.
(Killjoy 2015: 1)
This challenge comes through a sometime vague yet easily recognizable

juxtaposition of political positions. Those who have a tendency to offer
reflexive pronouncements about the movement normally tie it to a loose
amalgamation of anarchist/feminist/environmentalist politics. As one of
the grand old men of Steampunk, Jake Von Slatt, put it:
Involvement in [the Steampunk] subculture introduces people to political

thought. I’m not talking about government and elections here, I’m talking
about personal politics. The politics of power, race, gender, class, and per-
sonal expression. (Von Slatt 2015: 3)
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Switzerland AG 2022
W. Fife, Imaginary Worlds, Palgrave Studies in Literary
Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08641-0_2
32 W. FIFE
Steampunk is a romantic movement, but one with a difference. Rather

than being anti-technological in orientation, Steampunk rejects alienating
and dehumanizing forms of technology and celebrates a re-humanized
alternative. The movement certainly attracts its share of aesthetes, yet
most members sternly reject style over substance. As the writings of the
Catastrophone Orchestra and Arts Collective (NYC) suggest:
Steampunk rejects the myopic, nostalgia-drenched politics so common

among “alternative” cultures. Ours is not the culture of neo-Victorianism
and stupefying etiquette, not remotely an escape to gentlemen’s clubs and
classist rhetoric. It is the green fairy [a reference to absinthe] of delusion and
passion unleashed from her bottle, stretched across the glimmering gears of
rage. (COAC 2015: 11)
Beginning with the 1980s’ novels of Tim Powers, K. W. Jeter, and

James Blaylock that drew upon a neo-Victorian England for inspiration,
Steampunk now includes global dimensions (Vandermeer 2011: 48; also
see Carrott and Johnson 2013; Roland 2014). Simultaneously, it has
moved more deeply into the past and penetrated further into later periods
of industrialism. What remains is a refined retro-futuristic sensibility that is
expressed through literature, fashion, music, cinema, television, art, and
events (e.g., tea parties, conventions, lawn parties, concerts). Participants
are driven by a punk-derived Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic, an environmen-
talism that remains pro-technology, an exploration and indictment of
social inequalities, a concern about and excitement for the potentials of
genetic engineering, a desire to be adventurous and inventive, and a sense
of dramatic style that embodies a punk-inspired, gear- and goggle-
enhanced, neo-baroque elegance. At its essence, Steampunk asks the ques-
tion: What if our technological lives had taken a different direction than
the one that occurred? What if steam machines, for example, had remained
the dominant technology? What if airships were our primary form of long-
distance travel? What if China had won the opium wars, the South had
won the American Civil War, or Queen Victoria had been assassinated?
What if, what if, what if? What would the social, economic, environmental,
personal, and even stylistic results have been? Born in alternative histories
and fictionalized lives, Steampunk adherents want to offer both them-
selves and others a re-imagined world for yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
These preoccupations are expressed through many avenues, not least of
which are multiple forms of transportation that become re-imagined
through a Steampunk lens. Prominent among them are collective forms of
transport, with special emphasis given to steam-powered airships, trains,
2 STEAMPUNK AS STEALTH POLITICS 33
and ships. Individual mobility varies greatly, from powered bicycles to sin-
gular methods of individual movement (the genius of the inventor and
one-of-a-kind feats of engineering are Steampunk ideals). What Steampunk
ideas about transportation and mobility embrace is the notion that specific
forms of transportation, like technology more generally, has the potential
for both a positive and a negative impact on humanity. The right kinds of
human mobility can engender environmental health, foster human cre-
ativity, and encourage equitable human relationships (both economic and
social). The wrong kind can bring destruction and disaster, pollute us
(both environmentally and in a psychic or spiritual sense), and offer only
dead uniformity dressed up as consumer choice. Practitioners recognize
that the same idea, object, person, or event could move in many different
directions with just a tweak here or a poke there—ending with either a
very desirable or a very detrimental final result. A grand thought experi-
ment, Steampunk embraces the implications of chaos theory (e.g., Gleick
1987; Kellert 1993) without necessarily acknowledging a conscious intent
about the project. Yet two key messages of Steampunk remain: (1) if a
small change had been made at the right time and place, what alternative
path might we be following today? and (2) what might happen still if we
let our imaginations re-think, re-order, and recover from what has actually
occurred so far?
In my experience, many ordinary members of the Steampunk move-
ment (for some of the movement variations see Vandermeer 2011; Carrott
and Johnson 2013) may be only vaguely aware of the politics that they
embrace along with the goggles, corsets, tea parties, and radical re-
inventions. For example, my third-year-level university course on the topic
of Imaginary Worlds includes a large Steampunk component. During the
last seven years of teaching the course, I have had roughly a dozen stu-
dents who self-identified as regular members of Steampunk groups.
Numerous others in the course have participated in parallel kinds of re-
enactment or Live Action Role Playing (LARP) groups, some of which
contain Steampunk components (on LARPS, see Stark 2012). They create
their own clothing, attend either regional conventions or local events, and
some engage in writing or other artistic endeavors associated with this
specific counter-culture. None of my students thought of Steampunk as
being an overtly political movement, or of their choice to participate in
Steampunk as being a specifically political choice. Yet, as we teased out
Steampunk political positions through ongoing classroom discussions,
each indicated that they were comfortable with the basic forms of
34 W. FIFE
environmentalist/anti-racist/social-and-economic egalitarianism/femi-
nist/anarchist forms of embedded politics in the movement. It was not
uncommon for individuals to reject a specific label (e.g., “I don’t see
myself as a feminist”) while at the same time openly embracing what could
only be seen as positions that were commonly associated with that specific
political label in the standard world. They saw no contradiction in embrac-
ing each of these mutually exclusive thoughts simultaneously. In a sense,
the right to hold contradictory thoughts and to believe in their mutual
truth is also a defining feature of Steampunk.
What might be true among some (and we do not yet have the research
to understand how many) rank-and-file members of Steampunk groups
are not necessarily true of the leaders of these groups or of the defining
features of the movement as a whole. As a Steampunk who takes the name
TechnoAlchemist states in relation to the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic of
Steampunk and the anti-consumption politics it embraces:
It calls out for us to have a place with hand tools in it that we use, to make
things that we need. Things that cannot be bought. It calls for us to re-
examine the last one hundred years as potentially a “Second Dark Age,” a
cul de sac where technology and humanity’s ambitions took a wrong turn.
(TechnoAlchemist 2015: 122; italics in the original)
Margaret Killjoy suggests that allowing technology to separate us from

other organisms leads humans astray in the name of efficiency:
Of course, it is a false claim that technology itself is “unnatural.” We must

think only of the lens that allows us to peer into the heavens—or at the cha-
otic dance of single celled critters—to realize that invention need not be evil.
But if technology, as it is applied, has separated the vast majority of us from
the natural world, then it is time that we misapply it. Let us be diverse and
inefficient! (Killjoy, Steampunk Magazine 2: 63)
I am suggesting here that musicians, artists, writers, commentators, and

event organizers serve as organic animators in the Steampunk movement.
I offer the term ‘organic animator’ as a parallel but not identical notion to
the concept of the ‘organic intellectual’ that was first put forth by Antonio
Gramsci (1971):
Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an

essential function in the world of economic production, creates together
with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it

homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic
but also in the social and political fields. (Gramsci 1988: 301)
This is especially true of emerging economic classes. The landed gentry

