BEYOND OUR NUCLEAR ENTANGLEMENT

Abstract

This essay explores our nuclear entanglement through culture and the environment. It does so through a quilted self-reflexive narrative. The narrator is positioned as a critical human rights activist, and follows the subjective, imaginative and suicidal implications of the nuclear in their life. A key argument is that we are living within the confines of the nuclear algorithm, which has wrought irreversible changes to the psychological, social, and ethical life of Homo sapiens within the Anthropocene. The essay calls attention to the tools of conviviality and love required for co-existence and co-survival beyond our nuclear entanglement.

Keywords:

• nuclear
• algorithm
• entanglement
• amnesia
• human rights
• activist
• Homo sapiens

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Text of President Obama's speech in Hiroshima, Japan, NY Times 27 May 2016.

2 Ashis Nandy, Time Treks (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007) 79.

3 Julia Gillard, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-23/gillard-sees-tsunami devastation-first-hand/2604050> (accessed 1 Aug. 2017).

4 Raimon Panikkar, Cultural Disarmament: The Way to Peace, <http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/spagnolo/XXXV-2-Cultural-Disarmament.html> (accessed 1 Aug. 2017).

5 Nandy 83.

6 Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (London: Harvill Secker, 2016) 83.

7 Nitin Sawhney and Hussain Seyed Yoosuf, “Broken Skin” lyrics, Universal Music Publishing Group, 1999.

8 This is an allusion to the remarkable work of the anti-nuclear North American nun Rosalie Bertell, who penned No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth (London: Women's Press, 1985).

9 Harari 15.

10 Jacques Derrida, “No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives),” Diacritics [Online] 14.2 (1984): 20–31, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/464756> (accessed 1 Aug. 2017).

11 Sawhney and Yoosuf.

12 This phrase is borrowed from Doris Lessing, Prisons we Choose to Live Inside (London: Cape, 1987).

13 Panikkar.

14 Deborah Bird Rose, “Slowly ∼ Writing into the Anthropocene” in Writing Creates Ecology and Ecology Creates Writing 1, eds. Martin Harrison, Deborah Bird Rose, Lorraine Shannon, and Kim Satchell, spec. issue 20 of TEXT (Oct. 2013): 1–14 (2).

15 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of an Enduring Kantian Fable,” New Literary History 47.2–3 (2016): 377–97.

16 Nandy 80.

17 Panikkar.

18 Geshe Lhakdor, “Inner Disarmament for External Disarmament,” Southern Cross University, Lismore, 2014. Video. Geshe Lhakdor is Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

19 Paul Tibbets, interview, 1989, <http://www.atomicheritage.org/article/manhattan-project-veterans-bombing-hiroshima> (accessed 1 Aug. 2017).

20 This idea comes from Madan Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996).

21 Ashis Nandy, “Foreword” in Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values, by Baden Offord, Erika Kerruish, Rob Garbutt, Adele Wessell, and Kirsten Pavlovic (London: Anthem, 2015) vii.

22 Letter to the Editor, Lesley Beckhouse, Queanbeyan, NSW, The Australian 25 Aug. 2017.

23 Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015): 12–13.

24 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (New York: Doubleday, 1958) 7.

25 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “Human Rights: The Common Language of Humanity. Opening Statement of the United Nations Secretary-General” in World Conference on Human Rights (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1994) 5–21 (7).

26 Naoto Kan, <http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/japans-former-pm-tells-of-tokyo-evacuation-risk-after-fukushima-20140827-1097na.html> (accessed 1 Aug. 2017).

27 It is worth noting that the Ranger and Jabiluka are adjacent uranium mine sites – and are on the traditional lands of the Mirarr people – surrounded by 20,000 hectares of the Kakadu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. At the Madjedbebe site, currently within the confines of the Jabiluka uranium mining lease, are 11,000 Indigenous artefacts – accurately dating Indigenous habitation to be potentially as old as 80,000 years. This site is being carefully explored through a unique and benchmark-setting agreement between the researchers and the Mirarr, who retained total control over the dig and the artefacts. See <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/dig-finds-evidence-of-aboriginal-habitation-up-to-80000-years-ago> (accessed 5 Aug. 2017).

28 Julia Gillard, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-23/gillard-sees-tsunami devastation-first-hand/2604050> (accessed 17 Aug. 2017).

29 Nandy, Time Treks 79.

30 Ibid. 91.