MATERIALIZATION OF “THE INVISIBLE NUCLEAR” IN U.S. NUCLEAR FICTION ON CHERNOBYL

Abstract

The paper emphasizes the literary dimensions of duality, related to ‘the invisible nuclear’ in U.S. writing practices (from the late Cold War up to the present), covered by the post-Chernobyl Age, while highlighting he ethical aspects of nuclear energy related issues in the post-traumatic societies. The paper is focused on studying the literary implications of ‘the invisible nuclear’ in depicting a nuclear power plant disaster (the Chernobyl NPP explosion) and its aftermath in North American fictional works such as Frederik Pohl’s Chernobyl (1987), Andrea White’s Radiant Girl (2008), and Orest Stelmach’s The Boy from Reactor 4 (2011). The paper intends to study the transformations of ‘the nuclear invisible” in the U.S. nuclear fiction on Chernobyl disaster, which helps to define the cultural and social parameters of the unbiased perception of nuclear energy as a concept for further impact on public acceptance of the nuclear technology. This paper intends to studying the implications of ‘the invisible nuclear’ in its cultural and social representations of the nuclear energy, giving rise to the socio-cultural and social-technical shifts in reconsidering the perception of the nuclear energy issues (related to nuclear power plants’ functioning). I highlight intentionally the literary dimensions of academia’s reflections on the nuclear related issues, coming from nuclear weapon industry and policy, because the contemporary nuclear discourse requires the strict separation of ‘nuclear war’ narrative and ‘nuclear energy’ narrative, which have the different policies of their implications as well as the different messages in the nuclear discourse: when a nuclear war as well as nuclear weapons are narrated as an absolute textual, nuclear energy and nuclear power, commonly represented in ‘atom for peace’ policy is still a subject of materialization which encourages the hot debates.

Keywords

• nuclear fiction
• nuclear narrative
• nuclear criticism
• nuclear invisible
• duality