Material-Discursive Diffractive Agency of Nuclear Warfare in Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke and Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows

Perhaps the deadliest weapon that transformed the weaponscapes of human civilization is the nuclear bomb. Creating and using this technology is one of the greatest examples of the inhuman dimension of the posthumanposthuman world. Its brutal use in World War II generated waves of human devastation and annihilation, which are still unforgettable. Nevertheless, even after witnessing the magnitude of annihilation which nuclear bombs can bring, the incessant desire of various countries in the world to get hold of this technology under the pretext of deterrence and establishing their hegemonic superiority is still prevalent. This chapter conducts a diffractive analysis of the agency of nuclear weapons in Mohsin HamidHamid’s Moth SmokeHamidMoth Smoke and Kamila ShamsieKamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows to highlight its power to transform lives, economies, cultures, and politics of human societies. I argue that Shamsie’s imaginative portrayal of nuclear attacks on Japan implies the necropoliticsnecropolitics of white races, which had far-reaching emotional, biological, environmental, and psychological impacts, while Hamid’s narrative has an ambivalent discourse on the political and economic ramifications of being a nuclear power. Mohsin Hamid’s Moth SmokeHamidMoth Smoke is a full-length exploration of what happened to Pakistani society, environment, politics, and economy in the aftermath of nuclear tests in 1998.