{"id":9620,"date":"2018-04-15T23:06:20","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T04:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=9620"},"modified":"2018-09-09T08:47:10","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T13:47:10","slug":"anthroposcenic-chernobyl-in-text-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/04\/15\/anthroposcenic-chernobyl-in-text-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropo(s)cenic Chernobyl* in image &amp; text"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/gund\">Gund Institute<\/a> research talk from a few months ago, on &#8220;Navigating Earth&#8217;s &#8216;Zone of Alienation&#8217;: Chernobyl and the Search for Adequate Images of the Anthropocene,&#8221; can now be viewed online (see link below). It consists mostly of out-takes from my book <em>Shadowing the Anthropocene,<\/em> forthcoming later this year from Punctum Books.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0UT7jqMeAgA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Chernobyl material comes out of a much longer talk on that topic, titled &#8220;30 Years (or 30,000): Seven Spectral Stories In and Around Chernobyl,&#8221; which I wrote for the 30th anniversary of the accident. Here it is, as given at the University of Kansas in 2016. I was getting over pneumonia at the time, and the images and text often don&#8217;t align well (at a few points the images run well ahead of the spoken text), but the overall drift is there.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ol6jnJr4FOA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>* Note on the spelling of Chernobyl\/Chornobyl:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For those who pay attention to such things (as some of my Ukrainian friends do), I should note that in\u00a0my academic writings, I have generally tended to use the (more common) spelling of &#8220;Chernobyl&#8221; for the nuclear power plant and its 1986 accident, but &#8220;Chornobyl&#8221; (or &#8220;Chornobyl'&#8221; with an apostrophe to soften the final consonant) for the town itself. The first is traditionally transliterated that way from the Russian &#8220;<span lang=\"ru\">\u0427\u0435\u0440\u043d\u043e\u0431\u044b\u043b\u044c,&#8221; while the second comes from the Ukrainian &#8220;<span lang=\"uk\">\u0427\u043e\u0440\u043d\u043e\u0431\u0438\u043b\u044c&#8221;; the meanings are the same, but the original spellings (albeit in Cyrillic) and the pronunciations are slightly different.\u00a0As the nuclear plant is now within the boundaries of an independent Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian transliteration may seem more appropriate. With the capital, Kyiv (formerly &#8220;Kiev&#8221;), that makes sense, although habits are hard to break. (That&#8217;s why English speakers refer to &#8220;Rome&#8221; rather than &#8220;Roma,&#8221; &#8220;Prague&#8221; rather than &#8220;Praha,&#8221; &#8220;Moscow&#8221; rather than &#8220;Moskva,&#8221; and for the most part still &#8220;Kiev&#8221; rather than &#8220;Kyiv.&#8221; But &#8220;Peking&#8221; and &#8220;Peiping&#8221; have mostly died out in favor of &#8220;Beijing,&#8221; so habits can and do change, eventually.) <\/span><\/p>\n<p>The first spelling, &#8220;Chernobyl,&#8221; remains much more common in English, so it is more easily searchable, findable, and cross-referenceable. That is changing, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/new-brunswick\/chornobyl-spelling-editors-note-1.3765167\">Canadian media<\/a> leading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/world\/chernobyl-vs-chornobyl-why-the-different-spellings-1.2875354\">the way to<\/a> Ukrainian-preferred transliterations (as with &#8220;Kyiv&#8221; instead of &#8220;Kiev&#8221;) and I will happily change with it, but as of this posting it is still not the norm.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A complicating factor, however, is that the nuclear power plant&#8217;s origins &#8212; as well as its 1986 accident &#8212; occurred during the Soviet era, in which Russian was not only the state language but the culturally enforced <em>high-status<\/em> language. In this sense, it really was the <em>Chernobyl<\/em> nuclear plant that exploded, since that&#8217;s what it was called at the time by the state that was responsible for it. Revising history by changing the power plant&#8217;s name might in this sense be wiping the (Soviet) state&#8217;s hands cleaner than the current (Ukrainian) state might wish. Independent Ukraine took it upon itself to address the failures of the former (Soviet) state, but the primary failure, emblematized by the accident, preceded its existence. (On the other hand, some of the power plant&#8217;s blocks continued functioning well into the era of independence, so even that gets complicated.) <\/p>\n<p>The town, however &#8212; which is not where the nuclear power plant is located, but some distance away &#8212; predates both the Soviet era and the Russian imperial era, going back to the days of Rus&#8217; (not <em>Russia<\/em>), well before the Ukrainian and Russian languages diverged\/evolved into their modern variants. In that case, a historical perspective doesn&#8217;t definitively require either choice, so deferring to contemporary realities &#8212; with Chornobyl being a town in contemporary Ukraine (albeit a ghost town) &#8212; makes more sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Gund Institute research talk from a few months ago, on &#8220;Navigating Earth&#8217;s &#8216;Zone of Alienation&#8217;: Chernobyl and the Search for Adequate Images of the Anthropocene,&#8221; can now be viewed online (see link below). It consists mostly of out-takes from my book Shadowing the Anthropocene, forthcoming