The Victorian postmodern

The world seems fascinated with reviving and repunking the past. We chatted to cultural critic, writer, researcher and editor Alex Dodd about one such nostalgic trend that has been given horns – the Victorian postmodern.

Who is Alex Dodd and how did she come to be researching the Victorian postmodern?

I’m an independent writer with a passion for visual culture, and the interaction between images and words. While studying towards my Masters in Literature at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, I took a course that explored the literary phenomenon of the Victorian postmodern, which totally captured my imagination. When I returned to South Africa, the theme kept cropping up in artworks I was encountering in my work as a cultural critic. I felt the desire to understand more about what was driving this aesthetic fixation with Victorian styles and themes in contemporary South African culture. So I decided to embark on a PhD, and have spent the past two years researching this theme as a research fellow with the Archive and Public Culture research initiative at the University of Cape Town.

What is the Victorian postmodern?

Over the past few decades there has been an extraordinary global blossoming of texts and images that revise themes from works that initially sprung to life during the 19th century. From hit films by Francis Ford Coppola (Dracula, 1992), Jane Campion (The Piano, 1993 and The Portrait of a Lady, 1996), Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland, 2010) and Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 2011) to bestselling novels by AS Byatt (Possession, 1990 and Angels & Insects, 1992) and William Gibson (The Difference Engine, 1990), contemporary culture seems to be rife with appropriations from the 19th century. I’m interested in what makes the Victorians so enticing to our postmodern culture – their elaborate costumes, inventive machinery, bi-polar sexuality, sense of time and place, séances and ancestor relations…

What are some of the pop culture manifestations of this?

I see it everywhere – from the popularity of the Victorian glass bell jar in interior design to the contemporary penchant for collecting bones, skulls or beetles in the vein of 19th century naturalists. If you think of the global popularity of the post-recession ‘maker movement’, it stems back to John Ruskin and William Morris, firebrands of the British Arts and Crafts movement, who advocated simplicity of form and honest use of materials as part of a broader moral philosophy that resisted the faceless numbings and dumbings down of industrialisation. I adore the Victorian-inspired gazebo and pavilion designs of the ingenious British designer Thomas Heatherwick, whose work was celebrated with a major retrospective at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum this year. Then there’s that new themed bar on Bree Street in Cape Town, called The Orphanage, ‘a specialist emporium of artisan cocktails, elixirs, intoxications and delicious morsels of substance’ where some of the cocktails come served in a china teacup. And David Donde’s new Truth Coffee emporium, a flagship roastery housed in a three-storey 19th century warehouse in Cape Town’s East City, featuring wonderfully evocative steampunk styling. The Little Hattery, Cape Town’s go-to bespoke styling company, held its Steampunk launch party there in August and the styling was decidedly sepia-hued.

In the new edition of VISI, we’ve noticed two specific movements, one being Delft. Have you got any specific insight on Delft?

Delft-inspired designs seem to be prompted by a similar archival urge to recover aspects of our material culture that pay homage to our hybrid heritage in fresh, mashed-up ways. In the case of Delft, I think it stems back more to the Dutch strains in the mix, whereas in the case of the Victorian Postmodern it’s about reinventing the stuff left behind by our English ghosts. 

The other one that has suddenly hit South Africa is steampunk. What is steampunk?

It’s a retro-futurist literary genre and a pop cultural phenomenon that incorporates 19^th century fashion and technology. Generally, steampunk styling is set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used, but with elements of either science fiction or fantasy. I’m really drawn to the utopian strain in Steampunk and the idea that we can recycle trashed or forgotten elements of our past to invent outlandish new possibilities for the future. One of the key things about it is that it is pre-digital, pre-Apple, pre-atomisation – it’s the opposite of all that sleek seamlessness. The mechanics of the thing are obvious to the eye.

What distinguishes African manifestations of the Victorian postmodern with those in the rest of the world?

This is the most crucial aspect of my research. For the majority of people who live in this country, the words ‘Victorian’ and ‘colonial’ trigger a legacy of damage and division rather than one of inventive splendour and innocent free-range curiosity. So in a South African context, works of this nature tend to be much less nostalgic. I’m looking in particular at artworks by Mary Sibande, Nicholas Hlobo, Kathryn Smith, Santu Mofokeng, Minette Vari and others that have a parody or burlesque element that comes out of a desire for radical rethinking of our racial and sexual identities. There is no point in plundering the past unless you intend to illuminate the present.

Why do you think there is suddenly this global surge in that reviving that part of history?

I think it has to do with the ways in which inherited styles play a part in shaping our cultural identities and our sense of ourselves. In messing about with past styles inherited from our motley crew of ancestors, we have a liberating chance to rewrite ourselves.

What do you intend to do with all your research?

I hope to be awarded my Doctorate and to share my ideas in the form of a beautiful book. 

See our full steampunk report here and our Delft report here. In the new SPRING FLING edition of VISI magazine, we feature the brand new steampunk-themed Truth HQ coffee bistro. 

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More from the SPRING FLING edition of VISI

• New and second-cycle
  Renovation and interior design is seldom a stagnant, once-off affair. The best spaces grow into themselves. See the before pictures of the houses featured in the magazine.

• Deft blue strokes
  Fabric, surfboards, shacks… Something is afoot, and not just in South Africa! From Babylonstoren to Russia, browse our full Delft trend report.

• Popcorn architecture
  We have inspiration from the Architecture ZA 2012 Biennial Festival to share. Watch our online film festival and read our report back. 

• Mechanical futurism
  Some say steampunk is what happened when Goths discovered brown. Others say it grew out of a literary genre. Explore our steampunk trend report.

• Joburg Art Attack
  For at least one week in September, Joburg was hit by an art attack. Read the post-mortem and our guide to starting an art collection, written by the experts. 

• Winning wishes
  In October, Warren Lewis will be giving away four paintings. Up for grabs over October and November is a Bodum Bistro Coffee Maker from Banks Kitchen Boutique. Enter the competitions here.