Reassessing the Nuclear Public Sphere: Nuclear Counterpublics and Deabstracting the

“Secret” Bomb through Nucliteracy

Dibyadyuti (Dibs) Roy West Virginia University Abstract: MIT8 Anthology

My goodness, aren’t atoms wonderful! They are easier to understand than Dagwood!

–Blondie Bumstead in Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom

On the first page of the U.S. government publication Learn How Dagwood Splits the

Atom (1949), a visibly perplexed Dagwood Bumstead is affectionately kissed by his bemused wife Blondie, as he embarks on one of his many attempts to split the nucleus of an Uranium235 atom with an axe. After multiple comic forays Dagwood finally manages to split the nucleus of the atom with a “neutron bazooka”—leading to his wife Blondie’s relieved assertion that atoms are indeed “easier to understand than Dagwood.” Significantly, the connotations of Blondie’s seemingly naïve remark move beyond the gender-biased rhetoric that typified patriarchal assumptions regarding the American “flapper” culture of the 1950s—arguably for the first time, the nuclear phenomenon had broken out beyond the confines of the military-industrial complex into the public sphere.

Arising from the above premise, this paper traces the development of the American nuclear public spherei through examining government and civilian documents, exploring how the cessation of above ground nuclear bomb testing fundamentally altered nuclear discourses. I argue that the abstraction and disembodiment of the nuclear phenomena, with the removal of the nuclear from the performative public arena led to the reconstitution of the bomb from a state- secret to a dominant cultural-political entity—that extended the private technocratic community into the public domain. Consequently, through analyzing of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.Strangelove I posit that as a representative post-nuclear apocalyptic text, it challenges governmental publicity through a dynamic nuclear literacy or nucliteracy—forcing a re-acquaintance with the physical threats of the bomb and leading to the initiation of resistive nuclear counterpublics.

1

I will also emphasize that this dissemination of nuclear discourse beyond the domains of the military-industrial-scientific complex, (following the remission of above-ground testing in

1962), did not lead to the the extension of the hegemonic power embedded in technostrategic discoursesii, to a larger public domain. Rather as this paper hopes to show, these textual signifiers that were created for public consumption, maintained the governmental hegemony that was in vogue in the pre-1962 nuclear era. The newly emerging “nuclear public sphere” was therefore a pseudo public sphere, resulting from a concerted effort on part of the technocrats to provide the public domain with an illusion of having a stake/say in the nuclear discourse—while in reality nuclear policies and decisions were still deeply entrenched in techno-military-political communities. I will briefly outline below, the six sections, that will comprise my paper.

Early Atomic Culture and the “Secret” Nuclear Bomb

In the first section I discuss how from its inception, American nuclear discourse has been shrouded in a veil of secrecy—a phenomenon that had to be kept secret, as part of the larger psychological warfare that the United States Government was engaged in with its adversaries.

However, the triumph of allied forces in WW-II, accelerated through the nuclear power of

American forces, meant that “like most of the Manhattan Project scientists, the public feeling was euphoric” (Zeman and Amundson 2004, 3). Pertinently, the catastrophic power of the nuclear bomb that had apparently safeguarded American sovereignty, ensuring the freedom of its citizens from the throes of fascist powers, was also potentially a devastating threat for the nation—if it fell into unfriendly hands. The bomb’s catastrophic potential made it necessary to be construed as a “secret”—paradoxically to be protected from the very American public that it was purported to protect. Therefore a clear binary had been established between the private technocratic community involved in the wartime efforts and the public American population,

2 who were passive observers of the bomb and its effects. Not surprisingly this period of Early

Atomic Culture saw the devastating effects of the bomb being abstracted either through religious rhetoric or through comic glorifications in popular culture, which constructed the nuclear as a transcendental object, thereby diminishing its devastating effects and elevating it into an aesthetic nuclear sublime.

