Transnatural ethics: revisiting the nuclear cleanup of Rocky Flats, CO, through the queer ecology of Nuclia Waste

This article explores the cleanup and conversion of former plutonium production facility Rocky Flats, located near Denver, Colorado, into a wildlife refuge. The article addresses the ethical demands of the 'post-nuclear' nature refuge and offers transnatural ethics and aesthetics in response, a relational ethics that seeks to take waste as inspiration. The article employs the performative persona of Denver-based drag queen comedienne Nuclia Waste to explore how transnatural ethical practice might figuratively reconstruct subjectivity in waste and develop a queer-ecology approach. The paper asks: what might the irreverent performances of a 'radioactive' drag queen open up, particularly for those living as the remains of the nuclear facility? Through detailed empirical analysis of the cleanup of Rocky Flats, the paper outlines the ethical framework historically employed at the site, which has relied upon and reproduced a waste/nature divide; the cleanup and management of the site have further naturalized this binarism. I argue that any effective response to such ongoing containment efforts requires a fundamental reorientation of environmental ethics toward waste. Drawing on ideas about 'naturecultures' and Donna Haraway's work, Michel Foucault's relational ethics, and the work of Eric Darier and Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands on 'queer ecology,' the article seeks to delineate an alternative: a relational ethics that recognizes and politicizes the permutation of waste and human, nature and waste. I utilize the digital performances and mutant drag of Nuclia Waste to revisit Rocky Flats and make broad connections between contamination and militarism, sexuality and the environment. The article speculates that experimental politicizations of subjectivity in waste might potentially foster coalitions between queer, labor, and environmental activisms.