Home zero: Images of home and field in nuclear‐cultural studies

Images of “home” and “field” pervade discourse about nuclear weapons. These images create inter‐related symbolic realms in which nuclear operations are variously promoted, accomodated, and resisted. In analyzing a series of personal and fieldwork narratives, this essay explores various configurations of these images in both official and critical nuclear discourses. It argues that the discursive fields of national‐strategic and critical‐ethnographic operations are mapped and conducted over domestic sites. The existence and oppositional power of these sites are typically repressed, however, in order to maintain the authority of professional nuclear discourses. Revising the relationship between Home and Field potentially transforms the existing practices of both nuclear hegemony and progressive nuclear criticism.