Abstract

Sustaining nuclear imperialism through nuclear gaslighting

This paper introduces the main theoretical components of my book project, currently titled Nuclear Gaslighting: Food, Science and Hope After TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Disaster. The book situates ethnographic research exploring everyday eating in the aftermath of the 2011 meltdown of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant within a wider history of nuclear imperialism. My conceptualization of nuclear gaslighting builds on theorizations of “cultural gaslighting” (Ruíz’s 2020) and “toxic gaslighting” (Grandia’s 2020). Discussing the sociological dimensions of gaslighting, Sweet (2019) describes how social injustices (sexism, racism, etc.) are central to the smooth functioning of gaslighting. The frame of nuclear gaslighting acknowledges the role of existing social injustices (e.g., colonial and patriarchal power relations) in making certain people the targets of “food policing” (Kimura 2016, p.5) and other oppressive forms of “nuclear silencing” (Schwartz 2021, p.39), without ignoring nuclear gaslighting’s wider origins and purpose: to sustain nuclear imperialism.