“First Lightning” and the Rise of Nuclear Deterrence

The second section highlights the radical change that occurred in the politics of the nuclear with the successful testing of Soviet Russia’s first nuclear bomb “First Lightning” in

1949, as for the first time in the history of the atomic phenomenon, nuclear deterrence had established. In the period preceding the Soviet nuclear test, the unwillingness of the American technocratic community to extend the nuclear into the public domain was effectively due to the sole presence of America in the nuclear club. The entry of Soviet Russia into the nuclear race however ensured that the American government could no longer maintain the non-committal status-quo and they had to address the apocalyptic concerns that had arisen in the public domain.

Importantly the only way that the privatized” secret” bomb could be extended into the public domain, without compromising the governmental hegemony, would be by making the bomb a

“fabulously textual” phenomenon (Derrida 1984, 23).

The “fabulously textual” bomb

In this section I challenge Derrida’s assertion that the nuclear had been “a phenomenon whose essential feature is that of being fabulously textual, through and through”, by arguing that the “fabulously textual” nature of the phenomenon arose only due the removal of the dynamic exploding bomb from the public arena. During the period of above ground testing of the nuclear bomb (pre-1962), the performative and visual nature of the bomb allowed the military-industrial

3 complex to construct the nuclear phenomenon as a transcendent sensory experience since “the profundity of the (nuclear) sublime is inexpressible, placing that outside language”, (Masco

2004, 350)—which allowed it to both discursively contain the bomb from the American public while simultaneously exhibiting the transcendent nuclear capability of America to its adversaries.

However, the abatement of American above ground testing on July 7, 1962 meant that the

American military industrial complex had to devise a new way to exhibit nuclear superiority to antagonistic nations. Indeed the “the structures of information and communication…including non-vocalizable language ” (Derrida 1984, 23) that had been in the period of above ground testing implicitly behind the performative nuclear bomb, had to be brought out into the public domain to keep justifying America’s Cold War nuclear policies. This leads to my next section where I discuss whether the nuclear public sphere was finally being constituted during this period.

The Pseudo-Nuclear Public Sphere

By emphasizing Habermas’ conceptualization of the public sphere as a space where

“Access is guaranteed to all citizens”, (Habermas 1974, 49) I argue that even though the period following 1962 (the end of above ground testing) perceived a marked change the way nuclear discourse had been previously disseminated, a truly emancipated nuclear public sphere was far from being established .Rather, as I point out, what in fact had been established was a pseudo nuclear public sphere, since the documents produced verbally and textuallyiii during this period further disembodied and abstracted the bomb—implying that citizen access was being restricted to a fundamentally key aspect of the bomb; its catastrophic destructive abilities.

4

Dr.Strangelove and How the Post-Apocalyptic Made us Start Worrying About the Bomb

While comic abstractions or religious glorifications of the bomb had been emblematic of the Early and High Atomic Culture Period (1949-1963), the move to underground nuclear testing marked a watershed amount. Initial cultural caricatures regarding the bomb were now being replaced by treatises that problematized the nuclear through post-apocalyptic settings. Through analyzing Dr. Strangelove as a representative text of this era, I argue here that Kubrick's path- breaking movie promoted a form of "nuclear-consciousness" to his audience—contributing toward the larger project of public nucliteracy.

Nucliteracy and the Initiation of Nuclear Counterpublics

In this concluding section I highlight the role played by cultural texts such as Dr.

