TY - CHAP

T1 - Shots of Ambivalence

T2 - Nuclear Weapons in Documentary Film

AU - Sylvest, Casper

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - The atomic bomb is a fetish of modernity. As Gabrielle Hecht has elegantly put it: ‘The atom bomb has become the ultimate fetish of our times. Salvation and apocalypse, sacred and profane, sex and death: the bomb contains it all’ (Hecht 2007: 100; see also Harrington de Santana 2009). A crucial part of the concept of the fetish concerns how an object is presented as something else or more than what it also or really is. Fetishism is therefore intimately bound up with representation and reproduction. But as Hecht’s observation about the ‘ultimate’ nature of the nuclear fetish suggests, the imagery and vocabulary we deploy to represent nuclear weapons harbor radical dualisms that constantly deny full closure. Perhaps the theme of life and death is the most plentiful and historically significant in our representation of nuclear weapons – a trait related to the sheer power of these weapons, as well as to their association with both triumph and ruin since the dawn of the nuclear age – but many forms of dissonance surrounding these weapons have been subjected to scrutiny in cultural history and related disciplines.1 Ambiguity even extends to modern notions of the technological sublime, where awe, pleasure and pride in nature and technology are undermined by the central role of human creation.2

AB - The atomic bomb is a fetish of modernity. As Gabrielle Hecht has elegantly put it: ‘The atom bomb has become the ultimate fetish of our times. Salvation and apocalypse, sacred and profane, sex and death: the bomb contains it all’ (Hecht 2007: 100; see also Harrington de Santana 2009). A crucial part of the concept of the fetish concerns how an object is presented as something else or more than what it also or really is. Fetishism is therefore intimately bound up with representation and reproduction. But as Hecht’s observation about the ‘ultimate’ nature of the nuclear fetish suggests, the imagery and vocabulary we deploy to represent nuclear weapons harbor radical dualisms that constantly deny full closure. Perhaps the theme of life and death is the most plentiful and historically significant in our representation of nuclear weapons – a trait related to the sheer power of these weapons, as well as to their association with both triumph and ruin since the dawn of the nuclear age – but many forms of dissonance surrounding these weapons have been subjected to scrutiny in cultural history and related disciplines.1 Ambiguity even extends to modern notions of the technological sublime, where awe, pleasure and pride in nature and technology are undermined by the central role of human creation.2

U2 - 10.4324/9781315756899-14

DO - 10.4324/9781315756899-14

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-1-138-79778-9

SN - 978-1-315-75688-9

T3 - Popular Culture and World Politics

SP - 95

EP - 113

BT - Documenting World Politics

A2 - van Munster, Rens

A2 - Sylvest, Casper

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -