Atomic Mnemonic Assemblages: Towards A Sociological Poetry.

In On Hashish, Walter Benjamin writes that he would "like to write something that comes from things the way wine comes from grapes." In this paper, I try a similar project by squeezing things from my past that have been fermented over time with memory. I take as the starting point various objects and spaces from my childhood experiences in and around the atomic city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which may or may not be shared by others who encountered atomic Appalachia. I use my own eccentric archive and queer methodologies, including sociological poetry, to theorize perceptions of memory and the atomic spaces of my youth. Stretching beyond my own experience, this paper seeks to add to the growing body of sociological thinking about the connections between materiality and memory by adding the atomic as a dynamic example of matter's vibrancy and effects on individual and collective memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]