Traces the hidden currents of nuclear history that continue to shape politics and planetary survival using media archives and digital forensics.
Nuclear Gaia: Media Archives of Planetary Harm challenges us to see the planet itself as shaped by nuclear processes—an evolving entity where past accidents, detonations, and military strategies continue to radiate through environmental and social landscapes. Agnieszka Jelewska and Michal Krawczak explore how media archives and open-source investigations transform nuclear memory and create new forms of justice beyond the domain of scientists and politicians.
Bringing together nuclear studies, media theory, and environmental humanities, this book reveals how independent researchers and local communities are reclaiming the narratives of nuclear harm. With fresh case studies and bold conceptual frameworks, Nuclear Gaia sets the stage for a new era of postnuclear studies, where AI, quantum mechanics, and nuclear technology intersect in ways we are only beginning to comprehend.
List of Abbreviations List of Figures Introduction: Welcome to Nuclear Gaia 1. Post-nuclear Studies and Infrastructures of Nuclear Regimes Media archives and grassroots practices Quantum entanglements Digital information, energy, and matter Sentient media and radiation Quantum media theory Media as geological sedimentation Infrastructures of violence Hyper-aesthetics of nuclearity 2. Nuclear Gaia: Oscillating Between Spacetimemattering and the Nuclear Colonial Drive Splitting the atom, or the intertwining of scientific experiments, historical time and military policies Masculinist nuclearism Nuclear criticism: the end of linear archives and the bomb as a medium Spacetimemattering and the memory of nuclear violence Nuclear Gaia as technologically mediated Earth design Colonial traces of Nuclear Gaia A lustful gaze at the exosphere and the moon as the 8th continent 3. From Biosphere to IT Gaia The Earth in the state of total peace Vernadsky’s biosphere and its noöspheric transformation The Quest for Gaia, or Lovelock’s tale about the superorganism, climate change and nuclear sadness Earth Science System and the self-reflective global subject The Earth as we knew it no longer exists 4. Nuclear Communication and Grassroots Archives of Catastrophes The advent of nuclear-proof communication Simulation as a tool of the real: between war games and catastrophes The postnuclear seismic order The Fukushima Daiichi disaster and proof of communication collapse Live archiving of nuclear regimes Top-down archive as a theater of simulating nuclear future An inaccessible archive Records from the zone of alienation Against nucleocratism Beyond the linear paradigm 5. Nuclear Violence and Planetary Harm: Testing the Endurance of Humans and the Environment Media labs of atomic tests New media of the nuclear renaissance Ahead of the Time: three visions of Russian nuclearism Atomic steppe: the Semipalatinsk Test Site Seismic studies of nuclear power Fallout archives: the Nevada Test Site The Downwinders’ archive Toxic archipelago archives: the French Polynesia Test Site Atoll archives: the Bikini Test Site Nuclear savages Decolonizing nuclear regimes 6. Anthropocene: The First Geological Epoch of Nuclear Gaia Indices of the Anthropocene Metadata of the Anthropocene Nuclear Anthropocene: toxic minerals and landscapes Nuclear harm: conditions for half-life A Great Extractivism Deep time future of radioactive waste and cross-generational justice No Apocalypse, Not Now … References Index
Agnieszka Jelewska, Ph.D., Professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and director of the Humanities/Art/Technology Research Center AMU. She examines the transdisciplinary relations between science, art, culture, and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries, their social and political dimension. She is also a curator and co-creator of art and science projects. Michał Krawczak, PhD, assistant professor at Anthropology and Cultural Studies Department of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, co-founder and program director of the Humanities / Art /Technology Research Center. Researcher, designer and curator of art and science projects. His main research field is modern forms of violence from the perspective of media and cultural studies.
Reviews for Nuclear Gaia: Media Archives of Planetary Harm
Nuclear Gaia: Media Archives of Planetary Harm is a rich intervention in the field of nuclear studies. It offers not only new case studies and materials, but also new conceptual insights and tools by which to think about them. By viewing nuclear power through a range of ecological and scientific lenses, the authors have arrived at a highly original, path-breaking interpretation of their subject. This landmark study promises to pave the way from nuclear to postnuclear studies, where AI, quantum mechanics and nuclear technologies will merge in ways we are only just beginning to imagine. -- Chris Hill, Associate Professor of History, University of South Wales.
