BOOK CHAPTER:
Shiloh Krupar, 2016, “The Biopolitics of Spectacle: Salvation and Oversight at the Post-military Nature Refuge” in Global Spectacles, eds. Bruce Magnusson and Zahi Zalloua (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press), 116-153
BOOK LINK: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295742656/spectacle/
INTRODUCTION:
In 2001, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists hosted a tongue-and-cheek exercise that addressed the problem of the disposal of plutonium—the material used in nuclear weapons, with a half-life of 24,110 years. A “Plutonium Memorial” competition invited artists, architects, and other visionaries to consider the crucial issue of nuclear waste via a hypothetical memorial to the excesses of the U.S. nuclear enterprise. Among the many entries, Michael Simonian’s 24110 was declared the winner.[i] Named after the half-life of plutonium, Simonian’s proposal called for a prominent plutonium storage facility south of the White House on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. A steel and concrete tub would be buried in the ground holding a 500-ton deposit of plutonium casks. Beneath a partially-lifted circular lawn cover, the concrete lip of the memorial would be embossed with portraits of politicians and scientists as well as logos of nuclear-industry corporations. A layer of volcanic turf and gravel above the casks would theoretically expose visitors to just 0.01 millirems of radiation annually, as part of the 360 millirems that the average American is said to receive annually.[ii] A panoply of flared steel tabs—241 “clock totems”—would splay out from the walkway; one would be bolted down to the ground every century to mark the passing of plutonium’s half life.
Aside from the uncanny affinity between enduring nuclear materials and memory projects, the imagined memorial, by placing the residues of war at the front door of the President, would contaminate the material symbolic space of the nation and demand an ethical response to the enduring material residues of the Cold War.[iii] If American exceptionalism works to externalize war and obscure militarism domestically, then this memorial would internalize waste and compel a reckoning with domestic toxicity and nuclear colonialism. Through a process of reverse colonization, the memorial would materially and symbolically convert the National Mall into proving ground, bringing the U.S. West—where most U.S. military projects have taken place—into the heart of the nation. In addition to drawing out interesting and unexpected symbolic relations with other memorials to American wars through juxtaposition, the plutonium memorial would turn inside-out two prominent strategies of waste disposal: “The great American lawn cover-up,” and hiding nuclear waste out of sight in Western deserts and/or the backyards of the poor.[iv] It could also direct attention to the way state rationalities regularize environmental exposures to toxicity, radiation in this case, as the background conditions of everyday life. In this respect, however, the memorial risks reproducing—possibly legitimating—banal endemic forms of violence via toxic exposure as part of its performance, if recognition of the way such enduring wastes persist in conditioning the present is not achieved. Through the very act of memorializing, the national imagination might still assimilate the ironic counter-spectacle as part of the progress of the nation by consuming the nuclear era as past. The plutonium-container memorial could itself become national kitsch, with nuclear waste as destination, so that “greened” weapons and “clean-tech” wars may continue to be waged elsewhere. This is a real possibility given the so-called “environmental turn” of the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE).
Although the memorial is a hypothetical exercise, many of the issues it raises point toward the “post-Cold War” re-organization of the military and emphasis on environmental security, which now figures largely in concerns over national security and serves as pretext for other national projects. The DOD, as the largest energy user in the country, has been investing heavily in alternative energy to advance warfare under conditions of global warming and fossil fuel scarcity, making the U.S. military a defender of green policies in Washington, D.C. legislative circles. The Department of Energy (DOE), too, has been implementing “green upgrades” of the nation’s stockpile, integrating environmental considerations into the lifecycles of weapons. Both the DOD and DOE have turned to the domestic environmental legacies of 20th-century industrial-military production, and in some cases offered concessions to populations and lands impacted by military activity. A prominent example of this is the decommissioning and remediation of numerous facilities to return them to the public, restoring wetlands and establishing wildlife refuges on land formerly a part of bomb production facilities or testing grounds. If Simonian’s counter-monument to the U.S. atomic project struggles with co-optation by tourism and a national narrative of progress, the recreational consumption of vast military natures across the U.S. raises similarly urgent issues about cultural visibility, exposure, military ecologies, and environmental memory.
This chapter is broadly concerned with such restructuring and the phenomenon of the post-military or post-nuclear nature refuge. The chapter focuses on the biopolitics of the “post-Cold War” landscape, specifically the biopolitical function of spectacle within the neoliberal state. As military facilities and nuclear complexes are decommissioned, remediated, and repurposed as grounds for popular recreation, such concessions can be seen to utilize a strategic ontology of nature as separate, external, pure, and/or available for consumption—nature as spectacle—to bury past injustices and abandon war’s material remains—contaminated land, sick workers, etc.—in plain sight. It follows that military-environmental stewardship, legacy management, and even efforts to secure the health and safety of the population can work to maintain consent, annex counter-histories, shift capacities and research infrastructures to ensure the survival of warmaking capacities, make profits on wastes, and strategically dispose of military remains in order to support military realignment.
To establish and explore these claims, the chapter considers the biopolitical “nature” of spectacle more generally, pointing out methodological differences with “greenwashing” critiques and ideological interpretations of spectacle. In contrast to a limited visual understanding of spectacle as repressive of reality, with matter as medium of a deceptive image, the chapter strives for an institutionally-embedded, relational, material-focused analysis of spectacle as an arrangement of truth and relations with biophysical nature.[v] Spectacle is shown to be an environmental project, with serious ecological-social consequences, in the context of neoliberal military restructuring. The chapter grounds the analysis in two key biopolitical arrangements of spectacle—salvation and oversight—that orchestrate disposal and/or denial of post-Cold War military remains. Case studies of these spectacular divisions reveal how post-Cold War concessions and liquidation go hand-in-hand. The chapter concludes by exploring the ethical implications, namely, the challenge of doing criticism under conditions of toxicity, and the challenge to “exposure” as critical pedagogy.
Having started out with a hypothetical plutonium memorial in order to introduce some general issues regarding post-Cold War cultural and environmental developments, the chapter continues in an allegorical format. The scheme is loosely based on a fieldtrip visit to a typical former-DOD or -DOE site that is now organized as a wildlife refuge and that is open to the public for recreational consumption and interpretation. Several figures have been incorporated to help orient the reader. This approach, while tongue-and-cheek, aims to encourage the “naturalist” tradition toward spectacle: To take the material, institutional, and environmental aspects of spectacle seriously, and to address spectacle through popular forms of environmental education. Beginning in an interpretive center, the chapter offers an overview of the biopolitics of military restructuring and nature spectacle. This is followed by two field visits to particular manifestations of spectacle found in post-Cold War military restructuring: Salvation and government oversight. The chapter concludes with brief reflection on exposure and criticism.
[i] “Plutonium Memorial Design Competition,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 3 (2002): 39.
[ii] Nuclear Energy Institution, “Radiation and Human Health,” http://nuclear.inl.gov/docs/factsheets/radiation_human_health_1003.pdf (accessed October 23, 2011).
[iii] This chapter incorporates select material from my forthcoming book: Shiloh Krupar, Hot Spotter’s Report: Military Fables of Toxic Waste (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2013).
[iv] Mira Engler, Designing America’s Waste Landscapes (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 232.
[v] Shiloh Krupar and Stefan Al, “Notes on the Society of the Spectacle Brand,” in Handbook of Architectural Theory, eds. C. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, and Hilde Heynen (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, forthcoming 2012).