of the Middle Ages, for example, had ecclesiastics (Gramsci 1971: 7),
while capitalism has relied on teachers, lawyers, doctors, priests, and oth-
ers (Gramsci 1971: 14). Organic intellectuals often come out of the same
social and cultural milieu as the rank-and-file members of the movement.
When associated with new movements, they can give voice, shape, and
organization to a form of consciousness that pushes back against the cur-
rently existing dominant social class and its hegemonic forms of expres-
sion. In the case of Steampunk, organic animators are required, in a sense,
to pretend not to be the leaders, organizers, or definers of the movement.
Due to a pervasive anarchist and DIY sensibility, it would be anathema for
an individual to openly claim to ‘speak for’ or ‘represent’ the Steampunk
movement. Steampunk animators therefore spend a great deal of time
denying that they speak for anyone other than themselves as individuals;
yet they also undeniably set the tone for the movement as a whole through
their novels, song lyrics, magazine articles, books (fiction and non-fiction),
on-line leadership, and creative artwork. This is to say that they serve as
the ‘intellectuals’ of the movement, in the Gramscian sense that they for-
mulate both the history of the movement and its trajectory. In the Do-It-
Yourself world of Steampunk, these animators perhaps do it a little more
and do it a little louder than the others. At the same time, Steampunk
might be said to have solved the problem that Gramsci posited in relation
to the gulf that normally exists between intellectuals and masses in a capi-
talist economy, which habitually separates manual from mental work (or
workers from intellectuals) and makes it difficult to foster a more encom-
passing group-form of social consciousness (e.g., Gramsci 1988: 300).
Rank-and-file Steampunk members are constantly exhorted to ‘do it your-
self’—write it yourself, sculpt it yourself, build it yourself, think it yourself.
In this way, they may have come as close as any social movement to creat-
ing a political forum that acts as a ‘collective intellectual’ (Gramsci 1988:
300). In another way, they are fulfilling Gramsci’s (1971: 322) vision that
all human beings are ‘philosophers’ in a more than merely technical sense.
I envision Steampunk as an amoeba-like organization that moves through
expansion and new growth. It acknowledges no set leadership yet retains
a specific thrust and direction that is largely set by its organic animators.
36 W. FIFE
Mobility as Politics
Steampunk adherents recognize that transportation and other forms of
mobility technology have the potential to do great harm or great good.
Steampunk practitioners, then, are in the business of re-imagining per-
sonal and collective transportation in such a way as to make these potenti-
alities clear. By reconfiguring and re-appropriating older forms of transport
and mobility, they hope to bend the present and future away from its cur-
rent trajectory and toward their own ends. They act as living examples of
what might be possible if personal imagination could replace industrial
and corporate sensibilities. In other words, Steampunk practitioners inher-
ently understand that mobility issues are intimately connected to the
unequal distribution of economic and social power. As Hannam et al.
(2006: 15) put it when identifying power as one of the key points for con-
sideration within mobility studies, it is important that we place “an empha-
sis on the relation between human mobilities and immobilities, and the
unequal power relations which unequally distribute motility, the potential
for motility.”
Goggles and Gargoyles

For many, brass goggles are the objects that best define the promise of
Steampunk. Wearing goggles is a necessity, the story goes, because steam-
punks are never sure what adventure they might be whisked off to at the
drop of a top hat. Goggles are the stylish eye protection that a person
needs for airship riding, hanging one’s head out of the window on a giant
steam train, peering through the rain and wind when operating a steam-
ship, or moving smartly along the road in a customized motorcycle (com-
plete with a tastefully appointed sidecar). Goggles embrace the promise of
mobile adventure. Life should not just be about movement, but about
movement with style—keeping in mind the need for personal protection
at the same time. That is, movement can be dangerous, and goggles serve
as a reminder of this double-edged potential.
The ambiguous promise of relative forms of mobility is nicely summa-
rized in the Steampunk novel The Alchemy of Stone, by Ekaterina Sedia
(2008). This is a complex novel, but viewing it through the lens of mobil-
ity gives us a unique and, I think, insightful perspective on the typically
embedded politics of a Steampunk sensibility. The book is focused upon
Mattie, an automaton that lives within a city-state originally built of stone
by gargoyles for the use of humans. The gargoyles are also credited/
blamed with creating a Dukedom out of the city, although in the present
period, the duke and his higher courtiers are more figureheads than rulers.
True power now resides in a parliament controlled by two rival sets of
associations: the alchemists and the mechanics. Once the alchemists had
the upper hand, but their lax attitudes toward organization and lack of a
structural base (each alchemist serves as a kind of independent entrepre-
neur/chemist/healer) have resulted in the mechanic class becoming the
most powerful single social group. The mechanics’ base in industrial pro-
duction, their unswerving dedication to ‘progress’ through mechanical
‘improvements,’ and the organization of extensive mining operations (for
coal, metals, and gemstones) in which they exploit the labor of the lower
classes serve as a structural platform for their political aspirations. This
shift in power is made more possible by the waning of the gargoyles. Born
of stone processes and seemingly immortal, the gargoyles have become a
shadow of their previous collective selves. Most of their members have
ground to a halt and become inert stone statues, a state that mocks their
‘natural’ abilities to fly through the air at will. Mattie is asked by them to
try and invent a method by which they might flee their now disastrous
connection to stone and become organic mortals and therefore escape los-
ing their mobility altogether. There is a strong hint in the novel that the
gargoyle disaster is related to the obsessive honeycombing of subterranean
earth (and the resulting disturbance of earth and rock) by the industrial
mining processes of the mechanics.
The relative forms of mobility that Sedia utilizes in the book serves as a
kind of mobile metaphor for social inequality, beginning with the inertial
threat to the gargoyles. Mattie too began as an inert collection of parts
(conscious before she was fully assembled; something very unnerving for
her) and had her movements greatly restricted by her master/maker (the
mechanic Loharri) who legally owned her. Always tinkering and making
‘improvements’ on her, despite her own wishes in the matter, Mattie even-
tually became bright enough to trick her master into allowing her to train
as an alchemist. With an alchemist’s social prestige as leverage, Loharri
finally ‘gives’ Mattie the gift of emancipation, and therefore seemingly full
freedom of movement (she moves out and lives on her own, while making
her own living through alchemy). This ‘gift’ proves illusory, as Loharri
literally keeps the key to Mattie’s heart (which is necessary to wind her
clockwork mechanism and therefore to retain her full consciousness and
ability for movement). It is interesting to realize that Mattie is her own
38 W. FIFE
mobility; that is, she walks everywhere she goes—a flaneuse who uses the
time to ruminate about whatever she observes and her own place in the
order of things. She has time, for example, to remember how Loharri
would punish her in the past if she displeased him by taking away her eyes
and therefore greatly restricting her freedom of movement and the ability
to function on her own.
The duke and his high court travel by formal carriage, pulled by a large
team of giant lizards—a fancier version of the extremely slow though non-
polluting cart-and-lizard that has long been the standard commercial
transport device in the city-state. However, the mechanics have embarked
upon an ambitious road building scheme to accommodate their steam-
powered buggies (equivalent to automobiles) and caterpillars (a bus-like
contraption that uses moving mechanical legs, capable of holding up to
ten people at a time). Both buggies and caterpillars are used extensively by
enforcers who, though human, are encased in a metallic carapace that
reminds those who view them of a machine-like countenance. This is per-
haps the ultimate expression of workers morphing into the technology
that they supposedly control.
The work rhythm and work content of living labour are subordinated to the
mechanical needs of machinery itself. Alienation of labour is no longer only
alienation of the products of labour, but alienation of the forms and con-
tents of work itself. (Mandel 1990: 34)
Or, as Marx suggests:
But machinery does not just act as a superior competitor to the worker,
always on the point of making him superfluous. It is a power inimical to
him … it is the most powerful weapon for suppressing strikes, those periodic
revolts of the working-class against the autocracy of capital. (Marx
1990: 562)
The rapid increase in industrial activity has created havoc among the
lower classes. For example, many peasants have been forcibly removed
from farming the land and relocated into the mines by order of the
mechanics; other workers have had their labor fully displaced by the
mechanic’s expanding production of slave-like and largely non-conscious
automatons.
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UN SERPENT DU VIEUX NIL
Le Caire moderne est un endroit qui a un air négligé. Les rues

