PROLIFERATIONS OF INDISTINCTION: NUCLEAR SPECTACLE, SOVEREIGNTY AND THE SENSUOUS POLITICS OF NATIONAL SECURITY IN AMERICA Marc Lafleur A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO August 2012 © Marc Lafleur, 2012 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1 Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92783-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92783-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada Abstract This dissertation considers the bodily politics of sovereignty from within the context of atomic and nuclear heritage efforts and touristic encounters in the United States. I begin with the assertion of a gap in the sovereign enterprise of power. This gap manifests as a zone of pure violence or as the philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls it, a “zone of indistinction.” I argue that through the ethnographic exploration of the ways in which bodies move through sites commemorating nuclear heritage a politics of indistinction can be deciphered in which nuclear spectacles act as sites of violent capture and easily reproduce and amplify the politics of nuclear fear in the face of an official narrative in which nuclear weapons are merely historical entities. I also demonstrate that nuclear indistinction is incomplete and waffles and decays in light of intense and affective bodily becomings. By exploring the affective body, this ethnography complicates the understanding of sovereignty by demonstrating the ways in which it is always in motion, between indistinction and its undoing, between presence and absence, between violence and hope. Ultimately, this ethnography challenges distinctions by which we have traditionally understood and compartmentalized, sovereignty, war, memory and the body by making an argument for their mutual entanglement and virtuality, their mobility across time, space and form. Finally, this ethnography attempts to resist re-presentational strategies in favour of forms of writing that participate in relationships of mimesis, amplification and unfolding with the cultural forms it addresses. Acknowledgements The credit for this work is multiple and diffused across time and space, folding in amongst family, friends, colleagues and teachers and occupying the spaces in between words, gestures, touches, sights and events. As the work is an accumulation of years and a collection of different place, the number of people implicated and enfolded in it has rippled outward with time and space. To begin, I owe a debt of gratitude to all those who helped me undertake this research in the field, multiple as it was. People too numerous to enumerate were more than generous with their time and knowledge and, often, their passion. Great gifts all. Colleagues and friends were also instrumental to my own development as a scholar and played an enormous role in supporting me though a multitude of hurdles that, often, seemed too keen to present themselves. Specifically, the companionship and intellectual stimulation offered by my great friend Maria Belen Ordonez was invaluable and I cannot imagine or recollect this process without her presence. In the final stages of preparation the parallel experiences and mutual support offered by my good friend and neighbor, Nicola Spunt, were a vital bridge to envisioning completion. The students that I have taught over the past ten years have also played an important role in shaping my own work and I must thank them for that. Undoubtedly, in various roles as teacher, I have learned as much or more as I have helped to impart and this, I think, is how it should be. I must also acknowledge the generous financial support for this research provided by a Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Dissertation Fieldwork Award, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a Simons Centre for International Studies at UB C/Department of Foreign Affairs Doctoral Research Award and various grants provided by York University. These grants and scholarships, so necessary to the intellectual life, are inadequate to the need and I feel grateful to have received so generously. I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have been mentored by two wonderful scholars without whom this work would not exist in concept or execution. Kenneth Little and Daphne Winland have been the truest of advisors supporting my curiosity and experimentation while endowing it with rigor, clarity and a critical faculty that I can only aspire to. They will always be family to me. My own family has offered me everything I needed for success. To say of my parents that they were always there seems inadequate to its enormity. Finally, to Lindsay, my light, my love, this could not have happened without you. I dedicate this to you, A and S and all that we are and will be together. To account for and acknowledge the generosity of shared lessons taught and learned, the offerings of love, friendship and mentorship is both impossible and inadequate to itself. Nonetheless it is sometimes in the face of these impossibilities that attempts become worthy and meaningful. I hope that is the case here. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. ABSTRACT ii 2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii 3. INTRODUCTION: NUCLEAR EVERYDAYS 1 Everyday Disasters 1 War in the New Mexico Desert 5 Sovereignty and the Exception: “War Without War” 9 Bodily Proliferations 20 Proliferations of the Middle: Strategies, Methodologies, Culture, Writing 29 Chapter Summaries 38 4. CHAPTER 1 — ATOMIC HAUNTOLOGIES: SPECTRALITY AND AFFECT IN NUCLEAR MEMORIAL 41 Reagan crashes the Party 41 Spectral Grounds: Spirit Possessions as National Spectacles 45 The Bomb and the Bombshell 68 National Security and the Sensation(al): Nuclear Public Spheres 84 5. CHAPTER 2 — MONSTERS, REPLICAS, CYBORGS, IMPOSTORS AND DOUBLES: PROLIFERATIONS OF INDISTINCTION IN THE NUCLEAR PUBLIC SPHERE 94 Prologue—Replicants and Doubles in the Nuclear Public Sphere 94 Part 1—Sovereignty’s Exceptions: Indistinction as Outcome 97 1.1—Introduction: Virtual Proliferation/Proliferating the Virtual 97 1.2—Indistinction 103 1.3—The Monster 108 Part 2—Where’s Little Boy?: Replicas and Rebirths 112 2.1—Absence 112 2.2—Detailed Proliferations/proliferations in Detail 117 2.3—Mimetic (Nuclear) Proliferations 119 2.4—Little Boy Returns 121 2.5—Male, Machine and Techno-Births 127 Part 3—Aggregations of Indistinction: Monster/Victim/Impostor/Survivor 137 3.1—Blast from the Past 137 3.2—the Impostor/Survivor and the Uncanny 141 3.3—Too Late: negation, monstrosity and potential 149 Part 4—Conclusion 151 6. CHAPTER 3 — NUCLEAR (PUBLIC) SECRECY: THE SECRET’S SEDUCTIONS 155 Prologue—Front Page Secrets 155 Part 1—Introduction Telling the Secret 156 Part 2—Anthropology’s (Nuclear) Secrets 157 Part 3—Strategies of the Secret 164 3.1 —The Work of the Secret 164 3.2—Spectacular Secrecy 166 3.3—Tracking the Secret (at war) 168 Part 4—Nuclear (Secret) Leakages 172 4.1—Behind the Fence 172 4.2—“In the Name Of... The Fence and the Rocket 183 Part 5—The Secret’s Insurgencies 195 5.1 Trinity and the Secret 195 5.2 Floyd and Allen 198 7. CHAPTER 4 — TRACING THE ABSENCE AND PRESENCE OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI IN AMERICA AS SENSUOUS ENCOUNTER: NOTES ON (NUCLEAR) RUIN 204 8. CONCLUSION: NUCLEAR SEASONS 268 Nuclear Winters: Indistinction and Capture 1991 272 Summers 1945,2005,2025: endless sunny days 273 Autumn 2006: Necro-ethnographies 274 Spring 2004-2011: lively proliferations 275 LIST OF FIGURES Fig 1.1 p.44 Fig 2.1 p.94 Fig 2.2 p.l 13 Fig 2.3 p. 122 Fig 2.4 p. 139 Fig 3.1 p. 178 Fig 3.2 p. 186 Fig 3.3 p. 190 Fig 4.1 p.205 Fig 4.2 p.206 Fig 4.3 p.239 Introduction: Nuclear Every days Everyday Disasters A sad fact, of course, of adult life is that you see the very things you ’I! never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you ’11 have to change your way o f doing things.