Nuclear disaster, space and trauma

A prayer for Chernobyl from Svetlana Aleksiévich

Abstract

The present article aims to analyze the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, occurred in 1986 in Belarus. Its objective is to understand how the effects of radiation transformed Chernobyl and its surroundings in “contaminated zones”, what suggests a traumatized perception of space. To this end, a debate of the area of psychology about trauma was incorporated, especially from the view of a traumatic language and a traumatic temporality. In this sense, the effects of the radionuclides in the environment, which often make “life” and “death” confuse with each other in the silent and radioactive war, corroborate the interpretation that, in natural and physical terms, the nuclear disaster is an example of how human beings, in the present time, act as central agents of environmental change. Thus, Hannah Arendt’s analyzes of the technical advances of the Atomic Revolution and the conquest of space were used. Along those lines, through the debates about the actual epoche known as Anthropocene, the nuclear disaster demonstrates the technical capacity of ambiental implosion – or the selfdestruction of our own planet – by humanity. For the understanding of the relationship between witnesses and the radioactive space, an interpretation of the event from the lenses of the book Voices from Chernobyl, of the belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksievitch, in dialogue with scientific studies in the quimical and radiological areas.