sont malpropres et mal construites, les trottoirs jamais balayés et
souvent démolis, les lignes de tramway plus souvent projetées sur le
sol que posées, et les ruisseaux mal entretenus. On s’attend à
mieux dans une ville où le touriste dépense tant d’argent chaque
saison. Il est entendu que le touriste n’est qu’un chien, mais du
moins vient-il un os à la bouche, os que se partagent bien des gens.
Vraiment on lui doit une niche plus propre. Officiellement on vous
répond que la circulation des touristes compte pour moins que rien
en comparaison de l’industrie cotonnière. Tout de même le terrain
dans la ville du Caire doit avoir trop de valeur pour qu’on l’emploie à
la culture du coton. On pourrait, tout bien considéré, la paver et la
balayer. On dit bien qu’il existe des autorités qui passent pour avoir
la haute direction des affaires municipales, mais son fonctionnement
se trouve être paralysé par ce que l’on appelle « Les Capitulations ».
On m’a assuré que tout le monde au Caire, exception faite pour les
Anglais qui apparemment sont les blancs inférieurs dans ces
régions, a le privilège de faire appel au consul de son pays à propos
de tout et de rien, que ce soit au sujet d’une boîte à ordures ou d’un
cadavre à enterrer. Or, comme presque tous ceux qui sont
respectables, et sans aucun doute tous ceux qui ne le sont pas, ont
un consul, il s’en suit naturellement qu’il existe un consul par chaque
mètre de superficie, chaque arshinon, chaque coudée d’Ézéchiel à
l’intérieur de la ville.
Et comme chaque consul montre un zèle extrême en l’honneur
de son pays et ne se gêne pas pour ennuyer les Anglais au point de
vue des principes généraux, les progrès municipaux sont lents.
Le Caire vous produit l’effet d’être une ville malsaine et pas
aérée, même lorsque le soleil et le vent la nettoient ensemble. Le
touriste, ainsi que vous vous en apercevez ici même, parle
beaucoup, mais l’Européen qui y réside d’une façon permanente
n’ouvre pas la bouche plus qu’il ne faut. Les sons vont si vite à
travers la surface de l’eau plate ! Sans compter que dans ce pays
toute la situation est, politiquement et administrativement, fausse.
Voici en effet un pays qui n’est pas un pays, mais bien une bande
passablement longue de jardin potager, nominalement sous la
direction d’un gouvernement qui n’est pas un gouvernement, mais
bien plutôt la satrapie disjointe d’un empire à moitié mort, régi avec
hypocrisie par une Puissance qui n’est pas une puissance mais une
Agence, laquelle Agence se trouve avoir été embobinée, par suite
du temps, de coutumes, de calomnies, jusqu’à être nouée en
relations très étroites avec six ou sept Puissances Européennes :
toutes ces Puissances possédant des droits, des pots de vin, sans
qu’aucun de leurs sujets puisse, apparemment, être justiciable à
aucune Puissance qui, directement ou indirectement, ou même de
quelque façon que ce soit, passe pour être responsable. Et ce n’est
là qu’une simple esquisse de l’ensemble. Compléter le tableau (si
quelqu’un au monde en sait assez pour le faire) serait aussi facile
que d’expliquer le base ball à un Anglais, ou le jeu du Mur, joué à
Eton, à un habitant des États-Unis. Mais c’est un jeu fascinant. Il y a
là-dedans des Français dont l’esprit logique se trouve offensé, et ils
se vengent en faisant imprimer les rapports financiers et le catalogue
du Musée de Bulak en un français pur. Il y a des Allemands là-
dedans dont il faut examiner soigneusement les exigences, non pas
qu’on puisse les satisfaire en quelque façon que ce soit, mais elles
servent à bloquer celles des autres. Il y a des Russes qui ne
comptent pas beaucoup actuellement, mais dont on entendra parler
plus tard. Il y a des Italiens et des Grecs (tous deux assez satisfaits
d’eux-mêmes en ce moment) remplis de haute finance et de belles
émotions. Il y a aussi des Pachas Égyptiens qui de temps en temps
rentrent de Paris et demandent plaintivement à qui ils sont censés
appartenir. Il y a son Éminence le Khédive, et celui-là, il faut en tenir
compte, et il y a des femmes tant que vous en voudrez. Et il y a de
grands intérêts cotonniers et sucriers anglais, et des importateurs
anglais demandant, avec des éclats de voix, pourquoi on ne leur
permet pas de faire des affaires d’une façon rationnelle et d’entrer
dans le Soudan qui, à leur avis, est mûr pour le développement, si
seulement l’administration qui le dirige consentait à agir
raisonnablement. Au milieu de tous ces intérêts et de ces passe-
temps qui se contrecarrent, le fonctionnaire anglais reste assis,
transpirant à grosses gouttes, lui qui a pour tâche d’irriguer, de
dessécher ou de défricher pour une bagatelle de dix millions de
gens, et il se trouve à tout propos empêtré dans des réseaux
d’intrigues qui le font échouer et qui s’étendent à travers une demi-
douzaine de harems et quatre consulats. Tout cela vous rend suave,
tolérant et l’on acquiert la bienheureuse habitude de ne plus
s’étonner de quoi que ce soit.
Ou du moins c’est ce qu’il semblait pendant que je suivais des
yeux un grand bal dans un des hôtels. Toutes les races et variétés
Européennes en même temps que la moitié des États-Unis s’y
trouvaient représentées, mais je crus pouvoir discerner trois groupes
distincts : celui des touristes, avec, dans leurs chers petits dos qui se
trémoussaient, les plis occasionnés par les malles des paquebots ;
celui des soldats et des fonctionnaires sûrs d’avance de leurs
partenaires, et disant clairement ce qui devait se dire ; celui d’un
troisième contingent à la voix plus basse, au pas plus doux, aux
yeux plus vifs que les deux premiers, très à l’aise comme le sont les
bohémiens lorsqu’ils se trouvent sur leur propre terrain, lançant par
dessus l’épaule à leurs amis des moitiés de mots en argot local, se
comprenant d’un signe de tête et mus par des ressorts
n’appartenant qu’à leur clan. Par exemple, une femme parlait un
anglais impeccable à son partenaire, un officier anglais. Juste avant
que ne commençât la danse suivante, une autre femme lui fit signe
de la main à la manière orientale, les quatre doigts abaissés. La
première femme traversa la salle et se dirigea vers un palmier qui
était dans un vase ; la deuxième s’y dirigea aussi jusqu’au moment
où toutes les deux s’arrêtèrent sans se regarder, avec le palmier
entre elles. Alors celle qui avait fait le signe de la main parla dans
une langue étrangère dans la direction du palmier. La première
femme, les yeux toujours ailleurs, répondit de la même manière avec
un flot de paroles qui passèrent comme une fusillade à travers les
feuilles raides, son ton n’avait rien à faire avec celui dont elle se
servit pour saluer son nouveau partenaire, qui survint au moment où
recommença la musique. Celui-ci était traînant et délicieux, l’autre
avait eu l’accent guttural et sec du bazar ou de la cuisine. Elle
s’éloigna et au bout d’un instant l’autre femme disparut dans la foule.
Très probablement, il ne s’était agi entre elles que de toilette ou
d’une question de programme, mais ce qu’il y avait là-dedans de
rapide, de furtif, de félin et de calme, cette navette, faite en un clin
d’œil, d’une civilisation à l’autre, toutes deux pourtant à ce point
distinctes, me resta dans la mémoire. De même la figure exsangue
d’un très vieux Turc, frais émoulu de quelque horrible assassinat à
Constantinople où il avait failli être tué à coup de pistolet. Mais,
disait-on, il avait discuté avec calme en présence du cadavre d’un
ancien collègue, en homme pour qui la mort importe peu, jusqu’à ce
que les Jeunes Turcs hystériques eussent honte et le laissassent
partir — pour entrer dans la lumière et la musique de cet hôtel
élégant.
Ces « Mille et une Nuits » modernes sont trop fiévreuses pour
des gens tranquilles ; je me réfugiai dans un Caire plus raisonnable,
les quartiers arabes où tout est tel qu’il était lorsque Marouf le
Savetier s’enfuit de Fatima-El-Orra et se rencontra avec le Djin dans
l’Adelia Musjid. Les artisans et les marchands étaient assis sur les
planches de leurs boutiques, avec, derrière eux, un ample mystère
d’obscurité, et les étroits défilés étaient polis jusqu’à hauteur
