Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation

16 Pages·2015·0.52 MB·English

by  Gordon Fraser

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130.3
Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation:
Apocalyptic Temporalities in Sherman Alexie’s
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
gordon fraser
C
OLD WAR MILITARIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES HAS LONG BEEN
acknowledged to depend on two interlocking premises. First,
as Tony Jackson and Jodi Kim have pointed out, the Cold War
nuclear threat was predicated on a contingent possibility of anni-
hilation, of genocide conducted in a sudden lash of light (Jackson
325–26; Kim 3–4, 248n9). Sites of Cold War conlict—military bases,
NATO or Warsaw Pact cities—might be consumed in sudden nuclear
holocaust, or they might not. Whether the powers able to bring about
this mass death are understood to be the Soviet Union and China or,
in post–Cold War politics, to be rogue states and terrorists, military
power in the United States since 1949 has at least in part been based
on the contingent possibility of mass death in North America. he
United States’ power, as a result, is continually shadowed by its nega-
tive: the possibility of national oblivion. he coupling of power with
potential annihilation, moreover, has colored United States culture.
he resultant anxieties can be seen in everything from Dr. Strange-
love (1964) to he Road (2006). Second, United States war planners
GORDON FRASER is a PhD candidate in
have responded to the threat of destruction by developing preemp-
En glish at the University of Connecticut,
tive and second- strike capabilities on a massive scale. he United
Storrs. His scholarship has appeared in
States can, in other words, bring about holocausts of its own.
NOVEL, J19, and other journals. He is at
work on two book projects: “American I suggest that a powerful and largely unrecognized critique of
Cosmologies: Race and Revolution in this logic has emerged from American Indian writers, particularly
the Nineteenth Century,” which traces Sherman Alexie. I say this critique is unacknowledged because, al-
how radical political movements have though Alexie is widely taught in ethnic studies courses, few scholars
deployed the language of cosmology to
have read his work within the “broader frame of reference” that Cle-
shape acts of resistance, and “Apocalyp-
mens Spahr calls for (161).1 But in the works of American Indian writ-
tics: Race and the Superweapon in the
ers like Alexie we ind an engagement with Cold War nuclear logic
US Imagination,” which examines racial-
that reveals its continuity with other “total war” military thinking.
ized justifications of extreme state vio-
lence from the Civil War to Hiroshima. his engagement shows that the apocalyptic dreams of the nuclear
© 2015 gordon fraser
PMLA 130.3 (2015), published by the Modern Language Association of America 599
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600 Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation PMLA
age are part of a longer history of apocalypti- as violence at all” (2). For example, it is the
cism. American Indian writers are uniquely ongoing violence done by the presence of
equipped to critique the logic of United States Agent Orange after the official withdrawal
military power, and they have: from Mitch of the United States from Vietnam, causing
Cullin’s he Post- war Dream (2008) to Alex- thousands of deaths and birth defects over
ie’s Indian Killer (1996), Leslie Marmon Silko’s decades, and not the violence of the United
Almanac of the Dead (1991), N. Scott Moma- States’ defoliation campaign itself (13–14). For
day’s House Made of Dawn (1968), and even Nixon, the problem of slow violence is one of
John Rollin Ridge’s he Life and Adventures of apprehension. He asks, “How do we bring
Joaquín Murieta (1854). Ever since American home—and bring emotionally to life—threats
Indian writers have been writing iction, many that take time to wreak their havoc, threats
of their texts have contained powerful and of- that never materialize in one spectacular,
ten overlooked critiques of United States mili- explosive, cinematic scene?” (14). American
tarization and of the rationale that sees in the Indian writers ofer one answer by unsettling
contingent potential of apocalypse a justiica- the apocalyptic logic of military thinking in
tion for preemptive, apocalyptic violence. the United States and revealing its violent di-
But apocalypse contains multiple, over- mensions, fast and slow. Alexie’s apocalyptic
lapping meanings. he word’s irst meaning narration unsettles the conventional story of
in En glish is simply “revelation,” as in the apocalypse, a story of rupture and rebirth.
prophecy revealed to John of Patmos by God Alexie reveals the inescapable link between
in the inal book of the Christian Bible. Apoc- dreams of spectacular violence and the slow,
alypse here refers not to the end of the world attritional violence that develops as a conse-
but to the knowledge of the end of the world. quence of these dreams.
