The Campbell Doctrine April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, History
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Major Campbell stepped up to the microphone:
“The consensus rationalization for the offensive deployment of nuclear weapons is that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was intended to expedite the end of the war in Japan. This is the primary mode of discourse for those on all sides of the debate: what is often missing is a discussion of the other effects of the bombings. It is my opinion that the necessity of the bombing insofar as it actually motivated the Japanese surrender is irrelevant. What truly mattered was the effect of the bomb on the Soviet Union. As we all know, the Soviets agreed to enter the war in Asia in August 1945, and invaded Manchuria just before the end of the war. The atomic bombings, which I personally believe to have been no more militarily effective than the bombing of Dresden or Tokyo, sent a clear message to the Soviets, a message of technological superiority. In addition, it sent a message of moral superiority to the rest of the world, East and West alike. The United States, and by proxy our allies in the West, were able to claim responsibility for the capitulation of Japan while denying the Communists and their Eastern bloc credit for their efforts in China. By establishing America, and America alone, as the winner in the Pacific, we beat not only Japan but the Soviets as well. We are not only victorious but righteous in our cause, in this Cold War as in the World Wars. We must fight the Communists at any cost.”
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Cold War
Origin Story April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, History, Memory, Myth
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Although Oppenheimer was not personally a religious man, he was very aware of the cultural significance of religion, both in America and in the wider world. He chose the name of the first nuclear test to be “Trinity” because of his identification of his work with the poetry of John Donne, which is loaded with religious and mythic figures. The allusion to the Christian Trinity dovetails with the scientists’ work, which many believed to be unlocking the power of creation. This also tied into the Hindu mythology that Oppenheimer drew heavily upon when describing the event. However, he refused to reduce the concrete reality of the bomb to mythological symbolism. Oppenheimer advocated for scientific responsibility and awareness, something he spoke out about often. He is often reappropriated as a paragon of the anti-militant movement associated with the Cold War arms race, but he himself took issue with this view. In response to one playwright’s depiction of him as a reluctant participant in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer responded:
“I had never said that I had regretted participating in a responsible way in the making of the bomb. I said that perhaps he had forgotten Guernica, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Dachau, Warsaw, and Tokyo; but I had not, and that if he found it so difficult to understand, he should write a play about something else.”
The Father of the Atomic Bomb April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, Image, Myth
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Part of our cultural lexicon is an excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” This quote, associated with the atomic bomb, has found its way into even the most trivial forms of social discourse.
Atomic Shirt
What is less well known is that he didn’t quote the Hindu saying at the first nuclear test, but said later that he was reminded of the passage. Even more interesting is that Oppenheimer’s association of the atomic blast was more explicitly a reference to the first line of the passage, not the end. The translation of the full excerpt is
- “If the radiance of a thousand suns
- were to burst at once into the sky,
- that would be like
- the splendor of the Mighty One—
- I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Sanskrit, from the Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita
Monument April 20, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, Image, Memory, Video
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Memorials exist for all sorts of things. There are lots of monuments devoted to war and death, and most of them follow a predictable pattern. Everyone is probably familiar with the Vietnam Memorial and its wall of names; those who have seen it recall vividly the impact of seeing 58,195 names of dead soldiers engraved on a single surface. The corresponding event for my generation, the September 11th attack, was memorialized in a powerful way that I remember as particularly affective (rampant commercialization notwithstanding).
But what does a monument tell us about the event it memorializes? Names and numbers are important, but something important is missing. Anyone that knew someone whose name is one of those lists remembers them as a person, a collection of memories and experiences that told a unique story. It can’t be boiled down to a saying on a tombstone or an entry on a census form, and it is crucial to preserve those experiences. For an experience that can’t be boiled down to a singular event, maybe it would be more effective to let those experiences stand on their own, to memorialize them not with a mass of identical entries but with a ready-made figure that can represent individuality for each person who engages with it.
Entering the Conventional April 20, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, History, Image
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Nuclear weapons were developed for a specific purpose: to be the most destructive force humanity is capable of unleashing on the world. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb obliterated the city of Hiroshima, killing over 70,000 people instantaneously. The effects of the bombing and the impact of its symbolic representation, the mushroom cloud, would reverberate through the remainder of the twentieth century and into the next millennium.
After Hiroshima, “conventional” warfare like that waged across Europe during two world wars took a back seat to the escalating nuclear arms race. In these weapons was the power of the sun, and their shadows powerfully affected all that they touched.
Only sixty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and less than twenty since the end of the Cold War, this powerful symbol of unconventional warfare has entered the cultural lexicon. What would those who created it have to say about this advertisement?
The Cold War
