The end, or life in the nuclear age: aesthetic form and modes of subjectivity.
2012-08
Loading...
View/Download File
Persistent link to this item
Statistics
View StatisticsJournal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Title
The end, or life in the nuclear age: aesthetic form and modes of subjectivity.
Authors
Published Date
2012-08
Publisher
Type
Thesis or Dissertation
Abstract
"The End, or Life in the Nuclear Age: Modes of Subjectivity and Aesthetic Form" is a transnational study of the experiences of Americans, Japanese Americans, and Japanese in the nuclear age as expressed in post-World War II literature, television, and cinema. I use the figure of the bomb as a way of understanding the historical, political, and linguistic impacts of modernity - crystallized in the image of the nuclear bomb - on our contemporary moment. I argue that the world has become fully global, not because all peoples experience the same material conditions of life, but because the nuclear age is one in which the world is conditioned for the possibility of the end of life as such. This project responds to key cultural and literary theorists writing from the aftermath of the Holocaust in Europe (in particular, Theodor W. Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Paul Virilio, and Michel Foucault), by enlarging the scope of their critique of modernity to include the atomic bombing of Japan. Crucially, I argue that nuclear war is not merely a futural event as commonly understood by most Western theorists. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demands that we account for how acts of terror committed by the West against the non-West have discursively given rise to an age in which nuclear technology functions as the symbol for both the ultimate technological triumph of Western science, and total planetary destruction. In so doing, this dissertation contributes to further development of the interdisciplinary field of nuclear criticism.
"The End, or Life in the Nuclear Age: Modes of Subjectivity and Aesthetic Form" is a transnational study of the experiences of Americans, Japanese Americans, and Japanese in the nuclear age as expressed in post-World War II literature, television, and cinema. I use the figure of the bomb as a way of understanding the historical, political, and linguistic impacts of modernity - crystallized in the image of the nuclear bomb - on our contemporary moment. I argue that the world has become fully global, not because all peoples experience the same material conditions of life, but because the nuclear age is one in which the world is conditioned for the possibility of the end of life as such. This project responds to key cultural and literary theorists writing from the aftermath of the Holocaust in Europe (in particular, Theodor W. Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Paul Virilio, and Michel Foucault), by enlarging the scope of their critique of modernity to include the atomic bombing of Japan. Crucially, I argue that nuclear war is not a futural event as commonly understood by most Western theorists. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demands that we account for how acts of terror committed by the West against the non-West have discursively given rise to an age in which nuclear technology functions as the symbol for both the technological triumph of Western science, and total planetary destruction. In so doing, this dissertation contributes to further development of the interdisciplinary field of nuclear criticism.
Through a close reading of Japanese hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) essays, Japanese anime (animation) and cinema, American Cold War novels, and Japanese American Bildungsromane I trace the emergence of an aesthetics of the fissure that resists the structuring logic of a global nuclear modernity organizing populations according to target sites and kill zones. In order to understand this aesthetics of fissure I analyze the literary concepts of semiotic liminality, mimesis, melodrama, and Bildungsroman alongside political discourses of nuclear strategy, Hegel's philosophy of history, and feminist theory. Thus, this dissertation creates a comparativist approach that takes seriously the inextricable connection between world literature and world politics.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2012. Major: Comparative Literature. Advisor: Richard Leppert. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 235 pages.
Related to
Replaces
License
Collections
Series/Report Number
Funding information
Isbn identifier
Doi identifier
Previously Published Citation
Suggested citation
Gibson, Alicia. (2012). The end, or life in the nuclear age: aesthetic form and modes of subjectivity.. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/136990.
Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.