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'Knowing this country': Confronting the nuclear uncanny in Aboriginal life writing
Get PDFNuclear phenomena have been described as ‘uncanny’ because they disrupt rationalist ways of understanding space and time, but also because they are sites for the return of a variety of cultural repressions. In this essay, I explore an Australian instance of nuclear uncanniness—the ‘black mist’ that followed the first nuclear trial at Emu Field, South Australia, in 1953—through a work of life writing by witness and Anangu woman Jessie Lennon. I find that I’m the One that Know this Country! (2000) offers an Anangu critique of the nuclear uncanny, in which the various disruptions of the nuclear age are revealed to be part and parcel of the processes of colonisation. The work of life writing itself is the means for the Aboriginal survival of the nuclear apocalypse and its associated epistemological upheaval, structured around Lennon’s authorial position as ‘the one who knows this country.
