A "Voice to Sing": Rongelapese Musical Activism and the Production of Nuclear Knowledge

Abstract

The Marshall Islands are a Pacific archipelago of twenty-nine atolls and five islands that comprise two island chains (Ratak and Rlik). I refer to individuals as both Marshallese (ethnicity/nationality) and in accordance with how people often refer to their identities (belonging to an atoll, e.g. Bikinian, Rongelapese). The primary and official language is Marshallese, an Autronesian language. There are approximately 60,000 people living in the Marshall Islands, and the capital city/atoll Majuro Atoll has a population of about 25,500. It is the most populous city. The Rongelapese, the population focused on in this article, number in the few hundreds. The United States conducted sixty-seven nuclear tests in the archipelago from 1946 through 1958. 2 Jacques Rancire, Dissensus: