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In a May 1986 essay entitled “Anthropological Shock,” Ulrich Beck reflected on the aftermath of Chernobyl as a “media event” in Germany. By anthropological shock, Beck was referring to the experience of the inadequacy of our senses when faced with radiation danger—human senses register nothing when exposed to increased levels of radiation. Individuals’ own sovereign judgment is rendered impossible. Without the information provided by the media and other social institutions, laypeople would not even notice the increased levels of radiation. Beck describes this as “the experience of cultural blinding.” Another aspect of the shock is that “those who until now have pretended to know don’t know either. None of us—not even the experts—are experts when it comes to the atomic danger.”1 We need not assume that people remain “cultural[ly] blind” to radiation danger—that no cultural ways of identifying danger are developed. Nevertheless, the two previous chapters have shown that neither can we assume that those most affected will necessarily develop ways of “seeing” the danger and become the most risk-conscious. As argued in the introduction , one’s experience of radiological contamination, even for those who live with it on a daily basis, is highly mediated—by media narratives, authoritative accounts, scientific theories and equipment, maps, rumors, and any other representations that render radiation publicly visible. In Belarus, media portrayals might be one of the most influential means for representing post-Chernobyl radiation, especially since these portrayals are dominated by the official discourse, which in turn is echoed by practical changes in the lives of the affected populations, such as loss of monetary compensation and other benefits (see chapter 1). Almost everybody I interviewed in Belarus on the topic of Chernobyl could clearly describe the official position on the matter. As one of the main forces in making radiation publicly visible, mass media can raise awareness in local contexts (especially since there is no 3 Waves of Chernobyl Invisibility 66 Chapter 3 perceptible difference between the contaminated and uncontaminated regions). Mass media can also potentially set a national agenda on radiological contamination.2 But the media can also help displace imperceptible risks as a matter of public discussion. Media representations of Chernobyl and radiation danger shift with time and changing political agendas; they do not become increasingly more accurate and comprehensive. The scope of Chernobyl’s consequences can be enlarged or diminished; the nature of these consequences can be—and was—redefined and reframed. This chapter follows the metamorphosis in how Chernobyl’s consequences were represented in the Belarusian media—their growing and shrinking in scope. I invite the reader to trace what the media were referring to when they spoke of Chernobyl: What areas are contaminated, how badly are they contaminated, and how long is this contamination going to last? Are the consequences already present, or what consequences should be expected, and when? What are the solutions? A young Belarusian woman ’s comment to me in Minsk in 2005 summarized the more recent outcomes of Chernobyl’s media transformation: “Chernobyl's consequences have been shrinking for years now. Old statements about Chernobyl being an ‘international problem’ sound funny. The affected area in Belarus has shrunk and seems to be roughly equivalent to the size of an airport.” The puzzle this chapter considers, then, is how the effects of Chernobyl first grew and then shrank, and why. The disappearance of Chernobyl from the official, government-controlled media cannot be explained by changes in the actual scope of contamination . It would also be ambiguous and even misleading to describe this disappearance as the result of cultural forgetting. Chernobyl did not simply disappear; it was extinguished in waves as a result of particular types of framing that set the health effects of the fallout outside the scope of immediate concern. Before that, the greatest public salience of Chernobyl did not begin until about three years after the accident, a period of great political transformation only two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. This eruption of visibility was followed by the gradual transformation of the Chernobyl discourse that again paralleled broader political transformations in the country. I trace the metamorphosis of Chernobyl as a historically situated, politically determined discursive construction. The answer to how and why Chernobyl disappeared as a radiological problem relates to the broader issue of what kinds of representation can potentially promote and sustain public attention to environmental risks, especially imperceptible risks with delayed health effects. There are at least two...

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