Postcolonial Disaster, Pacific Nuclearization, and Disabling Environments

The article examines the intersections between Postcolonial Studies and Disability Studies in relation to the disastrous effects of Pacific nuclearization. It explores how two fictional texts, Robert Barclay's Meļaļ (2002) and James George's Ocean Roads (2006), portray the nuclear Pacific as a disabling environment conditioned by imperialist military interventions. The article situates its comparative analyses in relation to Mark Priestley and Laura Hemingway's sociological research on disaster and disability and Achille Mbembe's postcolonial theory of necropolitics, showing how both novels foreground deep entanglements between the presence of nuclearism and disability in the region. Resisting the erasure of disabled subject positions in conjunction with this violent history, the texts politicize notions of post-disaster recovery in ways that anticipate more inclusive and anticolonial futures.