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Article ID: CBB001180561

Nuclear technoaesthetics: Sensory politics from trinity to the virtual bomb in Los Alamos (2004)

Masco, Joseph (Author)

American Ethnologist
Volume: 31, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 1-25
Publication date: 2004
Language: English

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Nuclear Weapons Production Facilities Nuclear Weapons Virtual reality 21st century 20th century, late New Mexico (U.S.) Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory

Description In this article I investigate the politics of nuclear weapons production by examining how weapons scientists have experienced the exploding bomb at the level of sense perception through three experimental regimes: underground testing (1945--62), aboveground testing (1963--92), and stockpile stewardship (1995--2010). I argue that, for weapons scientists, a diminishing sensory experience of the exploding bomb has, over time, allowed nuclear weapon research to be increasingly depoliticized and normalized within the laboratory. The result is a post--Cold War nuclear project that assesses the atomic bomb not on its military potential as a weapon of mass destruction but, rather, on the aesthetic pleasure afforded by its computer simulations and material science. (Abstract from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/ae.2004.31.3.349/abstract)

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