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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how traces are represented, celebrated or belittled in defining the future of La Hague, a peninsula where cherished natural landscapes coexist with nuclear infrastructures. The research project includes ethnography, "futuring" workshops and an artistic project on cartographies.

Paper long abstract

La Hague, a cherished peninsula in Normandy, boasts a panoply of natural landscapes, of great interest to local conservation workers and inhabitants affectively tied to the area. Traces of this natural and cultural history dot the area and seemingly compete for a regional identity amid a controversial industrial announcement which would prolong La Hague’s reputation as a nuclearized space. Indeed, in the so-called centre of the peninsula lies a vast nuclear fuel reprocessing site built in the 1960s, and recently officially marked out for potential extension and upgrading. In this context, this paper takes up the invitation of the TRACE and presents findings from a comparative research project focusing on landscapes, nuclear realities and futures, taking as one of its sites of interest La Hague. I draw on twelve months of ethnographic research in the area to explore which kind of traces are identified, represented, celebrated or pushed aside in forming the geographical and affective outlines of the peninsula – and what the stakes of such representations are for future possibilities.

I will complement my ethnographic data with local futuring workshops focused on imagining La Hague’s landscapes in 2125 and carried out as part of the research project, as well a collaboration with the local artist Anna Lejemmetel, with an exhibition planned in March 2026. The artistic project aims to explore the intimate and generative powers of the cartographic method, to unsettle its scientific format and interrogate how traces are found and potentially aggregated into a whole, and by whom.