Planetary Atmospheres of Fukushima: Introduction

Abstract

In this introduction, Thouny discusses the contradictions hidden by the name “3.11” and argues that the logic of containment of its rhetoric hides the eventfulness of the catastrophe by reducing it to the well-known postwar narrative of reconstruction and development. There are reasons to push forward the term “3.11,” notably its efficacy in giving shape to actual policies in Japan, and in fact bringing Japan back into a global world of nation-states—albeit one centered on a hegemonic American order of risk societies. The problem Thouny argues is that risk societies will never compel us to be moved and care for the toxic places in which we must learn to dwell. The premise of this book is that to engage with the eventfulness of Fukushima Japan, to understand why and how we come to care for this contaminated land in which we live, we need to depart from this deceptive if efficient logic of containment and start thinking the event of Fukushima in terms of planetary atmospheres in which responsibility becomes an indefinite process of reparation and care, literally a labor of love.