The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 to 2:00 pm (E.T.)
Nuclear weapons can usefully be located as part of a continuum of violence; with the bomb as both a product of and a lynchpin for systems of militarism, racism, and patriarchy. This talk will explore the relationship between nuclear weapons and some specific other contemporary systems of violence, including white supremacy, the carceral system, and border imperialism. One outcome of this perspective is that efforts for nuclear abolition require us to turn to feminist, queer, Indigenous, postcolonial, and antiracist thought and activism for lessons and collective actions to disrupt and dismantle the economic, political, and cultural systems that make nuclear weapons possible, that make them seem desirable, and that sustain other structures of violence. The talk is based on a forthcoming book about violence and abolition to be published by Haymarket Books.
About the speaker: Ray Acheson is a visiting researcher at SGS and leads the disarmament program Reaching Critical Will at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) which was founded in 1915 to challenge militarism, patriarchy, and capitalism as root causes of war. Ray represents the organization on the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work leading to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Ray also works to prevent the development of fully autonomous weapons with the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and to challenge the international arms trade and war profiteering.