Only later did the conventional present- day His irst short story collection, he Lone
understanding of the word emerge: apoca- Ranger and Tonto Fistight in Heaven (1993),
lypse as the end (“Apocalypse”). And yet is emblematic of this intervention. Released
“the end of the world” is misleading because in a twentieth- anniversary edition in 2013
in Christian theology the end functions as (Alexie and Walter), the collection continues
prelude to rebirth. his is why, I suggest, the to be read as a break from the earlier “Native
apocalyptic dreams of United States military American renaissance,” to borrow Kenneth
power are seductive. The ubiquitous end of Lincoln’s phrase (8). This renaissance was
the world described in Cold War cultural ostensibly marked by “a written renewal of
productions brings not a total rupture with oral traditions translated into Western liter-
the past but an opportunity to remake it in an ary forms” (Lincoln 8). Alexie’s text is more
imagined future. American Indian writers, I iconoclastic, funnier, and more idiosyncratic
suggest, have done more than reveal the apoc- than “renewal of oral traditions” implies,
alyptic dimensions of United States military and this is perhaps why so many critics have,
power. hey have ofered a way of unsettling as Tom Farrington puts it, voiced concerns
the ostensibly redemptive promise of apoca- about the text’s “cultural authenticity” (521).
lyptic, total- war violence. his disruption is Despite these critical concerns, the collection
critical because, rather than rebirth, sudden has achieved something close to canonical
acts of massive violence have actually pro- status in the ethnic studies classroom and in
duced what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence.” the broader culture. One of a small number
For Nixon, slow violence is “a violence of texts that represent American Indian lit-
that occurs gradually and out of sight, an at- erature to nonspecialists, it ofers students,
tritional violence that is not typically viewed scholars, and casual readers a chance to un-
130.3 ] Gordon Fraser 601
derstand Indian life, from reservation culture of United States culture—endings in which
to humor, from sports to the pull of tradition survivors are purified and reborn—Alexie
to the ongoing struggle against racism.2 But reveals the slow violence of apocalyptic af-
far less attention is paid to the way that Alex- termaths. He demonstrates that the ongoing
ie’s text allows readers to consider the non- physical presence of United States power on
Indian world—the primarily white culture and around the Spokane Reservation (in the
of militarism in the United States to which form of a uranium mine, an air force base,
Alexie also responds. By suggesting that his and a police presence) literally and figura-
text speaks in and upends the apocalyptic di- tively poisons the land and people.3 For a
mensions of United States military power, I Spokane or Coeur d’Alene Indian, the apoca-
hope to make a twofold intervention. I pro- lypse is not a potentiality; it is an ongoing re-
pose that his text ofers an urgent and largely ality and a remembered past. Alexie’s work,
ignored critique of the apocalyptic logic of then, critiques the iction that nuclear weap-
United States militarism and that logic’s ons represent a moment of historical rupture,
slowly unfolding consequences. I also offer indicating instead that nuclear weapons are
an example of a reading practice, a way to a continuation of the military logic that has
reconsider newly canonical American Indian historically privileged a fear of the future over
literature as making visible the global routes an awareness of the past and present. And the
of a United States culture against which that historical and spatial position of Indians, as
literature is ostensibly counterpoised. the targets of this logic, connects them to a
he culture to which I refer ofers apoc- global matrix of United States power and to
alyptic narratives with a fairly consistent its ongoing, slow consequences.
structure: a sudden rupture leads to a less- Mainstream United States culture, more-
than- total destruction of civilization in the over, requires this critique. As Jodi Kim
United States, a small group of survivors lives (248n9) and Donald Pease have pointed
on, and this narrow remainder begins to re- out, in some ways the Cold War never really
build a purified version of the nation and, ended. he preemptive logic of George H. W.
