Theorizing the Nuclear Age in International Relations: Imaginaries, Intersections and Enduring Legacies

Organized by Rens van Munster (rmu@diis.dk)
Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen
15-16 June 2023

The emergence of International Relations (IR) as a professional field of study was closely tied to the Cold War and the nuclear revolution. While the Cold War officially ended more than three decades ago, we still live in the nuclear age. The threat of nuclear war remains real, while other forms of nuclear violence – displacement, radiation-related illnesses, environmental contamination, intergenerational trauma – continue to expose populations and environments around the globe to harm.

The aim of this workshop is to take stock of the nuclear age and further interrogate its character and meaning, as well as its wide-ranging implications across a variety of domains, including politics, (popular) culture, ecology, and race.

The pervasive impact of the nuclear age on global politics, culture and human life calls for a broad research agenda. Yet, within International Relations the study of nuclear weapons was for too long left to the highly specialized field of strategic studies. Critical approaches to nuclear weapons have been few and far between. Luckily, this state of affairs has changed in recent years. A small but growing body of scholarship now recognizes the nuclear age as a unique and novel condition that nonetheless intersected with other global historical phenomena such as colonialism, ecological destruction and discrimination based on race and gender.   

In attending to these issues, this workshop takes inspiration from recent literature in the nuclear humanities and its attention to how the everyday is entangled with nuclear imaginaries. It also reflects recent political developments, not least the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The TPNW not only outlaws and stigmatizes nuclear weapons, but also highlights the global importance of addressing the toxic legacies of nuclear weapons development and use. Together, these developments bring into view people, places and perspectives that have traditionally been ignored or underrepresented in IR nuclear weapons scholarship.  

For this workshop, we invite paper proposals on, amongst other, the following themes and subjects:

• Nuclear imaginaries and their everyday intersections with technology, popular culture, colonialism, gender and/or the environment.
• Theorizations of the nuclear condition in the 20^th and 21^st century, including the relation between nuclear weapons and empire, as well as climate change and the Anthropocene.
• Nuclear heritage, memory, and (toxic) Cold War legacies.
• Intellectual histories of strategic studies, as well as other bodies of ‘nuclear thought’ that emerged in different forms across the globe (incl. in social critique, politics, literature or art).
• Global South perspectives on nuclear weapons, historically as well as contemporary.

If you are interested in participating, please send an abstract of max. 250 words to Rens van Munster (rmu@diis.dk) no later than 17 March. You will hear back from us within a week whether your abstract has been accepted. If you are accepted, you will be asked to develop a ca. 3000 words paper or think piece that can be developed into a full-length paper at a later stage.

Transport, hotel and meals will be paid for by the organizers (unfortunately we cannot assist in visa-related matters).