Strangelove in simultaneously inaugurating a nuclear counterpublic space while promoting nucliteracy—through deconstructing the aesthetic construction of the nuclear bomb and reifying its devastating apocalyptic potential. I argue that films such as Dr.Strangelove emphasize that the purported “rational” strategies of the techno-military complex are not only untenable, but in fact anti-humanist, paving the way for anti-nuclear activism which continues in the current era.

i In tracing the nuclear public sphere in America I will refer to four distinct periods of Atomic Culture: a)Early Atomic Culture (1945-1948) b) High Atomic Culture (1949-63) c) Late Atomic Culture (1963-1991) d) Post-Atomic Culture (1992-Present) postulated by Scott C. Zeman and Michael Amundson in their book Atomic Culture: How we Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. ii The term “technostrategic discourse” which is central to discussions on the nuclear was coined by Carol Cohn “to represent the intertwined, inextricable nature of technological and nuclear strategic thinking…to indicate the degree to which nuclear strategic language and thinking are imbued with, indeed constructed out of modes of thinking that are associated with technology” (Cohn 1987, 690). iii Some of these documents include: i) John. F. Kennedy’s commencement address at the American University in 1963 ii) John. F. Kennedy’s address to the American people on the Nuclear Test ban Treaty,1963 iii) Robert McNamara’s “Mutual Deterrence” Speech, 1967

5

Preliminary Bibliography/References

Agel, J. ed. 1970. The Making of Kubrick’s 2001. New York: Signet.

Asen, Robert and Daniel C. Brower. 2001 ed. Counterpublics and the State. Albany: SUNY UP.

Amis, Martin. 1990. Einstein’s Monsters. New York: Vintage Books.

Burgess, Jackson. 1964. “The ‘Anti-Militarism’ of Stanley Kubrick.” Film Quarterly 18.1: 4- 11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1210143

Chernus, Ira. 2008. Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity. California: Stanford UP.

Cohn, Carol. 1987. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12.4: 687-718. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174209

Derrida, Jacques. 1984. “No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives)” Diacritics 14.2: 20-31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/464756

Easlea, Brian. 1983 Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race. London: Pluto Press.

Francis, Gareth. “A Short and Curly History of the Merkin.” The Guardian. 25 June 2003. http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2003/jun/26/features11.g2

Garrison, Jim. 1980. From Hiroshima to Harrisburg: The Unholy Alliance. New York: SCM. Habermas, Jürgen. 1974. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article” New German Critique 3.1 : 49:55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/487737

Laurence, William L. 1947. Dawn Over Zero. London: Museum Press.

Lindley, Dan. 2001 “What I learned Since I Stopped Worrying and Studied the Movie: A Teaching Guide to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.Strangelove.” Political Science and Politics 34.3:663-667. http://www3.nd.edu/~dlindley/handouts/DrS.pdf

Masco, Joseph. 2004. “Nuclear Technoaesthetics: Sensory Politics from Trinity to the Virtual Bomb in Los Alamos.” American Ethnologist. 31.3: 349-373. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3805363

---. “The Nuclear Public Sphere.” Ethnografeast III- Ethnography and the Public Sphere, Lisbon Portugal. 20-23 June, 2007. Conference Paper.

McCanles Michael. 1984. “Machiavelli and the Paradoxes of Deterrence.” Diacritics 14.2: 11- 19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/464755

Musial, Joe. 1949. Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom. Prepared with the Scientific Advise of Lt. Gen. Leslie R.Groves, Dr. John R.Dunning, Dr.Louis M. Heil. New York: King Features Syndicate.

Nye, David E. 1990. American Technological Sublime. New Baskerville, MIT Press.

Rosen, Elizabeth K. 2008. Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Plymouth: Lexington Books.

Smyth, H.D. 1945. The Smyth Report: Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. York, Pennsylvania: Maple Press.

Taylor, Bryan C., William J.Kinsella, Stephen P. Depoe, Maribeth S. Metzler, eds. 2008. Nuclear Legacies: Communication, Controversy, and the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Warner, Michael. 2002. Publics and Counterpublics. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books.

Zeman, Scott C. and Michael A. Amundson, eds. 2004. Atomic Culture: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado Press. DIBYADYUTI ROY Date of Birth: 22.10.1986 Department of English Phone no: 001-541-953-2851 West Virginia University E-mail: [email protected] Address: 109 South Walnut Street, Apt # 2 Morgantown, WV 26501

Education

2010-2015: Doctoral Student and Graduate Instructor, Department of English, West Virginia University.

