Podcast for Social Research, Episode 91: The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 Years Later

Episode 91 of the Podcast for Social Research is a live recording of an event marking the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with BISR faculty Jude Webre, Suzanne Schneider, Hannah Leffingwell, and Alfred Lee each offering thoughts on the manifold legacies—literary, scientific, political (and geopolitical)—of August 6th and 9th, 1945. How, specifically, did the atomic bombs work, and what, specifically, did they do to the target cities and peoples? How did U.S. anti-war and feminist movements work to recover repressed domestic memories of the atomic bombings—and how do the politics of mourning (whose lives are eligible to be mourned?) impinge on the politics of race, gender, and class? Who gets to own nuclear weapons—and what justifies that ownership? Who is permitted to proliferate—and on what moral or political authority? What sort of historical rupture did the inauguration of nuclear weapons affect? Why do nuclear weapons resist prudential human control? Indeed, how do discourses of “inevitability,” so often employed in debates around weaponry and A.I., inhibit democratic politics and practice?

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The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini. If you like what you’ve heard, consider subscribing to Brooklyn Institute’s Patreon page, where you can enjoy access to all past and future episodes of this podcast, as well as (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Practical Criticism, Faculty Spotlight, and other BISR podcast productions.