Nuclear Criticism: In Pursuit of a “Politically Enabling” Deconstructive Voice

Abstract

This essay argues that rhetorical and argument scholars have yet to devise a critical or philosophic perspective adaptive to the quandaries of our nuclear world. The claim is advanced that the nuclear threat is fundamentally a textual problem, a problem created and perpetuated by argumentative and rhetorical practices. If nuclear imperilment is a textual threat, then the response to it should be a critical one. The author maintains that argument critics need to formulate a politically powerful “nuclear criticism” in order to subvert and dismantle argument formations which might motivate nations to engage in nuclear war fighting. Drawing primarily upon the critical perspectives of Jacques Derrida and Kenneth Burke, the essay concludes by offering six methodological injunctions for such a nuclear criticism.