d’épaule par le simple frottement de la marée humaine. Le blanc qui
porte chaussure — à moins qu’il ne soit agriculteur, — frôle
légèrement, de la main tout au plus, en passant. L’Oriental, lorsqu’il
baguenaude, s’appuie, s’adosse aux murs et s’y frotte. Chez ceux
dont les pieds sont nus c’est tout le corps qui pense. Et puis il n’est
pas bien d’acheter ou de faire quoi que ce soit et d’en finir sur-le-
champ. Bon pour ceux qui portent des vêtements serrés ne
nécessitant aucun soin. Donc, nous autres, portant robe lâche,
pantalon ample, et savate large, faisons de grands saluts complets à
nos amis et les multiplions quand il s’agit de ceux à qui nous voulons
du mal ; si donc il s’agit d’un achat il nous faut toucher du doigt
l’étoffe, la louer en citant un proverbe ou deux, et s’il s’agit d’un
nigaud de touriste qui s’imagine qu’il ne va pas être volé, ô vrais
croyants ! approchez-vous, et soyez témoins de quelle manière nous
le mettrons à sac.
Mais je n’achetai rien. La ville m’offrait plus de richesses que je
ne pus en emporter. Elles sortaient des obscurs couloirs, sur le dos
des chameaux basanés, chargés de pots ; sur des ânes dont les
sabots clapotaient, à moitié enfouis sous des filets gonflés de trèfle
coupé ; dans des mains exquisement façonnées de petits enfants
qui rentraient en vitesse des restaurants avec le repas du soir, le
menton collé contre le rebord de l’assiette, les yeux dépassant la pile
d’aliments, tout arrondis par la responsabilité ressentie ; dans les
lumières brisées qui radiaient des chambres surplombant la rue
dans lesquelles s’étalaient les femmes, le menton appuyé contre les
deux paumes en regardant par des fenêtres surélevées d’un pied à
peine au-dessus du niveau du parquet ; dans chaque regard jeté
dans chaque cour où, auprès du bassin d’eau, fument les hommes ;
dans les tas de débris et de briques pourries amoncelés au flanc des
maisons nouvellement peintes et qui attendaient qu’on s’en servît de
nouveau pour en faire des maisons ; dans le trémoussement et le
glissement des savates sans talons, rouges et jaunes, qu’on entend
de tous côtés, et surtout dans les odeurs mélangées si délicieuses
de beurre que l’on fait frire, de pain musulman, de kababs, de cuir,
de fumée de cuisine, de poivres et de tumeric. Les diables ne
peuvent supporter l’odeur de tumeric, mais l’homme sensé l’accepte.
Cela évoque le soir qui ramène tout le monde à la maison, le repas
du soir, les mains amies qui plongent dans le plat, la face unique, le
voile tombé et, en fin de séance, la grosse pipe qui gargouille.
Loué soit Allah pour la diversité de ces créatures et pour les Cinq
Avantages du Voyage et pour les gloires des Cités de la Terre !
Aroun-al-Raschid dans le bruyant Bagdad de jadis ne connut jamais
les délices infinies dont je jouis cet après-midi-là. Il est vrai que
l’appel à la prière, la cadence de certains des cris de la rue, et la
coupe de certains vêtements différaient assez sensiblement de ce à
quoi j’étais accoutumé par l’éducation, mais quant au reste l’ombre
sur le cadran avait rétrogradé pour moi de vingt degrés, et je me
trouvais en train de dire, tout comme, peut-être, disent les morts
lorsqu’ils ont retrouvé leurs esprits : « Voici de nouveau mon monde
réel ! »
Certains hommes sont musulmans par naissance, certains par
éducation, mais je n’ai jamais encore fait la rencontre d’un Anglais
qui déteste l’Islam et ses peuples, comme j’ai vu des Anglais
détester certaines autres croyances. Musalmani awadani — comme
on dit, — là où il y a des musulmans, là se trouve une civilisation
qu’on peut comprendre.
Ensuite nous rencontrâmes sur notre route une mosquée
abandonnée avec des colonnes en briques autour d’une vaste cour
intérieure ouverte au ciel pâle. Elle était complètement vide,
exception faite de l’esprit qui lui était propre et qui lui convenait ;
c’était cela qui vous prenait à la gorge lorsqu’on y entrait. Les églises
chrétiennes peuvent faire un compromis avec des statues et des
chapelles latérales où les indignes ou les éhontés font un trafic avec
des saints abordables. L’Islam, lui, n’a qu’une chaire et une
affirmation que l’on soit vivant ou mourant, une seule ; et, dans
l’endroit où les hommes ont répété cela avec une croyance
enflammée, à travers des siècles, l’air en est encore tout vibrant.
Actuellement certains prétendent que l’Islam est en train de mourir et
que personne n’en a cure ; d’autres disent que s’il s’étiole en
Europe, il ressuscitera en Afrique et en Asie, et reviendra terrible au
bout de quelques années à la tête de tous les neuf fils de Ham ;
d’autres s’imaginent que les Anglais comprennent l’Islam mieux que
n’importe qui, et que dans les siècles à venir l’Islam le reconnaîtra et
tout l’univers en sera modifié. Au cas où vous vous rendriez à la
mosquée de Al Azhar — université vieille de mille ans du Caire — il
vous sera possible d’en juger vous-même. Rien à y voir sauf de
multiples cours, fraîches en été, entourées de murs de briques hauts
comme des falaises. Des hommes vont et viennent par des entrées
sombres donnant sur des cloîtres plus sombres encore, et cela aussi
librement que si c’était un bazar. Là nul appareil d’enseignement qui
soit agressif et moderne : les étudiants s’asseyent à terre et les
maîtres leur enseignent, le plus souvent de vive voix, la grammaire,
la syntaxe, la logique ; al-hisab qui est l’arithmétique ; al-jab’r, w’al
muqabalah qui est l’algèbre ; al-tafsir, ou commentaires sur le Koran,
et le dernier et le plus ennuyeux, al-ahadis, traditions et nouveaux
commentaires sur la loi d’Islam, qui de nouveau ramènent, comme
toutes choses, au Koran, (car il est écrit : « En vérité Le Quran n’est
rien autre qu’une révélation »). C’est un plan d’études très étendu.
Nul ne peut s’en rendre maître entièrement, mais libre à chacun d’y
séjourner aussi longtemps qu’il le désire. L’université procure des
vivres, vingt-cinq mille pains par jour si je ne me trompe ; de plus il y
a toujours un endroit où se coucher si l’on ne veut pas de chambre
fermée et un lit. Rien ne saurait être plus simple, ni, étant donné
certaines conditions, plus efficace. Tout près de six cents
professeurs qui, officiellement ou non, représentent toutes les
variétés de la pensée, enseignent à dix ou douze mille étudiants qui
viennent de toutes les communautés musulmanes de l’ouest à l’est
entre Manille et le Maroc, et du nord au sud entre Kamechatka et la
mosquée malaise à Cape-Town. Ceux-ci s’en vont, à l’aventure, pour
devenir maîtres dans de petites écoles, prédicateurs dans des
mosquées, étudiants dans la Loi connue par des millions d’êtres
(mais rarement par des Européens), rêveurs dévots ou faiseurs de
miracles dans l’univers entier. L’individu qui m’intéressait le plus ce
fut un Mullah de la frontière indienne, à la barbe rouge, aux yeux
caves, qui très certainement ne serait jamais le dernier à une
distribution d’aliments, et se dressait, tel un chien-loup hâve au
milieu de chiens de berger, dans une petite assemblée sur le seuil
d’une porte.
Il y avait encore une autre mosquée somptueusement tapissée et
illuminée (chose que le Prophète n’approuve pas) où des hommes
parlaient au milieu du sourd marmottement qui, parfois, monte et
croît sous les dômes comme un roulement de tambour ou un
grondement de ruche avant que l’essaim ne s’élance dehors. A
l’extérieur, et au coin même de cet édifice, nous sommes tombés
presque dans les bras d’un représentant de Notre Simple Fantassin,
personnage qui ne tire pas l’œil et qui personnifie la distraction. La
tunique déboutonnée, la cigarette allumée, il était adossé à une grille
tandis qu’il contemplait la ville à ses pieds. Les hommes dans les
forts, les citadelles et les garnisons par le monde entier montent
aussi automatiquement au crépuscule pour jeter un dernier coup
d’œil général que le font les moutons au coucher du soleil. Ils parlent
peu et reviennent aussi silencieusement en passant sur le gravier
qui grince et, détesté des pieds nus, jusqu’à leurs chambres
badigeonnées en blanc et leurs vies bien réglées. Un de ceux-ci me
dit qu’il se plaisait au Caire. C’était un endroit intéressant. — Croyez-
