No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Listening to Radioactive Rubble: Vocal Decay, Gender, and Nuclear Ruination in the Marshall Islands
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 June 2022
Abstract
This article explores how Marshallese radiation songs, written during and after the nuclear testing period as nuclear survivors tried to make sense of their sufferings, yield insight into processes of imperial ruination, rupture, and fragmentation by resounding the powerful impress of radioactive decay in Marshallese lives. In assessing the parameters through which radiation becomes sensible, how, and to whom, it becomes all the clearer how the US nuclear project can be considered in terms of ‘imperial ruination’. US geopolitical accrual has depended on the structural dispossession of Marshallese from their Indigenous agency rooted in and routed through their matrilineal culture. Focusing on women's performances from the Rongelapese community, the presence of radiation – lyrically and affectively – can be traced through vocalized moments of decay that intimate how rubble is embodied and shared in the aftermath of nuclear destruction.
- Type
- Forum
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 ‘Nuke York, New York’ [Exhibition], Cornell AAP, https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/nuke-york-new-york.
2 ‘Nuke York, New York’.
3 The United States maintains that the size of the Bravo detonation as well as the spread of the fallout due to unexpected winds was a miscalculation and an accident, which has been hotly contested by various parties.
4 For more information about US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands and its impact, see Johnston, Barbara R. and Barker, Holly M., Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Barker, Holly M., Bravo for the Marshallese (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2004)Google Scholar; Giff Johnson, Don't Ever Whisper: Darlene Keju, Pacific Health Pioneer, Champion for Nuclear Survivors (Self-published, 2014).
5 ‘Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site’, UNESCO, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1339/ (accessed 11 March 2021).
6 I address this repertoire of radiation songs at length in the book, Radiation Sounds: Marshallese Music and Nuclear Silences (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021).
7 Gordillo, Gastón R., Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.
8 Gordillo, Rubble, 2.
9 Before the Compact was signed, the United States served as a trustee of the Marshall Islands. In 1947, one year after the first atomic tests were conducted on Bikini Atoll, the United Nations designated the Marshall Islands, which had been liberated by the United States from the Empire of Japan, as part of the Strategic Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands with the United States as ward. The Marshall Islands adopted a constitution in 1979 and sought a modified independence from the United States
10 Kwajalein Atoll, which boasts the largest lagoon in the world, houses the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site under the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command Technical Center. Though US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands ended in 1958, Kwajalein remains an active test site. The Compact also allows Marshallese to travel between the RMI and United States without a visa and provides limited funding to the RMI government.
11 Stoler, Ann, ed., Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 8Google Scholar.
12 Almira Matayoshi, quoted in Johnston and Barker, Consequential Damages of Nuclear War, 170.
13 Ellen Boas, quoted in Johnston and Barker, Consequential Damages, 170.
14 Taafaki, Irene J., Fowler, Maria Kabua, and Thaman, Randolph R., eds., Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands: The Women, the Plants, the Treatments (Suva, Fiji: ISP Publications, 2006), 13Google Scholar.
15 Johnston and Barker, Consequential Damages of Nuclear War, 69–70.
16 Stras, Laurie, ‘The Organ of the Soul: Voice, Damage, and Affect,’ in Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music, ed. Learner, Neil and Straus, Joseph N. (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 173Google Scholar.
17 Gordillo, Rubble, 81.