Description
Recent years have seen the rise of a number of redress and reparations movements for colonial harm, with claims for restitution often formulated in the name of “justice”. This is accompanied by a diversification of political issues that are linked to colonial violence and its persisting effects. Despite this momentum, nuclear violence, as a specific form of colonial harm, and the quest for “nuclear justice” are not given much attention in the discourse on colonial redress.
Research on nuclear colonialism and imperialism emphasises the colonial logics underpinning nuclear violence, such as the location of nuclear test sites in historically or currently colonised spaces. Yet, this scholarship focusses primarily on resistance to nuclear colonialism and not on the struggle for redress of nuclear injustices as colonial harm.
Contributing to the growing literature on nuclear colonialism and nuclear violence on the one hand, and colonial reparations movements on the other, this paper locates the struggles for redress of nuclear injustices within the broader movements for justice for colonial harm. The paper examines how (and indeed whether) nuclear weapons states and communities affected by nuclear violence relate this violence to colonial harm and contextualise nuclear legacies within colonial pasts. Drawing on literature on colonial redress and reparations movements, the paper highlights what can be learnt from dealing with colonial crimes to address nuclear violence.