later this year from Punctum Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,688977],"tags":[123667,212,213,455166,455163,16892,2899,455165,350233,454956,455162,455168,455167,16902,455164],"class_list":["post-9620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-geo_philosophy","tag-anthropocene","tag-chernobyl","tag-chornobyl","tag-four-noble-truths","tag-gund-institute","tag-herzog","tag-images","tag-nuclear-accidents","tag-nuclear-power","tag-sacrifice-zones","tag-shadowing-the-anthropocene","tag-slow-violence","tag-socio-ecological-suffering","tag-ukraine","tag-university-of-kansas"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2va","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8908,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/30\/anthropocenic-sublime\/","url_meta":{"origin":9620,"position":0},"title":"Anthropocenic sublime","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be giving the following talk at the \"Popular Culture, Religion, and the Anthropocene\" workshop\u00a0at the National University of Singapore this coming week. Navigating the Zone of Alienation: Chernobyl and the Anthropocenic Sublime Abstract: This two-part talk will interpret the Chernobyl nuclear accident and its \u201cZone of Alienation\u201d (Zona vidchuzhennia)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropocene&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8737,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/04\/25\/30-years-or-30000-spectral-stories-of-chernobyl\/","url_meta":{"origin":9620,"position":1},"title":"30 Years (or 30,000): Spectral stories of Chernobyl","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be giving this talk\u00a0at the University of Kansas on\u00a0Thursday. It'll be exactly two days after the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. And 16 days before the\u00a030th anniversary\u00a0of Mikhail Gorbachev's speech about the accident. Pravda (Truth)\u00a0first reported in any detail on the accident on May 6 and 7.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropocene&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"12936507_10156686380240175_3276137965878156821_n","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/04\/12936507_10156686380240175_3276137965878156821_n-275x213.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12370,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/02\/25\/the-event-of-ch%c9%b5rnobyl-resonance-renewed\/","url_meta":{"origin":9620,"position":2},"title":"The event of Ch\u0275rnobyl (resonance renewed)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 25, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"My recent 2022 Mohyla Lecture at the University of Saskatchewan, \"The Ch\u0275rnobyl Event: Ecology, Media, and the Anthropocene,\" is now available to be watched online. (That \"\u0275\" in \"Ch\u0275rnobyl\" is intentional; I discuss it in the talk.) In addition to updating some of my work on the Ch\u0275rnobyl \"hyper-event\" and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropocene&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/42Z9l3Stob8\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12475,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/04\/03\/inflection-point\/","url_meta":{"origin":9620,"position":3},"title":"Inflection point","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 3, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019ll be giving an online public talk called \"The Invasion of Ukraine as a Turning Point?\" for the University of California Santa Barbara this Tuesday at 4 pm Pacific Standard Time (7 pm Eastern US\/Canada time, 11 pm GMT). It hinges on the idea that the Russian invasion, like other\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/04\/03\/inflection-point\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/04\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/04\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/04\/image.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9856,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/10\/09\/shadowing-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":9620,"position":4},"title":"Shadowing the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times arrived in the mail today. It's published by punctum books, an open-access academic and para-academic publisher I've found to be a real delight to work with. Eileen Joy deserves a medal for her leadership of punctum, and\u00a0Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei's cover and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropocene&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2018\/10\/180502shadowingtheanthropocene-cover-front-draft-647x1024-174x275.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11113,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/09\/29\/dont-travel-the-anthropocene-without-this\/","url_meta":{"origin":9620,"position":5},"title":"Don&#8217;t travel the Anthropocene without this","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 29, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I just found out that Punctum Books has created a Shadowing the Anthropocene travel mug based on Vincent van Gerven Oei's superb cover design of my book. Cool. Readers can spare yourself the money for the book (read the free PDF) and get the mug instead! (Hipster alert!)","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropocene&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/09\/mug.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9620"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9631,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions\/9631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}