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Paper short abstract

This paper suggests revisiting polarisation by exploring the generative notion of ambivalence in relation to infrastructural futures. It draws on ethnographic research in La Hague, France, a narrow peninsula hosting a controversial nuclear fuel reprocessing site and a nuclear waste storage facility.

Paper long abstract

The French peninsula of La Hague has long been defined by nuclear infrastructures, namely a nuclear fuel reprocessing site and a waste storage facility built in the 1960s. These installations have shaped and been shaped by local livelihoods, co-existing alongside agriculture, tourism and the cultural and heritage sector. Recently, and in the context of a so-called nuclear renaissance, the reprocessing site has been officially marked out for potential upgrading and extension. Growing critical voices interrogate the continued dependency of La Hague’s socio-economic landscape on the nuclear industry, drawing attention not only to the complexity of managing nuclear waste but also searching for alternative environmental and economic futures for the peninsula.

Despite seemingly fundamental and existential disagreements about the infrastructures, people are closely and intimately tied to them and to each other, as they live and shape the area together. In the local peninsular atmosphere, people are pulled into different directions in relation to the presence of nuclear in their lives, livelihoods and landscapes, and their aspirations for future possibilities. Drawing on a year of ethnographic research in the area, this paper suggests revisiting polarisation by exploring the generative notion of ambivalence when it comes to infrastructural futures. When and at what scales might ambivalence be found and drawn on, or even cultivated, in spaces of so-called polarisation? Findings from local collaborative workshops focused on imagining La Hague’s landscapes in 2125, and carried out as part of the research project, will be examined alongside the ethnographic data.