Report on the 25th EASLCE Webinar – “Nuclear Colonialism”
(Dr. Jessica Hurley, George Mason University, USA)
24 September 2024, 4-5:30 pm (CEST)
Participants:
Shreedhar Prasad Adhikari (Tribhuvan University, Nepal)
Marie Beckmann (University of Würzburg, Germany)
Ilona Jurkonytė (University of Toronto, Canada)
Kiley Kost (Carleton College, USA)
Chang Liu (Heidelberg University, Germany)
Tom Nurmi (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz (University of the Balearic Islands, Spain)
Lena Pfeifer (University of Würzburg, Germany)
The 25th EASLCE Webinar brought together scholars from a variety of countries to discuss the intersections of the nuclear complex, colonialism, and environmentalism. Participants began by thinking about the environmental ramifications that nuclearism entails, ranging from the destruction of local ecosystems through nuclear testing, to the dilemma of nuclear waste disposal, and to the assumption that the nuclear is inherently environmental in its effects as it fundamentally alters the habitability of places for both human and other-than-human life.
Drawing on Livia Monnet’s reflections on decolonizing pedagogies of the nuclear, participants discussed the practical implications and specificities of a practice of decolonizing the nuclear, reflecting in particular on how ways of thinking are closely entangled with ways of acting. One of the main discussion points that participants dwelled on for a while was how nuclear decolonization must be situated at the intersection of the material and the epistemological, and how the environment mediates moral responsibility.
The discussion further addressed the temporal framework of a possible project of nuclear decolonization, reflecting on how colonial thought patterns precede but also go beyond clearly demarcated time periods of colonization. We asked ourselves whether we might ever become post-nuclear given that both the material traces and cultural ramifications of past and present nuclear action will continue to shape our current lifeworlds and those of generations to come. Participants also brought up the political discourse concerning nuclear energy as a possible ‘bridge technology’ towards carbon-neutral energy production, critically commenting on how such debates largely ignore the conditions of production as well as the longue-durée aftermath implicated by the nuclear.
The webinar concluded with a round of reflections on further research questions opened up by the discussion, which included practical implications for pedagogical settings (both as teachers and as teaching teachers), opportunities for transnational research in the field, and questions about the role of different narrative forms (in particular the poem and other short forms) in the mediation and representation of nuclear concerns.
