Considine, L orcid.org/0000-0002-6265-3168 (2022) Narrative and nuclear weapons politics: the entelechial force of the nuclear origin myth. International Theory: a journal of international politics, law and philosophy, 14 (3). pp. 551-570. ISSN 1752-9719
Abstract
This paper contributes a novel way to theorise the power of narratives of nuclear weapons politics through Kenneth Burke's concept of entelechy: the means of stating a things essence through narrating its beginning or end. The paper argues that the Manhattan Project functions narratively in nuclear discourse as an origin myth, so that the repeated telling of atomic creation over time frames the possibilities of nuclear politics today. By linking Burke's work on entelechy with literature on narrative and eschatology, the paper develops a theoretical grounding for understanding the interconnection of the nuclear past, present, and future. The paper supports its argument by conducting a wide-ranging survey of academic and popular accounts of the development of the atomic weapon in the US Manhattan Project. It reveals a dominant narrative across these accounts that contains three core tropes: the nuclear weapon as the inevitable and perfected culmination of humankind's tendency towards violence; the Manhattan Project as a race against time; and the nuclear weapon as a product of a fetishized masculine brilliance.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s), 2021. This article has been published in a revised form in https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971921000257. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. |
Keywords: | nuclear weapons, narrative, language, mythology, narrative power, Manhattan Project |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 28 Sep 2021 13:01 |
Last Modified: | 13 Mar 2023 17:55 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/S1752971921000257 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:178440 |