No Apocalypse, Not Now, Redux: Nuclear Criticism Revisited

Abstract

Abstract:This essay takes its point of departure in Jacques Derrida’s contribution to a colloquium on “nuclear criticism,” published in Diacritics in 1984. Today the threat of nuclear war again looms, and the need to analyze the discourse and rhetoric surrounding it is just as great as in 1984. Drawing on Derrida’s nuclear criticism, I focus on the indeterminacy and uncertainty that follow from the abandonment of institutions and the personalization of power. What may be most troubling about nuclear discourse at this time is how readily we all become complicit in its production and reproduction— even, or especially, through well-meaning interventions, through our very efforts to “walk us back from the brink.”