Haunting from the Future: Psychic Life in the Wake of Nuclear Necropolitics

Framing the sublime as affect in post-disaster tourism

“…[Theo (03/08/2016)] The feeling of danger that emanates from the radiation threat is uncanny and yields potential for the sublime because it creates "a feeling of hypervigilance while maintaining the lure of deniability" (Schwab, 2014). Radiation represents the zenith of danger, an invisible force with destructive material effects that possesses a 'vibrancy' (Bennett, 2010), that cannot be experienced or sensed but that can mortally impact the body (Schwab, 2014). David Nye (1996) argues that nuclear weapons are too horrifying to be ascribed to the aesthetic of the sublime, as it offers no moral enlightenment.…”

“…This ambivalence pertains to the realm of the sublime. The potential for sublime experiences of a post-disaster landscape is immensely commodifiable for tourism purposes because of the fascination towards dark and apocalyptic fantasies (Schwab, 2014). Stefan, the founder of the website Japanguide.com, believes that "in the long-term, the region may even profit from the publicity gained through 3.11" (Stefan, 16/08/2016).…”

Spectres of Caste/Contagion: Death Anxiety and Caste Anxiety in U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara

“…Pandemics have 'plagued' humanity over centuries in an intermittent manner and repetitive fashion. The gross recurrence of apocalyptic disasters and the evoked 'haunting' caused by them are widely read by scholars as haunting of "the past/present" (Blanco & Peeren, 2013); "the future" (Schwab, 2014); "Anthropocene" (Duncan, 2021); and finally, as "haunting Nature" in itself (Monnet, 2021). Jacques Derrida, in his seminal text Specters of Marx, writes about such 'repetition' of hauntings where he argues that it is "revenant [where] one cannot control its comings and goings because it begins by coming back" (1994, p. 11, emphasis in original).…”

Nuclear necropower: The engineering of death conditions around a nuclear power plant in south India

“…In the hands of a punitive state, they were forced to either live in prison or in a 'sterilisation zone', a designated 5 kilometre zone around the nuclear reactors as stipulated by India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.4 Both places were empty of their life-potentials to do with their future health, livelihood, and generations (see Abraham 2012: 107-108). Not integral to or compliant with the state -referring to a complex of organisational structures, personnel, discourses and practices that can be both dispersed and come together as a concrete force in people's lives (Foucault 2010: 4) the women were decreed disposable and subjected to a shadow existence entwined in nuclear necropower (see Kohso 2011, Schwab 2014, Alexis-Martin 2019, Fig. 1).…”