Publisher's Synopsis
Among the fall-out from the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the seed of a new cultural phenomenon: a half century of writings which attempt to evaluate the cultural consequences of a nuclear technology whose most conspicuous legacy is the nuclear power station and weapons of mass destruction. "Nuclear Criticism" introduces a variety of analytical approaches to representations of nuclearism, ranging from official accounts of the first atomic test in 1945 to recent reports on a controversial shipment of plutonium to Japan. A relatively late intervention in this history is self-styled and theoretically sophisticated nuclear criticism whose assumptions and practices are here contextualized and examined.;This introductory study argues that a broadly based nuclear criticism ought to be a component of cultural studies in a post-Cold War period characterized by fewer nuclear weapons and more nuclear powers.
