BCMCR New Directions in Media and Cultural Research Nuclear Gaia

The book analyses new media archives on nuclear violence toward humans and the environment in the context of the ongoing project to transform Earth into Nuclear Gaia as a consequence of a confluence of political, military, economic and scientific decisions made back in the 1940s, related to the development of nuclearity. 24 b&w illus. Nuclear Gaia challenges us to see the planet itself as shaped by nuclear processes – an evolving entity where past accidents, detonations and military strategies continue to radiate through environmental and social landscapes. Agnieszka Jelewska and Michał Krawczak explore how media archives and open-source investigations transform nuclear memory and create new forms of justice beyond the domain of scientists and politicians. ‘Nuclear Gaia: Media Archives of Planetary Harm is a rich intervention in the field of nuclear studies. It offers not only new case studies and materials, but also new conceptual insights and tools by which to think about them. By viewing nuclear power through a range of ecological and scientific lenses, the authors have arrived at a highly original, path-breaking interpretation of their subject. This landmark study promises to pave the way from nuclear to postnuclear studies, where AI, quantum mechanics and nuclear technologies will merge in ways we are only just beginning to imagine.’ Chris Hill, associate professor of history, University of South Wales. ‘Let’s stop debating how to prevent apocalypse and accept that the end of the world has already happened. Based on superb scholarship and crossing epistemic terrains which are normally bordered and secured, Nuclear Gaia tells the story of how that end came about. Not since Virilio has anyone written with such clarity and scope on the darkness of human destinies.’ Julian Reid, professor of international relations at the University of Laplandic, Finland and Research Fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) at Heidelberg University, Germany. Agnieszka Jelewska is a professor in the Anthropology and Cultural Studies Department of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and cofounder of the Humanities/Art/Technology Research Center AMU. Michał Krawczak is an associate professor in the Anthropology and Cultural Studies Department of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and cofounder of the Humanities/Art/Technology Research Center AMU. Describes the transformations we have witnessed due to the development of nuclear science and technology, accelerating policies interdependent on energy, and military procedures that have led us to make a provocative claim that, in many respects, planet Earth is getting closer to the embodiment of the project we call Nuclear Gaia. The book examines media archives and online platforms that recover data and memory and shape community knowledge of nuclear events from the distant and nearer past. These are the pieces of evidence that we are on the eve of creating new forms of social justice, carried out by open-source investigations (OSINT) groups, independent researchers, artists, media makers, activists, local communities and civic groups. Thus, analysing nuclear processes and their social and environmental consequences is no longer the exclusive domain of experts, scientists, politicians and the military. The authors hope that such communities’ practices and decolonial discourses, combined with the critiques within our methodology as post-nuclear media studies, can also change the fate of nuclear industry victims by creating media space to discuss and regain justice as socially sanctioned and shared rules for understanding and using nuclear energy both in past and the future.