Séminaire Guerre froide : Impacts, héritages, enjeux

10 avril 2025 | 15h-16h

FLSH – Amphi Pouthier

Séminaire en ligne sur https://bbb.unilim.fr/b/luc-edh-awh-vw5

Invitée : Anaïs Maurer de Rutgers University (USA)

« Nuclear colonialism and climate collapse in french and american Pacific colonies »

Abstract: Bombarded with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb a day for half a century, Pacific people have long been subjected to man-made cataclysm. Well before climate change became a global concern, nuclear testing brought about untimely death, widespread diseases, forced migration, and irreparable destruction to the shores of Oceania. In this talk, Anaïs Maurer analyzes the Pacific literature that incriminates the environmental racism behind radioactive skies and rising seas. Maurer identifies strategies of resistance uniting the region by analyzing an extensive multilingual archive of decolonial Pacific art, showing how Pacific nuclear survivors’ stories reveal an alternative vision of the apocalypse: instead of promoting individualism and survivalism, they advocate mutual assistance, cultural resilience, South-South solidarities, and Indigenous women’s leadership. Drawing upon their experience resisting both nuclear colonialism and carbon imperialism, Pacific storytellers offer compelling narratives to nurture the land and each other in times of global environmental collapse.

Bio: Anaïs Maurer is Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. Her research explores Indigenous decolonial ecologies, with a focus on nuclear imperialism and climate justice. Raised in Tahiti, she is conversant in colonial and Indigenous languages alike. For the past decade, she has conducted extensive fieldwork (or home-work) in the Pacific, compiling a unique corpus of Indigenous ecocritical stories in French, English, Spanish, Tahitian, Mangarevian, and Uvean, encompassing a wide variety of artistic genres from print literature to dances and graphic arts. Her first monograph, The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors to Climate Activists (Duke University Press, 2024), analyzes Pacific artists’ transgenerational fight against the nuclear arms race and climate change, by underscoring the environmental racism at the roots of both existential threats. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals as well as public-facing media, and has been supported by various grants, including, most recently, the international CAPAS fellowship for her second monograph project, ’Aita Atomi: Les artistes mā’ohi contre le colonialisme nucléaire.