Description
Feminist IR and multidisciplinary literatures have foregrounded the everyday impact of military/nuclear bases on the landscapes, economies, cultural and social relations of the sites they occupy. Building on such work, our project explores the consequences of the disbandment of bases. It is tempting to interpret base closure as a sign of de-militarisation or de-nuclearisation. Yet, existing research illustrates how “post” military/nuclear sites are contested terrains shaped by the enduring (absent) presence and significance of militarism and nuclearism. In that light, our paper examines the afterlives of two US Cold War nuclear submarine facilities, with a particular focus on the impact on place and on landscape/seascape: at La Maddalena in Sardinia, Italy, and Holy Loch in Scotland, UK. Drawing on ethnographic fieldnotes, informed by walking and other movement methods, we trace complex geographies “haunted” by ghostly military infrastructure, layered military histories and often-invisible environmental legacies, as well as by incomplete processes of economic restructuring and cultural practices of remembering and forgetting. We discuss the significance of these sites for broader critical engagement with the seductions of militarism and nuclearity, and reflect on the (micro)possibilities for place-specific resistance and recovery.
