‘A Hard Story to Tell’: Creative Dismantling and (Re)making Post-Nuclear Worlds Through Collage

How can futures without nuclear weapons be imagined from within International Relations (IR)? This article details a speculative future-making exercise that applied the collage method in the IR classroom to gain insight into how participants think about nuclear weapons futures and the obstacles encountered to conceiving of futures without nuclear weapons. It finds that two broad thought structures are at work to condition the boundaries of imagination: ‘nuclear exceptionalism’, which works to constrain imaginary processes, and ‘nuclear ambivalence’, which permits the imagination of a wider range of futures. This article makes two core contributions. The first is pedagogical, demonstrating how collaging can facilitate critical reflection on the boundaries of imagination regarding nuclear weapons. The second is conceptual, illustrating the development and practical application of the ‘worldmaking’ concept in IR, widening its analytical potential and showing researchers and practitioners a creative method of advancing an anti-nuclear politics of the future.