Bikini Abject: Pacific Island Nuclear Testing as a Technology of Exception

• In Event: 392 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. The Politics of Erasing Violence

Abstract

This paper explores theories of governmentality in order to deconstruct Pacific nuclear testing as a biopolitical formation. In this paper, I discuss the historical and social context of nuclear testing in the Pacific Islands of Bikini and Tahiti by revisiting Valerie Kuletz’s concept of nuclear colonialism alongside theories of exception and abjection. Through an exception/abjection framework that builds off of the work of Giorgio Agamben (2008), Aiwha Ong (2005), and Anne McClintock (1995), this paper argues that nuclear testing can be viewed as an “exceptional” technology of governmentality, wherein such violence both exceeds the juridical norms of democracy and expresses the state’s ability to produce contradictory and exclusionary forms of citizenship. Importantly, my paper also argues that the racialization and sexualization of Pacific indigenous groups constitutes an important dimension of practices of exceptionalism in nuclear colonialism. This is apparent in the context of sexual tourism, which demonstrates how the political economy circulating around nuclear testing is one premised on the racialization, sexualization, and cultural management of “the body.” This paper combines secondary historical sources on nuclear testing with social theory on sovereignty, citizenship, and power in order to position Pacific nuclear testing as an important case for understanding the flexibility of governance within the persistence of empire.

Author

• Vivian Giboung Shaw, University of Texas-Austin