m’en, me dit-il, cela vaut la peine de voir des pays, parce que vous
pouvez vous en souvenir plus tard.
Il avait bien raison : les brumes pourpres et citron, formées du
crépuscule et du jour qui projetait encore ses reflets, se répandaient
au-dessus des rues toutes palpitantes et scintillantes, masquaient
les grands contours de la citadelle et des collines du désert et
conspiraient à susciter, à éveiller des souvenirs, à les rendre confus,
tellement que la Ville sorcière se dépouilla de sa forme vraie et
devant moi dansa sous la ressemblance désolante de chaque cité
qu’un peu plus bas sur la route j’avais connue et aimée.
C’était là une sorcellerie cruelle, car à l’heure même où mon âme
nostalgique venait de se livrer au rêve de l’ombre qui sur le cadran
avait rétrogradé, je me rendis compte combien désolés, combien
nostalgiques devaient être les jours de tous ceux qui sont parqués
en des lieux lointains, au milieu de bruits étranges et d’odeurs
étranges.
EN REMONTANT LE FLEUVE
Il y avait une fois un assassin qui s’en tira avec les travaux forcés
à perpétuité. Ce qui l’impressionna le plus, dès qu’il eut le temps d’y
penser, ce fut l’ennui, réel et assommant, éprouvé par tous ceux qui
avaient pris part au rite. — C’était comme si l’on allait chez le
Docteur ou chez le Dentiste, expliqua-t-il. C’est vous qui arrivez chez
eux, plein de vos affaires à vous, et vous découvrez que tout cela ne
forme pour eux qu’une partie de leur travail quotidien. Sans doute,
ajouta-t-il, que j’aurais découvert que c’était encore la même chose
si, — ahem… — j’étais allé jusqu’au bout !
Sans aucun doute. Entrez dans n’importe quel nouvel Enfer ou
Paradis, et, sur le seuil bien usé, vous trouverez à vous attendre les
experts pleins d’ennui qui assurent le service.
Pendant trois semaines nous restâmes assis sur des ponts
copieusement meublés de chaises et de tapis, soigneusement isolés
de tout ce qui en quelque façon se rapportait à l’Égypte, et sous le
chaperonnage d’un drogman convenablement orientalisé. Deux ou
trois fois par jour notre bateau s’arrêtait devant un rivage de boue
couvert d’ânes. On sortait des selles de l’écoutille de l’avant, on
harnachait les ânes qui étaient ensuite distribués comme autant de
cartes, puis nous partions au galop à travers les moissons ou les
déserts, selon le cas, on nous présentait en termes retentissants à
un temple, puis finalement on nous rendait à notre pont et à nos
Baedekers. En tant que confort, pour ne pas dire paresse ouatée, la
vie n’avait pas d’égale, et comme la majeure partie des passagers
étaient des citoyens des États-Unis (l’Égypte en hiver devrait faire
partie des États-Unis comme territoire temporaire) l’intérêt ne faisait
pas défaut. C’étaient, en nombre accablant, des femmes, avec, par-
ci par-là, un mari ou un père placide, mené par le bout du nez,
souffrant visiblement d’une congestion de renseignements sur sa
ville natale. J’eus la joie de voir se rencontrer deux de ces hommes.
Ils tournèrent le dos résolument à la rivière, coupèrent avec leurs
dents et allumèrent leurs cigares, et, pendant une heure et quart, ne
cessèrent d’émettre des statistiques touchant les industries, le
commerce, la manufacture, les moyens de transport, et le
journalisme de leurs villes, mettons Los Angeles et Rochester, N. Y.
On aurait dit un duel entre deux enregistreurs de caisse.
On oubliait, bien entendu, que tous ces chiffres lugubres étaient
animés pour eux, aussi, à mesure que Los Angeles parlait,
Rochester voyait en imagination. Le lendemain je rencontrai un
Anglais venu de l’autre bout du monde, c’est-à-dire du Soudan, très
renseigné sur un chemin de fer peu connu installé dans un pays qui,
de prime abord, n’avait paru être qu’un désert aride et qui s’était
révélé en fin de compte comme plein de produits à transporter. Il
était lancé en plein flot d’éloquence lorsque Los Angeles, fasciné par
le seul roulement de chiffres, accosta et jeta l’ancre.
— Commânt ç’a, interposa-t-il avec vivacité pendant une pause.
On lui expliqua comment ; mais il commença aussitôt à mettre
mon ami à sec au sujet de cette voie ferrée, mû uniquement par
l’intérêt fraternel qu’il éprouvait, ainsi qu’il nous l’expliquait, « pour
n’importe quel satané truc qui se fasse où qu’on veut ».
— Ainsi donc, poursuivait mon ami, nous allons pouvoir amener
du bétail abyssin jusqu’au Caire.
— A pied ? Puis un rapide regard lancé vers le Désert :
— Mais non, mais non ! par voie ferrée et par la rivière. Et ensuite
nous ferons pousser du coton entre le Nil Bleu et le Nil Blanc et
« ficherons la pile » aux États-Unis.
— Commânt ç’a ?
— Voici. L’interlocuteur étendit en forme d’éventail ses deux
doigts sous l’énorme bec intéressé. Voici le Nil Bleu, et voici le Nil
Blanc. Il existe une différence de niveau de tant, entre les deux, et
ici, dans la fourche formée par mes deux doigts, nous allons…
— Oui, oui, je comprends, vous ferez de l’irrigation en profitant de
la petite différence qui existe entre les deux niveaux. Combien
d’acres ?
De nouveau on renseigna Los Angeles. Il se dilata comme une
grenouille sous une ondée. — Et dire que je me figurais que l’Égypte
n’était que des momies et la Bible ! Moi, je m’y connaissais autrefois
en coton. Maintenant nous allons pouvoir causer.
Pendant la journée entière nos deux hommes arpentèrent le pont
du navire avec l’insolence distraite des amoureux, et, tels des
amoureux, chacun s’en allait dire à la dérobée quelle âme rare était
son compagnon.
C’était là un des types à bord, mais il y en avait bien d’autres —
des professionnels, qui ne fabriquaient ni ne vendaient rien — ceux-
là, la main d’une démocratie exigeante semblait les avoir
malheureusement tous coulés dans un même moule. Ils ne se
taisaient pas, mais d’où qu’ils venaient leur conversation était aussi
conforme à un modèle fixe que le sont les agencements d’un wagon
Pullman.
J’en touchai un mot à une femme qui était bien au courant des
sermons de l’une et l’autre langue.
— Je crois, dit-elle, que la banalité dont vous vous plaignez… »
— Je n’ai jamais dit banalité, protestai-je.
— Mais vous le pensiez. La banalité que vous avez remarquée
provient de ce que nos hommes sont si souvent élevés par des
vieilles femmes, des vieilles filles. Pratiquement, jusqu’au moment
où il va à l’Université, et même pas toujours à ce moment, un garçon
ne peut pas s’en affranchir.
— Alors qu’arrive-t-il ?
— Le résultat naturel. L’instinct d’un homme c’est d’apprendre à
un garçon à penser par lui-même. Si une femme ne peut pas arriver
à faire penser un garçon comme elle, elle se laisse crouler et se met
à pleurer. Un homme n’a pas de modèles fixes, il les crée. Il n’y a
pas d’être au monde qui soit plus conforme à un modèle fixe qu’une
femme. Et cela de toute nécessité. Et maintenant comprenez-vous ?
— Pas encore.
— Et bien, l’ennui en Amérique, c’est qu’on nous traite toujours
comme des enfants à l’école. Vous pouvez le voir dans n’importe
quel journal que vous ramassez. De quoi parlaient-ils tout à l’heure
ces hommes ?
— De la falsification des denrées, de la réforme de la police, de
l’embellissement des terrains vagues dans les villes, répondis-je
vivement. Elle leva les deux bras : « J’en étais sûre » s’écria-t-elle,
« Notre Grande Politique Nationale de la coéducation ménagère.
Frimes et hypocrisies que tout cela ! Avez-vous jamais vu un homme
conquérir le respect d’une femme en se paradant par le monde avec
un torchon épinglé aux pans de ses habits ?
— Mais si cette femme le lui ordonne — lui disait de le faire,
proposai-je.
— Alors elle le mépriserait d’autant plus. N’en riez pas, vous.
Bientôt vous en serez là en Angleterre.
Je retournai auprès de la petite assemblée. Il y avait là une
femme qui leur parlait comme quelqu’un qui en a l’habitude depuis le
jour de sa naissance. Ils écoutèrent, avec l’extrême attention
d’hommes dressés de bonne heure à écouter les femmes, mais non
à converser avec elles. Elle était, pour ne pas dire davantage, la
mère de toutes les femmes assommantes qui furent jamais, mais
lorsqu’elle s’éloigna enfin, personne ne s’aventura à l’avouer.
— Voilà ce que j’appelle se faire traiter comme des enfants à
