Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T14:03:59.763Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 21 - War and Nuclear Criticism

from Part III - Emerging Concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2023

Anders Engberg-Pedersen
Affiliation:
University of Southern Denmark
Neil Ramsey
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Get access

Summary

The chapter looks at the devastations caused by nuclear testing, the links between environmental thinking and nuclear culture, and the twenty-first-century apocalyptic imaginary generated by climate breakdown and the post-Chernobyl and post-Fukushima nature of the second nuclear age. It reviews the Derridean moment of Nuclear Criticism at the very end of the Cold War through the lens of green Marxism by way of a meditation on the representation of nuclearized sites, deserts, islands, and wastelands, from the Cold War to the present. The chapter redefines the questions raised by Nuclear Criticism on the textuality of global war systems, on the impossibility of post-archival dreaming, through the modalities of environmental apocalypse now. The aesthetic repertoire of the chapter comprises John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife, stories by J. G. Ballard and the work of Jessica Hurley on Maori author James George’s Ocean Roads, Marlo Starr on Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner's Iep Jaltok, Philip K. Dick’s short story ‘Second Variety,’ DeLillo’s Underworld, and the work of the Nuclear Culture Research Group.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×