Alien Sightings and OVNI Culture in Argentina

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. K. Sheinin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Late Night ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, there were thousands of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings in Argentina (in Spanish, Objeto volador no identificado or OVNI). The mainstream media reported on many of them. In a field termed ufología, some events were explained scientifically or somewhat scientifically; most were not. These sightings and their stories lived on in a culture of thousands of OVNI aficionados and their literatures, frequently spilling into larger popular cultures. OVNI culture disrupts chronologies. It offers a picture of Cold War Argentina that breaks with longstanding popular and academic chronologies that stress a dictatorship-versus-democracy binary. That binary is real. However, OVNI culture superimposes an often-neglected Cold War chronology on the mid- to late 20th century. OVNI stories and their cultural consumption evolve and vary not with reference to violent Argentine political and historical change, but in the context of a larger transnational Cold War culture in an Argentine context. Hallmarks of OVNI culture in Argentina include the enormous influence of U.S. popular culture, as well as references to apocalyptic nuclear weapons, and unscientific notions of psychoses in explaining late-night sightings of spacecraft and extraterrestrials.

Introduction: Deconstructing The Starships

1998 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Gwyneth Jones
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Star Trek ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Us Navy ◽  
The Cold War

‘Deconstructing The Starships’ references a speech originally given at the June 1988 presentation of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The speech discusses science fiction’s penetration into popular culture and its inclusion in 20th century mainstream fiction. It also analyses the structure and methodology of a science fiction novel, looking at the characterisation, narrative and literary conventions used in order to develop an understanding of the requirements of a science fiction text. The chapter references Star Wars and Star Trek throughout, and uses the two franchises to associate the Starship Enterprise with US Navy nuclear submarines in the Cold War, thus mirroring science fiction with reality.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

New ''Cold War''

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Vladimir Batiuk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Nuclear Arms

In this article, the ''Cold War'' is understood as a situation where the relationship between the leading States is determined by ideological confrontation and, at the same time, the presence of nuclear weapons precludes the development of this confrontation into a large-scale armed conflict. Such a situation has developed in the years 1945–1989, during the first Cold War. We see that something similar is repeated in our time-with all the new nuances in the ideological struggle and in the nuclear arms race.

National Internationalists: British and West German Protests against Nuclear Weapons, the Politics of Transnational Communications and the Social History of the Cold War, 1957–1964

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
HOLGER NEHRING
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social History ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines the politics of communication between British and West German protesters against nuclear weapons in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The interpretation suggested here historicises the assumptions of ‘transnational history’ and shows the nationalist and internationalist dimensions of the protest movements' histories to be inextricably connected. Both movements related their own aims to global and international problems. Yet they continued to observe the world from their individual perspectives: national, regional and local forms thus remained important. By illuminating the interaction between political traditions, social developments and international relations in shaping important political movements within two European societies, this article can provide one element of a new connective social history of the cold war.

scholarly journals Preventing Nuclear Weapon Proliferation as Nuclear Power Expands

MRS Bulletin ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 340-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siegfried S. Hecker
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Nuclear Energy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Nuclear Attack ◽  
The Cold War

Raj et al. describe the promise of nuclear energy as a sustainable, affordable, and carbon-free source available this century on a scale that can help meet the world's growing need for energy and help slow the pace of global climate change. However, the factor of millions gain in energy release from nuclear fssion compared to all conventional energy sources that tap the energy of electrons (Figure 1) has also been used to create explosives of unprecedented lethality and, hence, poses a serious challenge to the expansion of nuclear energy worldwide. Although the end of the cold war has eliminated the threat of annihilating humanity, the likelihood of a devastating nuclear attack has increased as more nations, subnational groups, and terrorists seek to acquire nuclear weapons.

Continuity and Change in British Thinking about Nuclear Weapons

1994 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Croft
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Constant Argument

For almost fifty years there has been constant argument between those who have supported the development and possession of nuclear weapons by Britain and those opposed to those policies. This article argues that there has been a continuity in the arguments made by policy-makers and their critics, both operating within an unchanging series of linked assumptions forming a paradigm or mind-set. This article sets out the character of the assumptions of the orthodox and alternative thinkers, as they are termed in the article, examining their coherence and differences, particularly during the cold war. It concludes by attempting to draw out some implications for the British security policy debate in the post-cold war period.

Soviet Atomic Blackmail and the North Atlantic Alliance

1957 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Speier
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Atomic Weapons ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Future War ◽  
The Cold War

The uncertainty about whether atomic weapons will be used in future war, whether local or general, lends itself to political exploitation in the cold war. The efficiency of nuclear weapons in wartime, and their resulting threat-value in either war- or peacetime, constitute their political-military worth. In peacetime, the threat-value of weapons can be exploited in many ways: by an ultimatum, by authoritative or inspired statements on capabilities or intentions, by studied disclosures of new weapons at ceremonial occasions, by means of maneuvers, redeployments of forces, or by so-called demonstrations.

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