Description
Critical approaches to nuclear order examine ideational, material, institutional, and postcolonial elements of power embedded in the nuclear order, by which they substantially uncover hierarchical relationships rooted in nuclear order. However, the perspective of other political belongings and actors who are (almost) destroyed has not been substantially explored in these approaches. My project intervenes at this point and asks the following question: How did victimhood relating to nuclear technology inform the emergence of nuclear order from 1945 to 1970? Focusing on Hiroshima/Nagasaki in 1945 and the Bravo test in 1954, I collected data from official and civilian archives in Japan to conduct genealogical analysis. I argue that nuclear victimhood paradoxically contributed to the idea of nuclearism that certain countries can justify their nuclear weapons while others cannot. The specific process of this paradoxical contribution is depoliticization of the Bravo test in 1954 as something related to natural disasters. This movement triggered the separation of nuclear uses from tests in the discourses of nuclear victimhood, leading to problematising nuclear tests and less problematising nuclear possession, which ultimately naturalised nuclearism. This project will contribute to critical nuclear studies, by illuminating the role of nuclear victimhood in the genesis of the nuclear order.
