The politics of the nuclear text: Reading Robert Oppenheimer'sletters and recollections

Abstract

Nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war are daunting “facts” of contemporary culture. Nonetheless, they are symbolic productions: the meaning of the Bomb historically has been created in a cultural dialogue between conflicting interests. This essay uses post‐structuralist theory to explore the utility of a key signifier in that dialogue, the scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. During the 1980s, critics interpreted a published volume of Oppenheimer's letters in ways that both clarified and challenged the conventional arrangements of nuclear deterrence. Their responses suggest the enduring value of Oppenheimer as an intertextual form that mediates cultural experience of nuclear weapons.