Abstract

Reproducing Climate Violence or Generating Liberation? Nuclear Environmentalism and Anti-Colonial Feminism

I argue that responses to nuclear environmentalism must begin with an anti-colonial feminist lens. Such an approach foregrounds reproductive justice concerns to critically examine the assumptions in nuclear environmentalism and offers an alternative perspective on the inter-and intra-generational stakes of nuclear as a climate solution amid “radioactive colonialism” (LaDuke and Churchill) and the “antiblack climate” (Sharpe). At once ecological and reproductive, nuclear is a form of systemic violence that reproduces one form of life to the detriment of all others. My claim is that instead of the expansion of nuclear, we need to develop forms of responsibility to our already existing “bad relations” (Liboiron) and nuclear progeny. How we care for them now has serious if not fully knowable outcomes for presently living and unborn generations, and for generating alternatives to the indefinite reproduction of our colonial present.