A Nuclear Refrain
Contributors: Johnstone, Phil; Mason, Kelvin
Publisher: punctum books
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Brooklyn, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 146
ISBN-13: 9781950192618; 9781950192625
Subjects: Nuclear weapons
Description: "A Nuclear Refrain is a spatial fiction that critiques the 
policy of nuclear deterrence, the concept of Mutually Assured 
Destruction, and the UK?s decision to replace its Vanguard submarines, 
so-called Trident replacement. We challenge that decision via extending 
our geographical imaginations into the past, present, and future. Noting
 the more usual economic, moral, and strategic objections to Trident and
 its replacement, A Nuclear Refrain considers the issues from 
less familiar perspectives: the emotional and embodied, empire and the 
establishment, and the impact on democratic potentialities.
Set against the authors? ongoing participation in extensive public 
protests against the UK?s decision to replace Trident in 2016, A Nuclear Refrain
 disrupts familiar academic and policy forms of writing. It is ?an 
uncomfortable hybrid between academia and fiction,? intent on 
discomfiting the reader to spur the radical reimagining of a world 
profoundly shaped by the threat of nuclear weapons. Inspired by author 
and social critic Charles Dickens, this book draws on the form of A Christmas Carol.
 Transported by ?ghosts? of the nuclear past, present and future, a 
pro-Trident British policy maker, the Right Honourable Roger C. 
Bezeeneos, has his perceptions sorely challenged. But will Roger allow 
his feelings to influence his decision-making? Will he recognize the 
yearning for empire-lost that mobilizes the British establishment? And 
will he admit the limiting of political participation that a commitment 
to nuclear deterrence determines? It?s your call, Roger."

Notes: English.