Creative Projects Towards Nuclear Disarmament: Revisiting Oceanian nuclear weapons testing through Indigenous Hawaiian epistemology Kaoru Kodama A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy (MPhil) 2021 School of Art and Design ABSTRACT Nuclear weapons testing is one of the most defining aspects of the postwar history of Oceania. Conducted by US and French military in the Marshall Islands and French-occupied Polynesia, respectively, the repercussion of the tests shape today’s lived experiences, while contemporary militarisation continues to cause further environmental and social damage. This research focuses on a range of textual and visual projects from the wider Pacific: a socially oriented interview project, a memorial, a video art installation and a video poem. I explore how the responses of these works to Oceanian nuclear histories can function as a contribution towards ongoing efforts to disarm and demilitarise the region. Indigenous Hawaiian epistemology, as discussed by Hawaiian researcher Manulani Aluli-Meyer, guides the exploration of the selected creative works. For Aluli-Meyer, Hawaiian epistemology involves three distinctive ideas: conceiving of knowledge as an epistemological triangulation, the foundational pillars of Hawaiian knowledge and the intelligence of aloha. She positions the triangulation of knowledge as incorporating embodied, mental and spiritual ways of knowing, which also constitute the basis for holistic knowledge. For Aluli-Meyer knowledge that engages all three faculties of the body, mind and spirit is deemed holistic. Within my research, I am interested in how the triangulation of knowledge can function to challenge objective empiricism. This challenge, in turn, emphasises equally engaging all three facets of the body, mind and spirit when encountering the creative works selected for this thesis. The foundational pillars of Hawaiian knowledge value relational ways of knowing. My research is concerned with how the relationships that are formed through the selected creative works enable and contextualise knowledge, which establishes and cultivates viewers’ connections to locations and people involved in Oceanian nuclear testing. Such relational and contextual specificities function to undermine the dominant narratives of nuclear states that falsely universalise and appropriate lived experiences of the testing. Connection to land, particularly place, is a recurring theme in this research. Land holds and produces knowledge; irradiation and displacement from land thus signifies more than a disconnect from a physical homeland. The selected projects reclaim connections to land, which helps to reverse the various forms of erasure that nuclear weapons testing has inflicted on Oceanian communities. Both the triangulation of knowledge and the foundational pillars of Hawaiian knowledge are grounded in the intelligence of aloha. Aluli-Meyer positions aloha as the principle of compassion, empathy and care. Knowledge that is formed through aloha is an enduring kind of knowledge, which enables the continuation of past, current and future life. i This research simultaneously explores how this Hawaiian epistemological framework leads to ways of knowing that are conducive to the ongoing work of nuclear disarmament. Ultimately, this thesis takes the position that the textual and visual projects examined serve as sources of knowledge that contribute towards the demilitarisation of Oceania by practising the principle of aloha. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ...................................................................................................................... iv Attestation of Authorship .................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. vii Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 1. Methodology: Manulani Aluli-Meyer and Indigenous Hawaiian Wisdom ................ 15 2. Literature Review: Cautionary Nuclear Tales ............................................................ 33 2.1 Conceiving the World Amiss: Cold War Sciences, Narratives of the Anthropocene and Planetary Nuclear Harm ............................................................................................ 39 2.2 Isao Hashimoto’s 1945-1998: Obstacles in Visualising Planetary Nuclear Impact ..... 47 2.3 Conveying Nuclear Threat: Dissemination, Spectacles and Simulations Of Nuclear Violence .................................................................................................................... 60 2.4 Belonging To Oceania: Differences In Literature About, and For Oceania ................. 66 2.5 Erasure of Imperial Legacies of Contemporary Militarisation in Oceania ................... 72 3. Global and Planetary Nuclear Experience .................................................................. 85 4. Healing From Heliotrop-ic Violence with Aloha: Embodied and Sensorial Representations of Nuclear Harm ........................................................................... 98 5. Mourning, Remembering and Reviving Lost Stories: Storytelling in Irradiated Oceania ................................................................................................................... 113 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 131 Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 140 iii LIST OF FIGURES 1. Susan Schuppli, Trace Evidence, 2016, video, https://susanschuppli.com/works/trace- evidence-2/. ................................................................................................................... 38 2. Book cover of The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War (1985) by Paul R. Ehrlich, Carl Sagan, Donald Kennedy, and Walter Orr Roberts depicting nuclear winter on Earth. Illustration by Jon Lomberg, 1984. Cover design by Mike McIver. ....................... 42 3. – 4. Isao Hashimoto, 1945-1998, 2003, video, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, https://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/. ........... 50, 54 5. Alex Wellerstein, NUKEMAP, 2012-2020, Nuclear Secrecy, https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/. ............................................................................ 57 6. NUKEMAP (detail)......................................................................................................... 57 7. “Experience the Power of a Nuclear Blast in Your Area,” Outrider, https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/interactive/bomb-blast. ......................................... 58 8. Smriti Keshari and Eric Schlosser, the bomb, 2016, film, http://thebombnow.com/. ........ 63 9. Jane Change Mi, Le Goût de la Pureté, 2014, photograph, http://janecmi.com/Le-Gout-de- la-Purete. ........................................................................................................................ 78 10. Leni Leon (pacific_aesthetics), Instagram, August 8, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CDnE8bsFU_V/............................................................... 80 11. Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner (kathyjkijiner), Instagram, March 8, 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/CMI3f0NB6WG/. ............................................................ 82 12. Monument at Tahua Tu-Marama in Pape‘ete, Tahiti. Tahiti Infos, 2014, https://www.tahiti-infos.com/La-place-Jacques-Chirac-officiellement-denommee-a- Papeete_a104041.html. .................................................................................................. 87 13. Monument at Tahua Tu-Marama in Pape‘ete, Tahiti. Tahiti Heritage, 2013, https://www.tahitiheritage.pf/lieu-de-memoire-des-essais-nucleaires/. ........................... 87 iv 14. Jane Chang Mi, 24-08-1968, 2014, video installation, http://janecmi.com/24-08-1968. .. ..................................................................................................................................... 101 15. – 17. Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Anointed, 2018, video, Pacific Storytellers Collective, https://youtu.be/hEVpExaY2Fs. ......................................................................... 118, 120, 126 v ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. Kaoru Kodama 19th May 2021 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Fiona Amundsen for the invaluable support and guidance she has given me throughout this research. You know exactly what to say to untangle my thoughts and set me on my way again. I admire and appreciate the rigour, patience and insight that you have kindly given to our discussions. I’ll remember the lovely metaphors you used along the way! I cannot thank you enough. I would like to offer special thanks to friends and staff at AUT for their generous input and support. I am very fortunate to have been surrounded by