sometimes, to avenge its losses. Alexie’s sto- Bush’s new world order (which predates he
ries systematically deploy an indigenous per- Lone Ranger and Tonto’s publication) and
spective to unsettle this dyad of apocalyptic that of the war on terror (during which the
fantasy and military ruthlessness. His char- collection was rereleased with two previously
acters narrate holocausts that have already unpublished stories) both constitute a pro-
happened, that will happen, that are happen- longed coda to the Cold War logic of potential
ing. Alexie consequently redraws the Cold annihilation. United States military expan-
War map, linking colonial sites in the United sion during the Cold War was predicated on
States, such as Indian reservations and ura- the potential destruction of the nation. he
nium mines, with sites of the United States RAND Corporation scholar Herman Kahn’s
military’s violence abroad. The collection still- frightening (and infamous) work of mili-
speaks in the grammar of the mid- century tary strategy On hermonuclear War (1960)
thriller. In one surreal moment, George includes the phrase “we need” more than
Armstrong Custer presses “the button”; in an- ninety times, proposing the maintenance or
other, a quiet child suddenly says “E = MC2”; procurement of weaponry able to keep the
in a third, a hurricane making landfall on the United States’ losses below forty million in
United States Paciic Coast is “like Hiroshima the event of hostilities.4 And one has only to
or Nagasaki” (104, 128, and 6). And yet in- look at the legitimate concern about “loose
stead of playing out the apocalyptic endings nukes” today to see that, in some ways, United
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602 Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation PMLA
States military power depends on a similar America, the site of past, unresolved acts of
fear of mass death in North America and ethnic cleansing.5 This linking of the colo-
elsewhere. Alexie’s collection responds to the nized reservation world with the ostensibly
Cold War’s false endings and to the ubiqui- decolonized global South answers nationalist
tous radioactive land of postapocalyptic nov- narratives by revealing that the two sites rep-
els, ilms, and television shows by invoking resent a distinction without a diference. His
the actually radioactive land of the Spokane work disrupts a forgetful military logic that
Reservation. Alexie, then, offers a window looks only to the unrealized holocausts of the
onto the slowly unfolding apocalypse: not the future and ignores the traumas and ruptures
coming end of the world but the remembered of the past and present. But before discussing
end; not postapocalyptic rebirth but the slow Alexie’s strategies for disrupting this military
violence of apocalyptic atermaths. logic, we must irst turn to the logic itself.
Jacques Derrida’s “No Apocalypse, Not
Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles,
The Apocalyptic Temporalities of United
Seven Missives)” is a useful guide to this. Der-
States Culture
rida does not see the simultaneous emergence
To explore how Alexie’s collection ofers an of deconstruction and the potential of nuclear
indigenous critique of United States military destruction as coincidental. In his fourth mis-
power, we must answer two questions. First, sile/ missive, he reminds his readers that in
how have past critics and cultural producers imagining nuclear holocaust, we are “dealing
conceptualized the Cold War’s apocalyptic hypothetically with the total and remainder-
nuclear threat? In particular, I am interested less destruction of the archive.” Because we
in the way the contingency of annihilation— are waiting for an annihilation that might
the uncertain possibility of a holocaust— never arrive, we exist in an age defined by
structures how United States Americans have the deferral of absolute knowledge. Derrida
been conditioned to think about nuclear war goes on, “Literature belongs to this nuclear
and war more broadly. In a universe of pos- epoch, that of the crisis and of nuclear criti-
sible holocausts, all preemptive wars are ulti- cism, at least if we mean by this the historical
mately defensive. Annihilation of an enemy is and ahistorical horizon of an absolute self-
justiiable, by this logic, to prevent annihila- destructibility without apocalypse, without
tion of one’s own nation (although, as I will revelation of its own truth, without absolute
show, the lineage of this thinking stretches knowledge” (27). Tony Jackson sums up Der-
to the period before the advent of nuclear rida’s claims by writing that thermonuclear
weapons). Second, how does Alexie’s collec- war, “what most people take to be the end
tion challenge this thinking? If the nuclear of the world,” is in some sense a continually
threat is contingent, how does indigenous ex- anticipated but continually deferred event
perience—which includes the memory of past (325).6 Nuclear apocalypse is a contingent
holocausts—reigure military logic? Alexie, I possibility. But I suspect that Jackson’s phrase
will argue, disrupts the Cold War’s contingent “the end of the world” is misleading, despite
time and replaces it with a slow temporality its ubiquity. Although there are debates about
that remembers holocausts and notes their whether a massive nuclear exchange would
ongoing repercussions. While the United eradicate the human species, in mainstream
States military patrols the postcolonial world cultural discourse in the United States human
in the name of preventing future genocides (in beings almost always survive. It is beyond the
Israel, South Korea, and so on), Alexie calls at- scope of this essay to fully argue this claim,
tention to the ongoing colonization of North but a few examples will illustrate my point.
