Nuclear Fictions : Violence and the Narration of the Anglosphere
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| Title: | Nuclear Fictions : Violence and the Narration of the Anglosphere |
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| Description: | In this book, Michael Gardiner suggests that the conception of the ‘war-ending'weapon was tied up with a longer commitment to unified space and singular progress. The mission for total weapons can be seen rising with the highly-technical defensive war of the later nineteenth century, and passing through twentieth century atomic research, then the targeting of the outsides of commercial empire, and the post-war consensus with deterrence as its foundation. The end of the Cold War brought an opportunity to fully naturalise deterrence, but also brought a tacit acceptance of nuclear violence while forms of violence against the individual were rigorously sought out. If the world-unifying role of deterrence has always been undermined by the rise of rival empires, it has also been questioned by critical communities including the consensus-sceptics of the 1950s–60s, 1980s–90s Nuclear Criticism and readers of ‘nuclearism', millennial campaigns for Scottish independence, and twenty-first century descriptions of nuclear colonialism. Recently it has become more obvious that an Anglosphere concept of ‘worldly'deterrence was bound to a singular and ultimately nihilistic idea of progress.[bio]Michael Gardiner is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick. |
| Authors: | Michael Gardiner |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | Nuclear weapons--English-speaking countries--History, Deterrence (Strategy)--History, War--Technological innovations |
| Categories: | LITERARY CRITICISM / Gothic & Romance |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | In this book, Michael Gardiner suggests that the conception of the ‘war-ending'weapon was tied up with a longer commitment to unified space and singular progress. The mission for total weapons can be seen rising with the highly-technical defensive war of the later nineteenth century, and passing through twentieth century atomic research, then the targeting of the outsides of commercial empire, and the post-war consensus with deterrence as its foundation. The end of the Cold War brought an opportunity to fully naturalise deterrence, but also brought a tacit acceptance of nuclear violence while forms of violence against the individual were rigorously sought out. If the world-unifying role of deterrence has always been undermined by the rise of rival empires, it has also been questioned by critical communities including the consensus-sceptics of the 1950s–60s, 1980s–90s Nuclear Criticism and readers of ‘nuclearism', millennial campaigns for Scottish independence, and twenty-first century descriptions of nuclear colonialism. Recently it has become more obvious that an Anglosphere concept of ‘worldly'deterrence was bound to a singular and ultimately nihilistic idea of progress.[bio]Michael Gardiner is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick. |
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| ISBN: | 9781474475723 9781474475747 9781474475754 |
