Affective Exposures: Reading Unnatural Narratives in Contaminated Environments

To live in an environment threatened by imperceptible radiation is to live with uncertainty about the effects of radiotoxic contamination and thus about adequate affective responses. This article explores how “unnatural” (or anti-mimetic) narrative strategies can immerse readers into a disorienting world affected by nuclear disaster. I bring together three emerging areas of interest in ecocriticism: unnatural narratology, affective ecocriticism, and fiction dealing with nuclear disaster. While narratologists have positioned the unnatural as a means of describing “physically, logically, or humanly impossible” storyworlds (Alber et al. 102), my readings show how the affects engendered by anti-mimetic texts are actually adequate means to portray the ‘sensory disorder’ (Masco) provoked by imperceptible radiation.