130.3 ] Gordon Fraser 603
While works involving the total destruc- something akin to the massive rupture imag-
tion of humanity have certainly been made, ined by postapocalyptic novels and movies.8
ostensibly postapocalyptic works more of- Alexie illustrates this. The 1862 smallpox
ten feature some fraction of human survival epidemic, which Lone Ranger and Tonto re-
or rebirth. At the end of Nevil Shute’s novel fers to obliquely, provides an important ex-
On the Beach (1957), nearly every character ample. First, some background is necessary.
swallows a pill to quietly die before suffer- In March 1862, the steamer Brother Jonathan
ing radiation poisoning, but Captain Dwight made its way to Victoria, Vancouver Island,
Towers and his crew are still alive on the i- from San Francisco. One passenger, infected
nal page (although they, admittedly, also plan with smallpox, developed symptoms on the
to kill themselves after scuttling the boat journey. he traveler was inadequately quar-
[325]).7 Most post- nuclear- war literature of- antined, and upon the ship’s arrival in Vic-
fers a more explicit picture of human sur- toria, a smallpox epidemic spread rapidly
vival or regeneration. In the ilm adaptation throughout the region (Van Rijn 542; Boyd
of H. G. Wells’s he Time Machine (1960), for 172–201). Because white settlements had
instance, a nuclear apocalypse is made ex- adequate inoculation and vaccination cam-
plicit, but equally explicit is the human future paigns, set up quarantine hospitals, and de-
of postapocalyptic renewal. his tradition of stroyed infected clothing and blankets, the
human survival continues with Cormac Mc- casualties among whites were relatively few.
Carthy’s he Road (2006), in which, although Kiran Van Rijn documents how British and
things could “not be put right again,” survi- United States policies exacerbated the prob-
vors nonetheless live on (287). My point here lem of infection among the people of First
is that, while nuclear holocaust could cause Nations—policies that ranged from the with-
Derrida’s “total and remainderless destruc- holding of information about inoculation to
tion,” it is in fact understood conventionally the militarily enforced expulsion of not only
to entail the destruction of civilization. When sick but also healthy indigenous people from
we think of the end of the world, we do not white settlements. This expulsion acceler-
picture the actual end: we imagine the son in ated the spread of the disease as individuals
he Road wandering away from the corpse of returned to their families or made their way
his father; we imagine Captain Dwight Tow- to other settlements (551, 548). Van Rijn also
ers cruising into the Paciic with a steely crew discusses the often repeated story that two
of loyal sailors; we imagine Rod Taylor in white traders, Jim Taylor and Angus McLeod,
he Time Machine returning to the future to gathered blankets from the dead at Nancool-
help the Eloi rebuild human civilization. his ten and sold them to the Tsîlhoqot’in, start-
devastated survival is, I think, a structural ing a new outbreak. While the veracity of this
element of the way narratives work. It is dif- incident is unclear—Van Rijn attempted to
icult to tell the story of an empty landscape. track down its original source but came up
But the result is that when cultural producers empty—the larger point still holds. he poli-
imagine nuclear holocaust, they imagine sur- cies of Anglo- American institutions in the
vival, fractured continuity, and rebirth. region led to the annihilation of human life
It is important, then, to remember that among First Nations (Van Rijn 558n32).
this is the experience of the First Nations in I suspect that Alexie refers to the 1862
the Paciic Northwest and elsewhere in North smallpox outbreak when, in “A Drug Called
America. Even if they did not experience an Tradition,” Junior experiences a vision and
apocalypse in the literal sense (the world it- says, “hey’re all gone, my tribe is gone. hose
self did not end), they certainly experienced blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox,
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604 Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation PMLA
have killed us. I’m the last, the very last, and finds himself radically isolated in a surreal
I’m sick, too” (17). Geographically, at least, the environment from which much of the medi-
link makes sense. he characters in the story ating social reality has been stripped away”
live on the Spokane Reservation, near the site (9). In other words, there is a long tradition
of the 1862 catastrophe. And yet I would sug- of abstracting the ostensibly representative
gest that it is not critical that we determine individual in order to personify the collective.
whether Alexie’s text refers to this incident And yet I would suggest that Alexie’s
or to any of a number of others, such as the project—written more than a century after
better- known incident involving Lord Jefrey the texts with which Elmer concerns him-
Amherst during the Seven Years’ War. Alex- self—does something slightly different. Ju-
ie’s lack of specificity calls attention to the nior announces that he is the lone survivor of
apocalyptic dimensions of disease in North a kind of apocalypse, but he is not actually the
America—and to Amer- European military last, and the event he describes was only part
complicity. As Adrienne Mayor points out, in of an apocalyptic transformation. He makes
most references to smallpox blankets today his announcement during a vision as he sits
“details such as time and place are mutable.” among friends, all of whom are engaged in
Moreover, she writes, “mere mention of the the act of remembering the violence that
blankets also works as a shorthand censure of produced the present world. We do not have
Europeans’ treatment of native people in the the “remainderless destruction” Derrida de-
New World” (55, 54). By referring to smallpox scribes, but we are nonetheless faced with the
blankets, Alexie’s text conjures a veriiable re- atermath of an ended civilization. As in the
cord of mass deaths in North America and an 1960 adaptation of he Time Machine, to take
accessible folkloric archive of symbols associ- one example, we are let with a thin, imperiled
ated with that history. community living amid the ruins of the past.
In essence, Alexie brings his readers to a he key diference between Alexie’s postapoc-
site of ethnic cleansing but then invokes not alypse and more mainstream versions, then, is
this single act but a long succession of acts that the Indian community in Alexie’s text is
that brought about the transformation of the unable to rebuild because the slow violence of
world. he 1862 smallpox epidemic may not reservation life continues to unfold (Nixon 2).
have been apocalyptic in a literal sense, but Alexie repeats this motif of remembered
the invocation of smallpox blankets calls to apocalypse throughout the collection. He
mind white complicity in this and other epi- does this in two ways. First, he connects his
demics, the collective result of which was the characters to the memory of actual, nearly
transformation of the Western Hemisphere. remainderless historical devastation. But,
The allusion reminds readers that North second, he calls attention to how this destruc-
America today is a postapocalyptic landscape. tion is linked to United States military logic.
Recall, too, Junior’s claim during his vision: In “The Trial of Thomas Builds- the- Fire,”
“I’m the last, the very last, and I’m sick, too.” homas has a vision in which he becomes one
His experience as the lone survivor recalls of the eight hundred horses Colonel George
Cold War fantasies.9 But it also recalls a lon- Wright ordered destroyed ater the battle of
ger tradition of lone survivors in literature, a the Spokane Plains in 1858. Patrycja Kurjatto-
tradition Jonathan Elmer recounts. his tra- Renard writes that this scene is paradoxically
dition includes Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) one of cross- cultural understanding because
and James Fenimore Cooper’s he Last of the the soldiers in the account come to respect
Mohicans (1826). “In each case,” Elmer writes, the bravery of the horse Thomas inhabits,
“a more or less thinly characterized figure allowing him to escape. This may be true,
130.3 ] Gordon Fraser 605
but it is also important to keep in mind—as precedent,” the way we talk about war has not
Kurjatto-R enard acknowledges—that the changed since Homer, Quintilian, or Cicero
scene recounts a real event and that Wright’s (23, 24). His point is that despite the unprec-
goal in destroying the horses was to “destroy edented potential of nuclear weapons, the
the very basis of the existence of the tribe” calculations people make about wars have not
(237–38). he wars between the United States fundamentally altered. Alexie narrates the
military and the Pacific Northwest Indians link between the logic of nineteenth- century
were perhaps not literally apocalyptic, and yet warfare (remember Colonel Wright’s goal: to
United States military strategy during these “destroy the very basis of the existence of the
conlicts contained apocalyptic dimensions. It tribe”) and the logic of nuclear war: both seek
is only through recognition of these dimen- the total destruction of an enemy (Kurjatto-
sions that Alexie will allow readers to imagine Renard 237).
