The breakdown of a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl in 1986 is one of the most outstanding examples of a new type of large-scale technological disasters that have shaken contemporary technological culture. It did not only attract the attention of an almost global audience; it has also entered social imagination and collective memory throughout Europe and other parts of the world.
How do modern cultures remember the technical disasters they have produced? What do they remember and what do they forget? What are the symbolic and cultural forms (narratives, images, public rituals etc.) in which these events are framed and sustained within an ongoing communicative tradition? What are the inherent conflicts and ambivalences of such memorizing practices? Does the way in which previous disasters are memorized shape or even challenge the future use and legitimacy of a technology?
Although in the recent decade, many historians and sociologist have worked on the social construction of memory, they have rarely touched on technological disasters. The project uses the example of Chernobyl to address these questions both historically and comparatively. Its main part is a discourse analysis of the media coverage of the yearly “anniversary” of the Chernobyl event in two European countries. It aims at tracing the various metaphors and stories through which this event has been framed over time and space. It will not only ask, how these framings changed over time but also how they were linked the Chernobyl event to other concerns about the safety technology and related political constituencies.
