Dividing the Indivisible
The Fissured Story of the Manhattan Project
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12130635 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Margot Norris (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Issue | 35 |
| Pages | 5-5 |
| Publication date | 1996-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0882-4371 • E-ISSN: 1460-2458 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1354570 |
| OpenAlex | W2328392535 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
he cancellation of the Smithsonian Institution's planned exhibition accompanying the display of the Enola Gay-the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945-effectively demonstrated history as the inevitably conflictual discourse that philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard calls phrases in dispute (The Differend). The exhibit, designed as an even-handed moderation of conflicting interpretations, would nonetheless have celebrated this military anniversary with an unusually complex and sober review. By translating the academic debates over the dropping of the atomic bomb into a display for public consumption, the Smithsonian exhibit would have brought an amalgam of official and revisionary histories to public perception and popular understanding, to lodge there an ambiguous and troubled historical sense-like that of the Vietnam war. Its cancellation under protest from the American Legion, the Air Force Association, and members of Congress has been denounced as a political abuse of history and lamented as a sadly lost pedagogical opportunity. In a controversy somewhat reminiscent
Manhattan project · Political science · Law · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2021 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |