Book Announcement: Desiring the Bomb

Hi All,

I'm writing to announce my recent book, *Desiring the Bomb: Communication,
Psychoanalysis, and the Atomic Age* from the University of Alabama Press.
You can read more here:

http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Desiring-the-Bomb,6959.aspx

A description follows:

*A timely interdisciplinary study that applies psychoanalysis and the
rhetorical tradition of the sublime to examine the cultural aftermath of
the Atomic Age*

Every culture throughout history has obsessed over various “end of the
world” scenarios. The dawn of the Atomic Age marked a new twist in this
tale. For the first time, our species became aware of its capacity to
deliberately destroy itself. Since that time the Bomb has served as an
organizing metaphor, a symbol of human annihilation, a stand-in for the
unspeakable void of extinction, and a discursive construct that challenges
the limits of communication itself. The parallel fascination with and
abhorrence of nuclear weapons has metastasized into a host of other
end-of-the-world scenarios, from global pandemics and climate change to
zombie uprisings and asteroid collisions.

*Desiring the Bomb: Communication, Psychoanalysis, and the Atomic Age* explores
these world-ending fantasies through the lens of psychoanalysis to reveal
their implications for both contemporary apocalyptic culture and the
operations of language itself. What accounts for the enduring power of the
Bomb as a symbol? What does the prospect of annihilation suggest about
language and its limits? Thoroughly researched and accessibly written, this
study expands on the theories of Kenneth Burke, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund
Freud, and many others from a variety of disciplines to arrive at some
answers to these questions.

Calum L. Matheson undertakes a series of case studies—including the Trinity
test site, nuclear war games, urban shelter schemes, and contemporary
survivalism—and argues that contending with the anxieties (individual,
social, cultural, and political) born of the Atomic Age depends on
rhetorical conceptions of the “real,” an order of experience that cannot be
easily negotiated in language. Using aspects of media studies, rhetorical
theory, and psychoanalysis, the author deftly engages the topics of Atomic
Age survival, extinction, religion, and fantasy, along with their enduring
cultural legacies, to develop an account of the Bomb as a signifier and to
explore why some Americans have become fascinated with fantasies of nuclear
warfare and narratives of postapocalyptic rebirth.

-- 
Calum L. Matheson, PhD
Assistant Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life
Director of the William Pitt Debating Union
University of Pittsburgh
Candidate, Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center
Research Associate, University of the Free State

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