”As long as Ringhals does not explode with a bang”
Spatial perspectives on the nuclear power plant as motif in Swedish poetry 1974–1980
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54797/tfl.v55i3.57235Keywords:
Anti-nuclear poetry, ecocriticism, nuclear geography, nuclear spaces, contemporary Swedish poetry, nuclear uncannyAbstract
In this article, I discuss poems by seven different authors and poets published between 1974 and 1980, in the buildup toward the Swedish referendum on nuclear power in 1980. I focus especially on poems featuring the nuclear power plant as a motif and how it is presented as nuclear space in the poems. Through a spatially oriented ecocritical perspective, I approach the poems using an interdisciplinary framework of theoretical perspectives on the cultural representation and psychological experience of the nuclear. I identify and discuss two common thematic threads found in the material relating to the depiction of the nuclear power plant as place in the poems: one centering on the geographical dimensions and relations of the nuclear military-industrial complex and its risks, and one concerning negative affects tied to the experience of living in relative proximity to nuclear power plants, which is often portrayed as fear-inducing, threatening or uncanny.
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