l’école, dit méchamment mon amie.
— Mais voyons, elle les a figés d’ennui ; pourtant ils sont si bien
élevés qu’ils ne s’en sont même pas rendu compte. Viendra un jour
où l’Homme Américain se révoltera.
— Et que fera la Femme Américaine ?
— Elle se mettra à pleurer, et ça lui fera beaucoup de bien.
Un peu plus tard, je rencontrai une femme d’un certain État de
l’Ouest, et qui voyait pour la toute première fois le grand, l’heureux,
l’inattentif monde du Créateur, et se trouvait assez affligée parce
qu’il ne ressemblait pas à celui qu’elle connaissait, elle. Elle avait
toujours compris que les Anglais étaient brutaux envers leurs
femmes. — C’étaient les journaux de son État qui l’affirmaient — (si
seulement vous pouviez connaître les journaux de son État !) —
Mais jusqu’à présent elle n’avait pas remarqué de sévices exercés et
les Anglaises, qu’elle renonçait, disait-elle, à jamais comprendre,
avaient l’air de jouir d’une certaine liberté et d’une certaine égalité
agréables à l’œil. D’autre part les Anglais se montraient
manifestement bons envers des jeunes filles ayant des difficultés au
sujet de leurs bagages et de leurs billets lorsqu’elles se trouvaient
dans des chemins de fer étrangers. Gens tout à fait gentils, dit-elle
en terminant, mais assez dépourvus d’humour.
Un jour elle me montra ce qui avait tout l’air d’être une gravure
tirée de quelque journal de modes, représentant une étoffe pour
robe — joli médaillon ovale d’étoiles sur un fond de rayures grenat
— qui, je ne sais trop pourquoi, me semblait assez familier.
— Que c’est gentil ! Qu’est-ce donc ? dis-je.
— Notre Drapeau National, répondit-elle.
— Ah oui, mais il n’a pas tout à fait l’air…
— Non ; c’est une nouvelle manière d’arranger les étoiles pour
qu’elles soient plus faciles à compter et plus décoratives. Nous
allons voter là-dessus dans notre État, où nous avons le droit de
vote — je voterai quand je serai de retour là-bas.
— Vraiment ! et comment voterez-vous ?
— C’est là justement à quoi je réfléchis.
— Elle étala le dessin sur ses genoux, elle le contempla la tête
penchée d’un côté, comme si, en réalité, il eût été de l’étoffe pour
robe.
Et pendant, tout ce temps la terre d’Égypte se déroulait à notre
droite et à notre gauche, en marche solennelle. Comme la rivière
était basse nous la vîmes du bateau telle une longue plinthe de boue
pourpre et brunâtre, qui aurait de onze à vingt pieds de haut,
soutenue visiblement tous les cent mètres par des caryatides en
cuivre reluisant, sous forme d’hommes nus écopant de l’eau pour les
récoltes qui se trouvaient en dessus.
Derrière cette éclatante ligne émeraude courait le fond fauve ou
tigré du désert et un ciel bleu pâle encadrait le tout.
C’était là l’Égypte, celle-là même que les Pharaons, leurs
ingénieurs, leurs architectes, avaient vue ; terre à cultiver, gens et
bétail pour travailler, et en dehors de ce travail nulle distraction,
aucune attirance, sauf lorsqu’on transportait les morts à leur
sépulture au delà des limites des terres cultivables. Lorsque les rives
devinrent plus basses la vue s’étendait sur au moins deux kilomètres
de verdure bondée, tout comme une arche de Noé, de gens, de
chameaux, de moutons, de bœufs, de buffles, et, de temps à autre,
d’un cheval. Et les bêtes se tenaient aussi immobiles que des jouets
parce qu’elles étaient attachées ou entravées chacune à son
hémisphère de trèfle, s’avançant lorsque cet espace se trouvait
tondu. Seuls les tout petits chevreaux étaient libres, et jouaient sur
les bords plats des toits de boue comme des petits chats.
Rien d’étonnant que « chaque berger soit une abomination pour
les Égyptiens ». Les sentiers à travers les champs, poussiéreux,
foulés des pieds nus, sont ramenés jusqu’à la plus mesquine
étroitesse qu’il soit possible d’obtenir ; les routes principales sont
soulevées bien haut sur les flancs des canaux, à moins que la route
permanente de quelque voie de chemin de fer très légère ne puisse
être contrainte à les remplacer. Le froment, la canne à sucre, mûre,
pâle et à touffe, le millet, l’orge, les oignons, les bouquets de ricin
frangés, se bousculent pour trouver place où planter le pied puisque
le désert leur refuse l’espace et que les hommes poursuivent le Nil
dans sa chute, centimètre par centimètre, chaque matin, avec de
nouveaux sillons où faire pousser les melons, tout le long des rives
dégouttant encore d’humidité.
Administrativement un tel pays devrait être une pure joie. Les
habitants n’émigrent pas ; toutes leurs ressources sont là devant les
yeux, ils sont aussi accoutumés que leur bétail à être menés de-ci
de-là. Tout ce qu’ils désirent, et on le leur a accordé, c’est d’être mis
à l’abri de l’assassinat, de la mutilation, du viol et du vol. Tout le
reste, ils pourront s’en occuper dans leurs villages silencieux,
ombragés de palmiers où roucoulent leurs pigeons et où, dans la
poussière, jouent leurs petits enfants.
Mais la civilisation occidentale est un jeu dévastateur et égoïste.
Comme la jeune femme de « Notre État » elle dit en substance : « Je
suis riche. Je n’ai rien à faire. Il faut que je fasse quelque chose. Je
vais m’occuper de réforme sociale. »
Actuellement, il existe en Égypte une petite réforme sociale qui
est assez plaisante. Le cultivateur égyptien emprunte de l’argent —
ce à quoi sont astreints tous les fermiers. — Cette terre, sans haie,
sans fleur sauvage est sa passion par héritage et souffrance, tous
deux immémoriaux, il vit grâce à Elle, chez Elle et pour Elle. Il
emprunte pour la développer, pour pouvoir en acheter davantage,
soit de trente à deux cents livres anglaises par acre, faisant là-
dessus un profit, tous frais payés, de cinq à dix livres par acre. Jadis
il empruntait à des prêteurs locaux, Grecs pour la plupart, à 30 %
par an, ou davantage. Ce taux n’est pas excessif, à condition que
l’opinion publique tolère que de temps en temps celui qui emprunte
assassine celui qui prête : mais l’administration moderne qualifie
cela désordre et meurtre.
Donc il y a quelques années on établit une banque avec garantie
sur l’État qui prêtait aux cultivateurs à huit pour cent, et le cultivateur
s’empressa de profiter de ce privilège. Il n’était pas plus en retard
pour régler que de raison, mais étant fermier il ne payait
naturellement pas avant d’avoir été menacé de saisie. De sorte qu’il
fit de bonnes affaires et acheta encore de la terre, c’était là ce que
désirait son cœur. Cette année-ci, c’est-à-dire 1913, l’administration
promulgua soudain des ordres selon lesquels aucun fermier
possédant moins de cinq acres ne pourrait emprunter sur ses terres.
L’affaire m’intéressait directement, parce que j’avais cinq cents livres
sterling d’actions dans cette même banque garantie par l’État et plus
de la moitié de nos clients étaient des individus ne possédant pas
plus de cinq acres. Donc je pris des renseignements dans des
milieux qui semblaient être au courant. On me dit que la nouvelle loi
était complètement d’accord avec le Décret des États-Unis, celui de
la France et les intentions de la Divine Providence, — ou ce qui
revenait au même.
— Mais, demandai-je, est-ce que cette limitation de crédit
n’empêchera pas les hommes qui ont moins de cinq acres
d’emprunter davantage pour acheter davantage de terrain et de faire
leur chemin dans le monde ?
— Si fait, me répondit-on, évidemment. Et c’est justement là ce
que nous voulons éviter. La moitié de ces gens-là se ruinent en
essayant de s’agrandir. Il faut que nous les protégions contre eux-
mêmes.
C’est là, hélas ! l’unique ennemi contre lequel aucune loi ne
saurait protéger aucun fils d’Adam, puisque les véritables raisons qui
font ou perdent un homme sont absurdes ou trop obscènes pour
qu’on les atteigne du dehors. Donc je cherchai ailleurs pour
découvrir comment le cultivateur allait faire.
Lui ? me dit une des nombreuses personnes qui m’avaient
renseigné, lui ! il va bien, rien à craindre. Il y a environ six façons que
je connais, moi, d’éluder le Décret. Et très probablement que le
Fellah en connaît six autres. Il a été dressé à se débrouiller tout seul
depuis les temps de Ramsès. Ne serait-ce que pour la cession du
