Nuclear desire: power and the postcolonial nuclear order

298 Pages·2014·3.007 MB·English

by  Biswas, Shampa

Nuclear Desire
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Nuclear Desire
. . . .
Power and the
Postcolonial Nuclear Order
Shampa Biswas
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 2014 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2 520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Biswas, Shampa.
Nuclear desire : power and the postcolonial nuclear order / Shampa Biswas.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8166-8097-9 (hc : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8166-8098-6 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Nuclear nonproliferation—Political aspects—History. 2. Nuclear arms
control—History. 3. Postcolonialism. I. Title.
jz5675.b57 2014
327.1'747—dc23
2014005524
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Sumita Biswas and Richard Ashford,
for keeping me intact
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To build peace, now more than ever, it is necessary to build
more than peace. To refuse nuclear weapons, we must refuse
much more than nuclear weapons.
raymOND Williams
“The POliTics Of Nuclear DisarmameNT”
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: Use and Waste in the Global Nuclear Order 1
1. Intentions and Effects: The Proliferation
of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime 27
2. Whose Nuclear Order? A Postcolonial Critique
of an Enlightenment Project 75
3. Unusable, Dangerous, and Desirable: Nuclear Weapons
as Fetish Commodities 109
4. Costly Weapons: The Political Economy of Nuclear Power 135
Conclusion. Decolonizing the Nuclear World:
Can the Subaltern Speak? 171
Appendix. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime 201
Notes 209
Bibliography 241
Index 267