Article: Techno-Imaginations of a Nuclear Regime. How a Power Plant Became a Proxy Bomb
Abstract
The article analyzes the techno-imaginations of the nuclear regime as interdependencies between nuclear and media infrastructures (Parks and Starosielski), the policies, and forms of cultural mutations generated by them (Derrida, Kerckhove, Masco). The article discusses the actions of the destruction of nuclear infrastructure by the Russian army in 2022-2023 during the war in Ukraine, which led to the use of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as a proxy bomb. At the same time, it shows how media are designed under the nuclear regime and produce visions of the future as tools to neutralize critical discourse. The text indicates cultural and media activities – such as narratives produced around the 75th anniversary of the nuclear industry in Russia – which were used to generate nuclear visions of the future and to remediate resentment towards past nuclear imperialism. We put forward the thesis that one of the most important cultural consequences of the entanglement of the nuclear industry with the media and the narratives generated by it are new forms of weaponization of civilian nuclear infrastructure and a new topological figure of time in which the present is minimized to strengthen the future and the past. This onto-technological dependence generates new forms of atomized memory in which the past is justified by the pursuit of a sustainable nuclear future, the facts of the present are displaced, and the negative aspects of nuclear accelerationism are neutralized.
Preferred Citation
BibTex
Jelewska, Agnieszka; Krawczak, Michal: Techno-Imaginations of a Nuclear Regime. How a Power Plant Became a Proxy Bomb. In: Navigationen - Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften, Jg. 23 (2023), Nr. 2, S. 54-65. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/21640.
@ARTICLE{Jelewska2023,
author = {Jelewska, Agnieszka and Krawczak, Michal},
title = {Techno-Imaginations of a Nuclear Regime. How a Power Plant Became a Proxy Bomb},
year = 2023,
doi = "\url{http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/21640}",
volume = 23,
address = {Siegen},
journal = {Navigationen - Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften},
number = 2,
pages = {54--65},
}
author = {Jelewska, Agnieszka and Krawczak, Michal},
title = {Techno-Imaginations of a Nuclear Regime. How a Power Plant Became a Proxy Bomb},
year = 2023,
doi = "\url{http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/21640}",
volume = 23,
address = {Siegen},
journal = {Navigationen - Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften},
number = 2,
pages = {54--65},
}
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