terrain, il sait falsifier les documents, emprunter assez de terre pour
que son bien dépasse cinq acres le temps nécessaire pour faire faire
l’enregistrement de l’emprunt ; obtenir de l’argent de ses femmes
(oui, voilà un résultat du progrès moderne dans ce pays !) ou bien
aller retrouver le vieil ami le Grec à 30 %.
— Mais le Grec le ferait saisir et ce serait contraire à la loi, n’est-
ce pas ? dis-je.
— Ne vous tracassez pas au sujet du Grec. Il sait tourner
n’importe quelle loi qui existe pourvu qu’il y ait cinq piastres à gagner
là-dedans.
— Sans doute, mais est-ce que réellement la Banque Agricole
faisait saisir trop de cultivateurs ?
— Pas le moins du monde. Le nombre de petits biens est plutôt
en augmentation. La plupart des cultivateurs ne consentent à payer
un emprunt que si on les menace d’une assignation. Ils s’imaginent
que cela les pose et cependant leur inconséquence fait augmenter le
nombre des assignations bien que ces dernières n’impliquent pas
toujours la vente du terrain. Et puis il y a autre chose encore : tout le
monde (dans la vie réelle) ne réussit pas de même. Ou bien ils ne
font pas le métier de fermier comme il faut, ou bien ils s’adonnent au
hashish, ou s’entichent bêtement de quelque fille, et empruntent
pour elle ou font quelque chose d’analogue ; et alors ils sont saisis.
Vous avez pu le remarquer.
— Assurément. Et en attendant que fait le fellah ?
— En attendant, le fellah a mal lu le Décret — comme toujours. Il
s’imagine que son effet sera rétrospectif, et qu’il n’a pas à payer ses
dettes anciennes. Il se peut qu’ils causent des embarras, mais je
crois que votre Banque restera tranquille.
— Restera tranquille ! Avec les trois quarts de ses affaires
compromises — et mes cinq cents livres engagées !
— C’est là votre ennui ? Je ne crois pas que vos actions montent
bien vite, mais si vous voulez vous amuser allez en causer avec les
Français.
C’était là évidemment un moyen aussi bon qu’un autre de se
distraire. Le Français auquel je m’adressais parlait avec une certaine
connaissance de la finance et de la politique et avec la malice
naturelle que porte une race logique à une horde illogique :
— Oui, me dit-il. C’est une idée absurde que de limiter le crédit
dans de telles circonstances. Mais là n’est pas tout. Les gens ne
sont pas effrayés, les affaires ne sont pas compromises par suite
d’une seule idée absurde, mais bien par l’éventualité d’autres
pareilles.
— Il y a donc bien d’autres idées encore que l’on voudrait
essayer dans ce pays ?
— Deux ou trois, me répondit-il avec placidité. Elles sont toutes
généreuses, mais toutes sont ridicules. L’Égypte n’est pas un endroit
où l’on devrait promulguer des idées ridicules.
— Mais, mes actions, mes actions, m’écriai-je, elles ont déjà
baissé de plusieurs points.
— C’est fort possible. Elles baisseront davantage. Puis elles
remonteront.
— Merci, mais pourquoi ?
— Parce que l’idée est fondamentalement absurde. Votre pays
ne l’admettra jamais, mais il y aura des arrangements, des
accommodements, des ajustements, jusqu’à ce que tout soit comme
auparavant. Cela sera l’affaire du fonctionnaire permanent — pauvre
diable ! — d’y mettre bon ordre. C’est toujours son affaire. En
attendant la hausse va se porter sur toutes les denrées.
— Pourquoi cela ?
— Parce que le terrain est la principale caution en Égypte. Si un
homme ne peut pas emprunter sur cette caution, les intérêts
augmenteront sur tous les autres cautionnements qu’il offre. Cela
aura une répercussion sur le travail en général, les gages et les
contrats gouvernementaux.
Il s’exprimait avec tant de conviction et avec tant de preuves
historiques à l’appui, que je voyais perspective sur perspective
d’anciens Pharaons, énergiques maîtres de la vie et de la mort, sur
tout le parcours de la rivière, arrêtés en plein essor par des
comptables impitoyables, qui annonçaient prophétiquement que les
dieux eux-mêmes ne sauraient faire que deux et deux fassent plus
de quatre. Et la vision, parcourant les siècles, aboutit à une seule
petite tête grave, à bord d’un bateau Cook, penchée de côté, en train
d’examiner ce problème vital : l’arrangement de notre « Drapeau
National » pour que ce soit « plus facile de compter les étoiles. »
— Pour la millième fois loué soit Allah pour la diversité de ses
créatures !
POTENTATS MORTS
Les Suisses sont les seules gens qui aient pris la peine de se
rendre maîtres de l’art de gérer des hôtels. En conséquence, pour
toutes choses qui importent réellement — lits, bains et victuailles —
ils contrôlent l’Égypte ; et puisque chaque pays fait un retour à sa vie
primitive (c’est là la raison pour laquelle les États-Unis trouvent un
plaisir extrême à raconter de vieilles histoires) tout Égyptien ancien
comprendrait aussitôt la vie qui rugit tout le long de la rivière où tout
le monde s’ébat au soleil dans les casernes à touristes revêtues de
nickel, la comprendrait et y prendrait part.
De prime abord le spectacle vous permet de moraliser à peu de
frais jusqu’au moment où l’on se souvient que les gens occupés ne
sont visibles que lorsqu’ils sont oisifs, et les gens riches que
lorsqu’ils ont fait fortune. Un citoyen des États-Unis — c’était son
premier voyage à l’étranger — m’indiqua du doigt un Anglo-Saxon
entre deux âges qui se détendait à la manière de plusieurs écoliers.
— En voilà un exemple ! s’écria avec dédain le Fils de l’Activité
Fiévreuse. Vous voudriez me faire croire qu’il a jamais rien fait de sa
vie ? Malheureusement il était tombé sur quelqu’un qui, lorsqu’il est
sous le harnais, trouve que treize heures et demie de travail par jour
n’est qu’une journée passable.
Parmi l’assemblée se trouvaient des hommes et des femmes
brûlés jusqu’à n’avoir plus qu’une seule teinte bleu-noir — des gens
civilisés aux cheveux blanchis, aux yeux étincelants. Ils s’appelaient
des « fouilleurs », rien que des « fouilleurs », et me découvrirent un
monde nouveau. Si l’on accorde que l’Égypte tout entière n’est
qu’une vaste entreprise de pompes funèbres, quoi de plus fascinant
que d’obtenir la permission du Gouvernement de farfouiller dans un
coin quelconque, de former une compagnie et de passer le temps
froid à payer des dividendes sous forme de colliers d’améthystes, de
scarabées lapis-lazulis, de pots d’or pur, et de fragments de statues
inestimables ? Ou bien, si l’on est riche, quoi de plus amusant que
de fournir le nécessaire pour une expédition jusque sur
l’emplacement supposé d’une cité morte, et voir ce qu’il en advient ?
Il y avait parmi les voyageurs un grand chasseur qui connaissait la
plus grande partie du Continent, et qui était tout à fait emballé par ce
sport.
— J’ai l’intention de prendre des obligations dans l’exploration
d’une ville l’année prochaine, et je surveillerai les fouilles moi-même,
dit-il, c’est cent fois plus agréable que la chasse aux éléphants.
Dans cette partie-ci on déterre des choses mortes pour les rendre
vivantes. N’allez-vous pas vous payer une partie ?
Il me fit voir un attrayant petit prospectus. Pour ce qui est de moi-
même, je préférerais ne pas profaner les effets ou l’équipement d’un
mort, surtout lorsqu’il s’est couché dans la tombe avec la conviction
que ces babioles-là sont garantes de son salut. Bien entendu il
existe l’autre argument, que font valoir les gens sceptiques, à savoir
que l’Égyptien était un fanfaron et un vantard, et que rien ne lui ferait
plus de plaisir que la pensée qu’on le regardât, qu’on l’admirât après
tant d’années. Pourtant il se pourrait aussi qu’il nous arrive de voler
quelque âme offusquée qui ne verrait pas les choses de la même
façon.
A la fin du printemps les fouilleurs rentrent en foule du désert et
échangent des plaisanteries et des nouvelles sur les vérandas
somptueuses. Par exemple la bande A a fait la découverte de
choses inestimables, vieilles Dieu sait combien, et ne s’en montre —
pas trop modeste. La bande B, moins heureuse, insinue que si
seulement la bande A savait à quel point ses ouvriers indigènes ont
volé et disposé de leurs vols sous son archéologique nez même, elle
ne serait pas si heureuse.
— Bêtise, dit la bande B, nos ouvriers ne sauraient être
soupçonnés, et puis nous les avons surveillés.

