The Most Nuclear-Bombed Place: Ecological Implications of the US Nuclear Testing Program

Abstract

Although previous rhetorical research on nuclear colonialism treats the phenomenon from a human perspective, this chapter shifts to a broader ecological perspective to examine the relationship between nuclear technologies, rhetoric, and the more-than-human land community, including human animals, non-human animals, soils, plants, and water. Theorizing nuclear colonialism as a material-discursive formation allows for an analysis of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) that describes how nuclear colonialism entails a range of human and more-than-human rhetorics—both patterns of discourse with material consequences and forms of non-discursive material rhetoric—that justify, perpetuate, and challenge the practices of colonialism that underlie the nuclear production process. The theoretical and analytical arguments in this chapter have implications for understanding the relationship between rhetoric, materiality, discursivity, and ecology.