2009-2010: Doctoral Student, Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow. (Transferred)

2008-2009: Postgraduate Degree (MLitt) in Twentieth century and Contemporary Literature, Culture and Art, Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow. Secured a Distinction (the highest grade) during the postgraduate (MLitt) degree.

2005-2008: Graduate in English Literature, Department of English, Presidency College, Kolkata. (Subsidiary subjects: History and Political Science) I secured First class marks and was placed amongst the top one percent students in the university.

2005: Indian School Certificate (ISC) from Calcutta Boys’ School, Kolkata.

2003: Indian Certificate Secondary Education (ICSE) from Calcutta Boys’ School, Kolkata.

Academic Awards and Honors

2013: Elaine K. Ginsberg Graduate Student Enrichment Fund-awarded by the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, West Virginia University.

2013: James Paul Brawner Expository Writing Contest- Second Place awarded by Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, West Virginia University.

2012: Humanities Summer Internship awarded by the West Virginia University Office of Graduate Education and Life.

2012: Richard Tuerk "Out of This World" Paper Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy awarded by the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association at the SWTX PCA/ACA conference held in Albuquerque, NM.

2010: HERF Postgraduate Scholarship awarded by West Virginia University.

2010: Jackson Scholarship awarded by West Virginia University.

2009-2010: University of Glasgow-Faculty of Arts Postgraduate Research Scholarship awarded by the University of Glasgow.

2008-09: Glasgow Postgraduate Excellence Scholarship awarded by the University of Glasgow.

Research Projects

Computer Gaming Across Cultures: British Council funded UK-US-India Trilateral Research Project (January 2013-Present)

 A trilateral partnership between West Virginia University (USA), Bangor University (UK) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (India) to research massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) from a cross-cultural perspective. Outcomes of the project include a graduate curriculum and best practices for studying MMORPGs, as well as co-authored publications and conference presentations.

Textualities in Context Project: International Collaborative Research Project between WVU and Université Paris 8 (August 2012-Present)

 Digital literature works will be cross-sectionally analyzed using different theoretical perspectives represented by the project partners. These perspectives include semiotics, pragmatics, the cultural studies, reception and aesthetics. Collaboration with partners will cement the intercultural dimension of research including analysis from reading the same works in North America, and South Europe.

Publications

A Student’s Companion to English Literature: Elizabethan Plays to the Comedy of Manners with Debashis Bandyopadhyay and Abin Chakraborty. New Delhi, India: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Forthcoming.

A Student’s Companion to English Literature: Twentieth Century Drama with Debashis Bandyopadhyay and Abin Chakraborty. New Delhi, India: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Forthcoming.

Conference Presentations

“My Project is Sexy and You Better Know It”—The Reterritorialization of Online Gaming by Ivy League Institutions at Computer Gaming Across Cultures: Perspectives from Three Continents, Bangor University, Wales, UK, May 2013.

Reassessing the Nuclear Public Sphere: Nuclear Counterpublics and Deabstracting the ‘Secret’ Bomb through Nucliteracy at MIT8-Media in Transition International Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 2013.

“Leave the men where they lay, they'll never see another day”: Retributive Femininity and the Gendered Apocalypse in Joss Whedon’s Firefly” at the Eaton Science Fiction Conference, University of California, Riverside, April 2013.

“Snakes and Ladders”: Effectively Handing Tutor-Student Interaction in Writing Centers at Mid- Atlantic Writing Centers Associations Conference (MAWCA), California University of Pennsylvania, April 2013.

Transforming Nonplaces to Places: Gaining Agency from Trauma in Partition Rehabilitation Camps at the American Comparative Literature Association Conference (ACLA), Toronto, Canada, April 2013.