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Imaginary Worlds: Invitation to an

Argument Wayne Fife

Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology

Cover credit: © Donald Iain Smith / gettyimages

recurring courses I’ve taught at Memorial University on The Anthropology

1 Imaginary Worlds in a Comparative Framework 1

2 Steampunk as Stealth Politics 31

3 The Perils of Belief: Fantasy Fiction as Narrative Theology 53

5 Imaginary Worlds and Contemporary Alienation111

Appendix A: Marxist Approaches to Speculative Fiction129

Imaginary Worlds in a Comparative

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

It has become commonplace in anthropology over the last 100 years to

Why Should We Care?

course of this work, my plan is to make use of whatever theory or perspec-

becomes to what extend Marxist theory, and more specifically modes of

What Is an Imaginary World?

angels, demons, trolls, sorcerers, and witches. To my mind, it is this post-

Deep Worlds Versus Shallow Worlds

automatically assumed to be an adjunct to a larger imaginary world simply

Imaginary Worlds Versus the Standard World

‘border’ between imaginary worlds and the standard world is merely a

Additional Reasons to Study Imaginary Worlds

It is probably impossible to get an accurate account of the untold millions

off from non-gaming imaginary world researchers. In the field of

re-imagine older American Western fantasies, simply timeworn ideologies

(e.g., science fiction, fantasy television or movie productions, living enact-

Anthropology and Literature

forms of speculative fiction are also often experienced by listeners as con-

anthropologists and other social scientists acknowledging the extent to

destruction. William Lempert (2014) has written about an emerging tra-

children. “Children’s literature has become an identifiable medium

standard world, or anything else. That is, the reader is encouraged to

The Rest of the Book

R. Donaldson serves up an embedded form of theology that is encoded

Steampunk as Stealth Politics

This challenge comes through a sometime vague yet easily recognizable

Involvement in [the Steampunk] subculture introduces people to political

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Steampunk is a romantic movement, but one with a difference. Rather

Steampunk rejects the myopic, nostalgia-drenched politics so common

Beginning with the 1980s’ novels of Tim Powers, K. W. Jeter, and

Margaret Killjoy suggests that allowing technology to separate us from

Of course, it is a false claim that technology itself is “unnatural.” We must

I am suggesting here that musicians, artists, writers, commentators, and

Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an

with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it

This is especially true of emerging economic classes. The landed gentry

Goggles and Gargoyles

Or, as Marx suggests:

Le Caire moderne est un endroit qui a un air négligé. Les rues

You might also like

1 Imaginary Worlds in a Comparative Framework 1

2 Steampunk as Stealth Politics 31

3 The Perils of Belief: Fantasy Fiction as Narrative Theology 53

5 Imaginary Worlds and Contemporary Alienation111

Appendix A: Marxist Approaches to Speculative Fiction129