cross- cultural understanding. Throughout One might be inclined to believe that
the short stories, Alexie keeps memories of the doctrines of deterrence and of “limited
violence clearly within the narrative frame.10 wars” (in Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea) make
Moreover, the collection links these clear a difference. By this logic, prenuclear
memories of destruction to imagined apoca- wars could be apocalyptic (one could attempt
lyptic moments in the present or near future. to bring about the “end of the world” for an
he clearest instance of this practice appears enemy), but the ability of nuclear weapons to
in “Distances,” a story that begins when the bring about the “end of the world” for every-
narrator tells us, “Ater this happened, ater it one paradoxically defers the end. In an evenly
began, I decided that Custer could have, must matched nuclear conlict, each side can bring
have, pressed the button, cut down all the about the “end of the world” for the other—
trees, opened up holes in the ozone, looded and so all nations have an interest in avoiding
the earth. Since most of the white men died war. his is the doctrine of mutually assured
and most of the Indians lived, I decided destruction, and it is aptly called MAD. I
only Custer could have done something that think it is also misleading. In fact, many mil-
backward” (104). he catastrophic history of itary thinkers believed throughout the Cold
nineteenth- century settler- colonial violence War and perhaps continue to believe that one
has been inverted: in place of massacres of can win a nuclear conlict by employing the
Indian tribes and pandemics that dispro- centuries- old logic of military ruthlessness.
portionately struck Indians, we have a single he best example of this comes from Herman
United States military defeat elaborated into Kahn, who writes that “thermonuclear war
a nuclear genocide. Custer, the army colonel is likely to be an unprecedented catastrophe
whose hubris led to the annihilation of his for the defender. Depending on the military
own cavaliers, is just crazy enough to have course of events, it may or may not be an
“pressed the button” and destroyed the wrong unprecedented catastrophe for the attacker”
population. But the logic of nuclear destruc- (10). Nuclear war, like conventional war, pre-
tion here remains. he point of “the button” sumably favors the aggressor who employs
is genocide—the remainderless annihilation surprise and shows little mercy.
of a people. (It is important to remember that, Other thinkers were concerned less with
even here, only “most of the white men” die— surprise and more with ruthlessness. Con-
some survive, although we do not see them in sider SIOP- 62. he Single Integrated Opera-
the narrative.) Derrida claims that although tional Plan for Fiscal Year 1962, about which
the possibility of nuclear war represents a President John F. Kennedy was briefed in
radical break with the past because it “has no September 1961, was designed, in the words
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606 Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation PMLA
of Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman L. Lem- the “basis of existence” of the Japanese state.
nitzer, to “permit the United States to prevail And this logic continued with Hiroshima and
in the event of general nuclear war” (qtd. in Nagasaki. While many present- day scholars
Sagan 22). Lemnitzer took an approach dif- think of nuclear war as a transnational catas-
ferent from Kahn’s, believing that the United trophe—the destruction of almost all human
States could “prevail” over the Soviet Union life—the point of war from the perspective of
even if the former were the defender—but the war planner is to destroy enemy life and
only if United States military forces launched infrastructure. Strategic military planners—
a full arsenal of nuclear weapons against an from Wright to Khan to Lemnitzer—depend
“optimum-m ix” of targets, likely resulting on a particular logic: if the attacker moves
in 285 million Sino- Soviet deaths and an quickly and destroys everything, human life
unspeciied number of deaths in the United and the means of production, the enemy will
States (qtd. in Sagan 36–37; see also Rhodes be annihilated, and retaliation will be impos-
87). Or consider Secretary of State Dean sible. One can bring about the end of an en-
Rusk’s comments to the president and his emy’s world.
advisers during the Cuban missile crisis: Moreover, Alexie positions this logic as
“Mr. Khrushchev may have in mind . . . that, part of a long Amer-European genealogy (al-
uh, uh, he knows that we have a substantial though Indians co- opt it, as we will see). In
nuclear superiority, but he also knows that “Indian Education,” the reader is introduced
we don’t really live under fear of his nuclear to Randy, a sixth grader and “the new In-
weapons to the extent that, uh, he has to live dian kid from the white town of Springdale.”
under fear of ours” (qtd. in Trachtenberg 177). Ater Randy arrives in his new school, he is
While Rusk was not advocating full-s cale war tormented by Stevie Flett, who “called him
with the Soviet Union (far from it: he read the a squawman, called him a pussy, called him
incident as a political problem with a political a punk.” The two meet on the playground,
solution), he took it as an article of faith that where Stevie challenges Randy to throw the
the United States could win a nuclear war. first punch. Randy does so, and he breaks
Continuity exists between this nuclear- Stevie’s nose. Alexie’s narrator, then, leaves
war thinking and non- nuclear- war thinking. us with a kind of moral: Randy teaches “the
he logic Colonel Wright employed when he most valuable lesson about living in the white
struck suddenly against the Spokane Indians world: Always throw the irst punch” (175–76).