Being Maria: Apocalyptic Modernism and Regendering the Messiah in Metropolis at the Popular Culture and American Culture Association Conference (PCA/ACA), at Washington, D.C., March 2013.

Reconfiguring Post-nuclear Apocalyptic Spaces: Allegories of Hyperliteracy in The Book of Eli and The Matrix at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association (SWTX PCA/ACA) February 2012 at Albuquerque, NM.

Writing Centers: From Vision to Mission at West Virginia University Writing Center Colloquy: Writing Centers as Learning Cultures, November 2011.

Countering Binaries, Creating Multilingual Discourse: The ESL classroom as nepantla (borderland) for the Female L2 immigrant Learner at the 22nd Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition: Rhetoric and Writing across Language Boundaries, at Pennsylvania State University, July 2011.

Decolonization: The Child in Indian Sub-continental Fiction at the North Eastern Modern Language Convention (NeMLA), Rutgers University at New Brunswick, New Jersey, April, 2011.

The Beat Movement and the Hungry Generation: from Allan Ginsberg to Sunil Gangopadhayay at a student seminar in the University of Glasgow, March 2009.

Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being and the existential philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre, at a student seminar in the University of Glasgow, February 2009.

The Effect of Music Videos on Popular culture at a departmental seminar at Presidency College, Kolkata, India, December 2007.

Teaching Experience

Instructor English 305-Technical Writing English 242- American Literature Survey II-1865-Present English 132-Short Story and Novel English 102- Writing and Composition (Classroom and Online) English 101- Writing and Composition

Guest Lecturer Invited to lecture on Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines at the Department of English, Presidency University, July 2012 Invited to speak on Postcolonial Feminist Literature at the Department of English, West Bengal State University, July 2009.

Teaching Assistant English 490- Writing Center Pedagogy and Practice

Related Professional Experience

Center for Literary Computing- West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA (August 2013-Present) Associate Editor (Electronic Book Review) and Graduate Administrator  Handling editorial responsibilities such as feedback to authors, mark up and copy-editing for the Electronic Book Review (online academic journal). Managing center and English department databases and websites. Creating web pages for other departments. Contributing to grant writing process. Managing and teaching undergraduate staff.

Center for Writing Excellence-West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA (July 2011-August 2013) Graduate Tutor and Writing Center Administrator  Involved in providing individual writing assistance to the West Virginia University community at the Writing Center. Reviewing literature related to the theory and practice of writing center tutoring. Visiting undergraduate courses to publicize the Writing Center. Maintaining Writing Center website, blog, and participating in production of media related projects (e.g. podcasts, promotional videos, etc.). Working on special Writing Center projects (such as the newsletter and handouts related to research, the writing process, etc.). Collaborating with Writing Center staff to develop and deliver student and faculty workshops. Attending staff development meetings, mentoring undergraduate peer tutors and serving as a reader for the Undergraduate Writing Contests.

Electronic Theses and Dissertation Committee-West Virginia University, Morgantown USA (July 2011- Present) Task Force Member  Helping the members of the West Virginia University community promote their careers, assisting learners and researchers within and external to WVU, and making available many scholarly works that were previously inaccessible.

Oxford University Press, -Kolkata, India (June 2009-Sept 2009) Freelance Content Developer  Created reading assignments as well as academic activities based on higher order thinking skills for the New Broadway series of books and website designed for ELT (English Language Teaching). Worked in compliance with specific publishing guidelines while maintaining scheduled deadlines for specific projects.

Research and Teaching Interests

 Rhetoric of Nuclear Technology  Gender, Sexuality and the Body  Feminist Theory  Postcolonial Literature  Digital Humanities  Modern and 20th Century Literature, Art and Culture  Theories of Space and Place

Skills

Languages Proficient in use of HTML, CSS. Bengali Proficient in use of Photoshop, GIMP. Hindi Proficient in use of all components of MS Office. Moderately proficient in use of InDesign. Technology

References available on request.