Learning to Read the Great Chernobyl Acceleration: Literacy in the More-than-Human Landscapes

Abstract

© 2019 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The explosion of reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986, is often described as mankind’s biggest nuclear accident. However, describing Chernobyl as an accident works like a broom to sweep away the larger story around it, which ismore important. Exploring the larger Chernobyl Zone with the help of two biologists and a centenarian villager, this article shows how the greater PripyatMarshes, where the 1986 accident took place, was already sullied with elevated levels ofman-made radioactivity before the plant was ever built.Major radioactive releases continue in the region to this day. By enlarging the scale and temporal dimension of this history, this article shows how the Chernobyl accident serves as only an exclamation point in a chain of toxic exposures that remastered the landscape, society, politics, and bodies, not just locally, but globally.