in 1858 and destroyed not only their means his is the logic of Colonel Wright, in 1858,
of waging war but their “basis of existence” and of Herman Kahn, in 1961, reduced to a
continued into the twentieth century and playground confrontation: strike first and
animated nuclear and nonnuclear strate- strike ruthlessly. I do not mean to imply that
gic planning (Kurjatto-R enard 237). Ward “Indian Education” offers up a direct con-
Wilson writes of the United States bombing nection to military logic. If the story is con-
campaign against Japan that “beginning in sidered independently of the collection in
March 1945, US bombers had conducted a which it appears, the lesson—“Always throw
campaign of air attacks against Japanese cit- the irst punch”—is simply another example
ies that killed more than 330,000 civilians of the way racism begets acts of interpersonal
and wounded 472,000, made more than 8 violence (176). And yet in the context of the
million homeless, and burned more than 177 text’s references to elements of political his-
square miles of urban area” (168). One might tory, from Wright to smallpox blankets, the
conclude that United States military planners’ reader would be forgiven for thinking that
pre- nuclear- war goals included destroying Randy has learned a larger lesson about how
130.3 ] Gordon Fraser 607
the culture of the United States frames acts the logic of the Ghost Dance and that of the
of violence, personal or political. he logic of United States military. Numerous accounts
striking irst and striking ruthlessly applies as of the dance, including the unevenly reliable
easily to battleields as to playgrounds. irsthand version ofered in John Neihardt’s
In “Distances,” Alexie extrapolates this Black Elk Speaks (198–99), reveal that it was
logic to the scale of global holocaust. In do- entirely ceremonial and never violent. I am
ing so, he indicts the colonized response to suggesting, however, that Alexie expresses
United States power: a strike- irst thinking understandable skepticism about freedom
that mimics the logic of United States mili- movements that reproduce the logic of apoc-
tary ruthlessness. (his is similar to the way alypticism and violence, that hope for—as
he indicts the Randys of the playground— Black Elk described it—a “whirlwind” that
with understanding but with obvious ambiv- will “crush everything on this world” (qtd. in
Neihardt 198). Alexie’s skepticism is built on
alence about their strategy for dealing with
historical understanding. On 23 December
the white world.) Ater surmising that Custer
1890, the apocalyptic revival movement was
“pressed the button” and ended the world,
used by a United States army colonel, James
the narrator thinks better of his theory and
Forsyth, as a pretext for surrounding a Lakota
wonders whether “the Ghost Dance finally
encampment at Wounded Knee Creek. When
worked” (104). his remark refers to the 1890
a scule the next day led to the discharge of
Lakota Ghost Dance, part of a movement
a rile, Forsyth’s artillery opened ire. By the
inaugurated in 1887 by Wovoka, a Paiute
time the chaos ended, between 160 and 300
Indian born around 1858 in Mason Valley,
Indian men, women, and children lay dead
Nevada. Rani- Henrik Andersson writes:
(“Wounded Knee Massacre” 349–50).
Perhaps this is why Alexie’s treatment of
The basic idea of the ghost dance was that
Indian apocalypticism is nearly as critical as
there would be a time when all the Indians,
living and dead, would live happily forever his treatment of military examples of the same
in a world where no death, sickness, or mis- logic. In “Distances” the postapocalypse is not
ery would exist. here was no room for white the one preigured by the Ghost Dance—one
people in the new world; only Indians were in which the remainder “would live happily
to survive the great transformation, whether forever” (Andersson 27). Instead, Alexie gives
an earthquake or some other kind of natural readers a picture of ongoing trauma. Tremble
phenomenon. (27) Dancer has “burns and scars all over her legs,”
possibly from radiation poisoning (105). Oth-
he Ghost Dance, in other words, structur-
ers display the same symptoms. And conlict
ally resembles mainstream apocalyptic fan- has emerged between the “Urbans” and the
tasies, but it reverses them. Andersson writes “Skins,” the Indians who lived in the city and
that Wovoka’s dance, which emerged from on the reservation, respectively. In this way,
Christian revival movements, contained all Alexie’s story functions as apocalypse (revela-
three traditional senses of apocalypse: rev- tion), even as it narrates an apocalypse (an end
elation, destruction, and rebirth. The idea of things). And yet it is, inally, a critique. At-
of the dance was revealed to the prophet in tempts to annihilate enemies and to be reborn
a vision, and the dancers would, according in the atermath will always backire: Custer
to this vision, bring about through their per- “pressed the button” and destroyed his own
formance both the end of the world and its nation accidentally; the Ghost Dance works
renewal (25–27). I should be clear that I am but ultimately poisons the Indians who em-
not suggesting a moral equivalence between ploy it. his is a devastating critique of Kahn’s
[
608 Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation PMLA
military logic, which predicted that the Indian land. Beginning with the discovery of
United States economy would recover within uranium on the Spokane Reservation in 1954,
twenty years if “only” forty million people Midnite Mine supplied yellowcake irst to the
in the United States were killed in a nuclear military for nuclear weapons and then to pri-
strike.11 In Alexie’s stories there is no recov- vate companies for civilian reactors, poison-
ery, and the memory of trauma is ongoing. It ing the surrounding land and groundwater
makes sense that this critique would emerge (Cornwall). In “he Approximate Size of My
in the early 1990s and would remain relevant Favorite Tumor,” Jimmy tells Simon that he
to a post- 9/11 audience. As Derrida points out, has cancer (Alexie 157). As an article in the
the hope that one nation might win a nuclear Seattle Times pointed out, “No one has done
war persisted in military planning circles into the diicult medical detective work” to prove
the 1980s (26). Moreover, as I said above, the whether the frequent incidences of cancer
military logic advocating annihilation of an on the reservation were caused by the nearly
enemy can be read into prenuclear wars with thirty- year presence of a uranium mine
First Nations and even into the First Nations and processing plant so close to homes, but
themselves. People have long desired not only “there’s ample evidence that uranium min-
to defeat their imagined or real enemies but to ing causes lung cancer and other fatal lung
extirpate them. In Alexie’s world such desire diseases.” Moreover, studies of uranium min-
only begets death, and hope for a more secure ing on other reservations have shown conclu-
future after the apocalypse is revealed as a sively that the presence of mines at those sites
fraud. Alexie’s characters live in the apocalyp- caused cancer (Cornwall).
tic atermath, the world ater the destruction In another short story, “he Fun House,”
of everything and ater the revelation of what a woman walks to the banks of Tshimakain
that destruction must engender. Alexie’s char- Creek, where the water “was brown, smelled
acters live with slow violence, and we will turn a little of dead animals and uranium,” and
next to this rethinking of temporality. says she will “probably get sick” ater wading
in (Alexie 79–80). While the story ends in a
moment of triumph, a moment in which she
The Slow- Moving Catastrophe
reclaims her identity and a sense of her own
Until now, I have discussed possible fu- power, the ongoing presence of uranium-
ture apocalypses (nuclear strikes, the Ghost poisoned water serves as a reminder of the
Dance) and remembered past moments of forces that worked to deprive her of that iden-
violence (smallpox epidemics, massacres). tity. In “Flight,” one of the two stories added in
But the most obvious way in which Alexie ad- the 2003 edition, Joseph scofs at the destruc-
dresses the apocalypticism of United States tive potential of uranium. Alexie writes, “‘Ura-
power is by critiquing its presence on the Spo- nium has a half- life of one hundred thirty-i ve
kane Reservation and connecting this pres- million years,’ somebody told Joseph, and he
ence to sites of United States military power said, ‘Shit, I can tell you stories that will last
around the world. Alexie, in other words, re- longer than that’” (225). Uranium is a poison-
veals the slow violence of United States milita- ous presence throughout the collection. Alex-
rism—the way that an attempt to forestall the ie’s writing, then, links the apocalyptic with
end, or to forget the endings that have already the geologic, the fast and deferred with the
occurred, engenders a slow- moving catastro- slow and ongoing. In other words, he invokes
phe (Nixon 2). Consider, for instance, Midnite the present- tense violence of the postapoca-
Mine. Alexie’s collection is full of references lyptic landscape: the violence of a closed ura-
to the uranium mine’s presence on sovereign nium mine, of a landscape ater the last war.